APPEALING WORK - AN INVESTIGATION OF HOW ETHNOGRAPHIC TEXTS CONVINCE

This paper examines how written research accounts based on ethnography appeal to readers to find them convincing. In particular, it highligh ts the role of rhetoric in the readers' interaction with and interpret ation of the accounts. Extending relevant work in the literatures of o rganization studies, anthropology and literary criticism, the paper de velops three dimensions-authenticity, plausibility and criticality-cen tral to the process of convincing. Further, through the analysis of a sample of ethnographic articles, it discloses the particular writing p ractices and more general strategies that make claims on readers to en gage the texts and to accept that these three dimensions have been ach ieved. Through authenticity, ethnographic texts appeal to readers to a ccept that the researcher was indeed present in the field and grasped how the members understood their world. Strategies to achieve authenti city include: particularizing everyday life, delineating the relations hip between the researcher and organization members, depicting the dis ciplined pursuit and analysis of data, and qualifying personal biases. Through plausibility, ethnographic texts make claims on readers to ac cept that the findings make a distinctive contribution to issues of co mmon concern. Plausibility is accomplished by strategies that normaliz e unorthodox methodologies, recruit the reader, legitimate atypical si tuations, smooth contestable assertions, build dramatic anticipation, and differentiate the findings. Finally, through criticality, ethnogra phic texts endeavor to probe readers to re-examine the taken-for-grant ed assumptions that underly their work. Strategies to achieve critical ity include: carving out room to reflect, provoking the recognition an d examination of differences, and enabling readers to imagine new poss ibilities. The empirical analyses, which highlight both the rhetorical and substantive aspects of convincing, suggest that at a minimum ethn ographic texts must achieve both authenticity and plausibility-that is , they must convey the vitality and uniqueness of the field situation and also build their case for the particular contribution of the findi ngs to a disciplinary area of common interest. These analyses also sug gest that the most provocative task and promising potential of ethnogr aphy is the use of richly-grounded data to not only reflect on the mem bers' world, but more importantly to provoke an examination of the rea ders' prevailing assumptions and beliefs.