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“Never Mind
the Ethno
Stuff—
What Does
All This
Mean and
What Do We
Do Now?”
“Never Mind
the Ethno
Stuff—
What Does
All This
Mean and
What Do We
Do Now?”
Ethnography
COMMERCIAL—in the—
Ethnography
COMMERCIAL—in the—
39
c a s e s t u d y
In computer-supported
cooperative work (CSCW),
ethnography has received serious
attention as a method
of informing system design,
bringing a social dimension to
the design process by focusing
on how work is actually done
rather than looking at these
processes through some
idealized organizational view.
However, the method has been,
for the most part, confined to
research environments rather
than more directly involved in
the commercial world.
WORLDWORLDSteve Blythin
Mark Rouncefield
John A. Hughes
40 i n t e r a c t i o n s . . . m a y + j u n e 1 9 9 7
THE SETTING
The organizational set-
ting was one of
tremendous change.
The bank, facing increased
competition from new finan-
cial organizations and a host
of niche-market suppliers, saw
a need to change its culture
from predominantly adminis-
trative, in which the chief
function was perceived as the
safe and orderly handling of
customer accounts, to a selling
culture that emphasized selling
a range of financial products.
The most significant organiza-
tional developments were
heavy investment in informa-
tion technology (IT) and the
centralization of ‘back office’
processing in centers specializ-
ing in a particular area (lend-
ing, service, and securities) and
servicing ‘main street’ cus-
tomer service branches. The
research focused on the ser-
vice center that handled the
routine, administrative work of
managing accounts. In this
particular setting the work was
spread over four floors of a
modernized office building.
Each floor was devoted to a
particular type of work, for
example, opening and closing
accounts or regular payments,
in an arrangement that was, at
least in its general detail, com-
mon to all service centers.
THE ETHNOGRAPHICFRAMEWORK
The purpose of ethnog-
raphy is to carry out
the detailed observa-
tion of activities within their
natural setting. The aim is to
provide details of the routine
practices through which work is
accomplished, identifying the
contingencies that can arise,
how they are overcome and
accommodated, how divisions
of labor are actually achieved,
how technology can hinder as
T h e C a s e S t u d y
This article reports on a research project in which ethnography was used to
inform changes in management practices within a large retail bank.
The research project was part of the Department of Trade and
Industry/Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Center Initiative
on CSCW carried out by a consortium of NatWest Bank, the Centre
for Research in Computer-Supported Cooperative Work at Lancaster
University, and Syncho Ltd., a management consulting firm. As pro-
ject manager, Steve Blythin’s role was to present the output of the
research for his superiors at the bank. Indeed, it was at Blythin’s first
debriefing that a senior executive uttered the words used in the title of this arti-
cle. It was a refrain subsequently echoed both within the bank and from other
industrialists. The ethnographers, who have a research background, tended to
believe that their role was to analyze the work setting and that the role of the
organization was to respond however it chose. It was no part of the field work-
ers’ brief to become too closely involved with the real world of organizational
change. However, with sympathetic but firm pressure from Blythin, the ethnog-
raphers began to contribute much more to the process of organizational change.
What follows is an illustrative case study of the enhanced role of ethnography
in informing real world organizational change.
41i n t e r a c t i o n s . . . m a y + j u n e 1 9 9 7
well as support activities, and so
on. The focus is social, empha-
sizing the “situated” character
of work and the judgments and
discretion routinely employed in
response to everyday contin-
gencies. This enables the ethno-
grapher to identify the
cooperative aspects of “real-
world” work, such as small-
scale constellations of
assistance, the deployment of
local knowledge, the skillful
awareness of others, and so on,
that support the actual perfor-
mance of work activities.
The value of ethnography in
organizational and system
design is a matter of some con-
troversy. Although the authors
strongly support the method,
the role of ethnography as we
have hitherto practiced it is pri-
marily an informational input
that can also be of critical value
in making visible the real-world
aspects of a work setting. Such
modest claims, however, also
need to recognize that there
are clearly a number of prob-
lems in enabling others—such
as designers or the business
world—to use ethnography,
not the least of which involve
time, scale, and vocabulary.
Ethnography is directed toward
producing a “rich” portrayal of
the situation. Those interested
in commercial organizational
redesign, however, will often
be primarily interested in rapid-
ly and succinctly ascertaining
aspects of a process that are
useful or problematic to meet-
ing the particular problem at
hand. They also need practical
policy recommendations, as
reflected in the statement,
“What does all this mean and
what do we do now?”
The need to increase the util-
ity of ethnography has spurred a
number of developments that
allow the results of ethnograph-
ic studies to be structured for
presentation in a manner that
makes them more digestible in a
commercial context. Over some
years we have developed a set
of thematics to help organize
the very rich materials that
ethnography typically provides.
They include distributed coordi-
nation, plans and procedures,
and awareness of work, all of
which are discussed in the fol-
lowing sections.
Distributed CoordinationDistributed coordination refers
to the ways in which work
tasks are performed as part of
patterns of activities in division
of labor. It denotes a common-
place feature of all work set-
tings, namely, that tasks,
activities, and persons are
embedded within some type
of organized ensemble. They
have to be seen not as isolated
tasks, activities, and persons
but as socially organized tasks,
activities, and persons. This
means that coordination is an
inherent feature of the work
and much of this consists in
distributing information to rel-
evant parties. Keeping a steady
flow of information as a rou-
tine state of affairs in order to
“get the work done” is a
major feature of work.
PaperworkGiven the central role of coor-
dination within work, it is
important to identify the fea-
tures that affect coordination.
Notable coordination aspects
include the ability to monitor
the activities of others and
access to shared and available
information. Most of these are
accomplished through paper-
work. A prominent feature of
everyday work throughout the
bank is the completion, pro-
cessing, and duplication of
enormous amounts of paper,
which is so significant that
completion of paperwork con-
stitutes ‘the work.’
Fieldwork highlighted sever-
al problems with the routine
completion, distribution, and
coordination of paperwork, as
the following extract illustrates:
Next:
Recall of salary— “..normally
this should be done by our
SO section—but in view of
the numbers they can’t
cope…”
“I hate it when sections don’t
do what you ask them to
do…the customer was sup-
posed to hear 2 hours
ago…(I’ll) have to check up…”
“We’re not a process section
…we’re only a contact point”
“You can’t rely on the forms
going to the right location…
because of change of
address (ISS not updated)
or they get lost in the
post…”
One of the interesting
issues here is the impact of
perception (in this case, that
Standing Orders [SO] can’t
cope with the numbers) on
team working and its contribu-
tion to a “blame culture” that
reduces confidence and trust
within the organization. For
c a s e s t u d y
“Ethnography is directed towardproducing a ‘rich’ portrayal of the situation.Those interestedin commercialorganizationalredesign…willoften be primarilyinterested inrapidly and succinctly ascertainingaspects of a process that are useful or problematic…”
42 i n t e r a c t i o n s . . . m a y + j u n e 1 9 9 7
example, many problems were
routinely attributed to mail
sorting. For those in the mail-
room, however, errors were
regarded as both relatively
small (“Our error rate is about
1 percent”) and due to using
either temporary, untrained
staff or staff from other units
who were prone to “misfiring”
(putting post in the wrong
pigeonhole), simple confusion
(“They’ve seen a credit and
some checks ... but they didn’t
see they’re on a foreign
bank”), or “dumping” the
mail when they were recalled
to their own units.
Buck Passing and theBlame CultureCentralizing many of the local
branch functions at service
centers had some unfortunate
side effects, most notably the
emergence of a blame culture,
a culture of passing the buck.
Poor communications led to
the lack of a consistent, cus-
tomer-centered approach and
discouraged team working
across organizational units.
Collocation often creates and
encourages particular, often
fierce, group loyalties and the
development of an “us versus
them” attitude, where “them”
is any other unit within the
organization who “don’t
understand the pressures we’re
working under.” The mailroom
and the Records and Standing
Orders sections were all held
responsible for work difficulties
and—a particularly sore point—
for the poor results of inspec-
tion of the service center as a
whole and its failure to secure
a bonus payment.
The attenuation of lines of
communication was not helped
by spreading the center’s activi-
ties over four floors. Often this
meant that the bank was not
able to respond quickly or in a
particularly informed fashion to
urgent customer requests. With
processing so dispersed,
responsiveness depended on an
individual’s recognizing the
urgency of an issue and arrang-
ing to have the relevant docu-
mentation taken around to the
different sections. For example,
one of the mishandled sorts in
the mailroom was a check for
£1.5 million, which, if the
supervisor had not understood
its importance and arranged for
it to be delivered immediately
to relevant sections, would
have simply waited until the
next mail run.
Plans and ProceduresPlans and procedures refer to
the means by which distrib-
uted coordination is support-
ed. Project plans and
schedules, instruction manu-
als, job descriptions, formal
organizational charts, and
work flow diagrams are mani-
festations of some of the orga-
nizational artifacts designed to
make work orderly. Their pur-
pose is to provide a statement
of responsibilities, timings,
schedules, and interdependen-
cies through which coordina-
tion can be achieved. They try
to make a division of labor
coherent and may well also
claim to meet various efficien-
cy criteria.
For much of the time, pro-
cedures are routine and carried
out without undue reflection.
But there are occasions when
the procedures become explic-
it, as in the following example,
in which a worker is justifying
why a check cannot be
processed at that time.
On phone to xxxx Center:
“No you can’t…because it’s
past 3 o’clock and the cut-
off time and they won’t
accept the instructions…”
“…that’s why you’ve got a
cutoff of 12 o’clock…so
that we’ve got 3 hours to
get the paperwork and
phone work done..”
“…sorry about that but it
is the rule…”
Plans and procedures quin-
tessentially concern coordina-
tion. However, “the plan” is an
abstract construction that, to
be given life, will require prac-
tical application to the specifics
of the circumstances in which
it is to be followed. ‘Following
a plan’ will always require
more than can possibly be
specified within it. The use of
plans in real-world, real-time
activities typically involve
spelling out the plan by those
familiar with the circumstances
who are sufficiently trained in
the tasks involved, and a host
of other considerations.
Plans, Procedures, andLocal KnowledgeAccomplishing a plan depends
on the practical organization’s
members practical under-
standings about what the plan
specifies in these circum-
stances here and now, using
these resources, these people,
along with the other relevant
specifics. The ‘just what it
takes’ to implement the plan
43i n t e r a c t i o n s . . . m a y + j u n e 1 9 9 7
or procedure is what it takes to
‘make the plan work’ through
all the various contingencies
that can and do arise as the
‘unplanned’ obduracies of
organizational life.
Real-world, real-time work
often involves the use of local
knowledge, sometimes inter-
preted as cutting corners or
bending the rules to support
the overall objective of the
rules or procedures, as in the
following example.
Filling in Query Form:
“That’s one of our regulars…
she always has queries…
because she doesn’t bother
to look it up” “Also, if she
doesn’t get an answer quick-
ly enough she does the
query again and doesn’t tell
us so that 2 of us can be
doing the query…”
“She said she hadn’t had an
answer and I couldn’t
remember it so I looked in
the Query log…”
When plans and procedures,
and their associated decision-
making, are placed within their
social context, they come to be
seen as elements that enable
workers to make sense of their
own and others’ work and to
decide on appropriate courses
of action. It is important to see
how plans and procedures are
interwoven into highly variegat-
ed patterns of social organiza-
tion. How and in what ways, for
example, plans and procedures
are related to the sequentiality
of work; how and in what ways
they formulate the interdepen-
dencies of work; how they
identify problems of various
kinds; how they make work
accountable, open to criticism,
and so on. Plans also develop in
real time as it becomes clear
what the plan ‘really’ specifies
and its interdependencies. In
the process, additional work
loads of coordination are often
created.
It will come as no surprise
that plans and procedures can
also be a source of immense
frustration and annoyance,
particularly when they are
strictly implemented. The field
work identified ample
instances of the use of local
knowledge, “gambits of com-
pliance,” and so on, as fea-
tures of everyday work of the
center. A noticeable feature of
the center was its fairly rigid
adherence to plans and proce-
dures. As one assistant manag-
er commented:
“We piss a lot of people off
because we do things
right…(in the old days of
the branch) (a big customer
could phone up for money)
and whenever they phoned it
was singing, dancing and
taking your clothes off…
when we came here and they
phoned up and said can we
have £2 million today I said
‘No.’ ”
“We do things right, we do
things by the book and it
upsets people…particularly
people in Corporate…they
can’t use their superiority
and clout to do things…“
Or another, and frequent,
example from Records:
Next: Mandate from XXXX
Center not properly com-
pleted
On phone to XXXX Center:
It’s not my rules…
Audit… aren’t going to
accept that…”
Awareness of Work
“I think I’ll put a note saying
‘please put something
because we’re not psychic.’ ”
Another perspective on the
social organization of work—
and one obviously closely relat-
ed to the themes of distributed
coordination and plans and
procedures—is awareness of
work. This notion refers to
how work tasks are made
available to others and the
importance that this can play
in real-world, real-time work.
Awareness of work is a theme
that also involves interactional
subtleties and is a significant
means by which the coordina-
tion of work tasks is achieved
as a practical matter. The vari-
ous ways in which awareness is
developed, in which it is made
public and available to others,
are essential ingredients in
‘doing the work.’
One aspect of awareness
that was particularly important
to the bank, with its complex
and highly distributed division
of labor, was an awareness of
what work had been accom-
plished before it was handed
c a s e s t u d y
“Real-world, real-time workoften involves the use of localknowledge, sometimes interpreted as cutting cornersor bending therules to support the overall objectiveof the rules orprocedures…”
44 i n t e r a c t i o n s . . . m a y + j u n e 1 9 9 7
on to someone else and,
importantly, what happened to
that work once an individual or
a team had done its task suffi-
ciently so that others could do
their work. In this respect, field
work revealed a number of
failures, such as the following.
Chat with colleagues re:
codes; have been returned as
wrong; looking at Action
Sheets and reading out
codes:
“…they say it’s causing
inaccuracies to the bank’s
regulatory and statistical
reporting…they should tell
us what they think it is…“
Still looking at Action
Sheets: “What do we do if we
think the codes are right?”
“Give them a ring and ask
them.”
Phoning…explains “…so I
don’t know what you want us
to change it to…it just says
here it should be changed…
so if I think it’s right I just
leave it?”
Talking to colleagues:
On the phone again: “…t is
on the code grid.”
Goes to get Action Sheets
again: “…have we got time
to piss about with this?…
she says it’s on Table 3…”
Looking at sheets: “Where’s
Table 3?”
On phone: ”It comes under
EU? Even though it says
National Bank of XXXX?”
(Because they do not have
offices it comes under “‘over-
seas.’”) Writes number on
sheet: “Where’s that listed in
the codes then? Cause we’re
going to get loads of these.”
Talking to colleague: “Have
we got time for that?…”
“What a palaver… I don’t
know why they don’t just
write it on.” “Because it’s
easier to just send it out.”
One way in which visibility
and intelligibility are achieved is
through the ecological distribu-
tion of work and its activities.
This refers to the ways in which
the physical location of work
sites can facilitate or hinder the
ability of workers to gauge the
state of each other’s work by
seeing what colleagues are
doing now and how this fits
into their own pattern of work.
Many of the affordances that
arise from the physical layout
of activities arise simply by the
collocation of a collection of
persons ‘doing much the same
things’ or who are performing
interdependent activities. Being
able to ‘ask for advice’ just
when it is needed, updating
colleagues as one is passing, or
dealing with an emergency
when ‘all hands are needed’
are all informal, often intermit-
tent events that can be facili-
tated by the appropriate spatial
layout of work areas. Similarly,
the condition of desks, looking
in a particular filing cabinet,
working through a pile of
paperwork, and more, furnish-
es information about what the
person is doing, where he or
she is in the stream of work,
and how busy he or she is. In
subtle ways, this information is
available as a resource for judg-
ing whether, for example, “we
are on top of the work” or
whether “we are behind.”
The point we want to make
is that these affordances are
not necessarily planned or
designed—although they can
be—but are rather features of
the ecology of work that can
be used in the day-to-day col-
laborative ‘doing of the work.’
For example, members of
teams would often recognize
the ‘busyness’ of colleagues
and take on some of their
load. The physical separation
of supervisors from their teams
in some sections meant that
they relied on this type of
informal teamwork or constel-
lations of assistance because
they were in no position to for-
mally determine the progress
of the work. Awareness of
work in the ways we have just
sketched was not facilitated by
the distribution of the work
over the four floors of the
building and did much to
encourage the blame culture
discussed earlier.
The categories just dis-
cussed loosely align with
potential organizational design
issues and recommendations.
The emphasis on distributed
coordination highlights sup-
port for action and tasks with-
in the system.
Highlighted here are the
manner and means by which
work is coordinated and its
implications for support, rang-
ing from simple coordination
mechanisms to more proce-
dural work flow systems. The
45i n t e r a c t i o n s . . . m a y + j u n e 1 9 9 7
emphasis on plans and proce-
dures highlights the relation-
ship between users and the
formal representation of their
work. This relationship is rich
and complex, emphasizing the
difference between formalized
descriptions of work and ‘get-
ting the job done.’ Knowledge
of this distinction and what it is
to ‘do the job’ is central to
design decisions. The emphasis
on awareness of work reflects
the importance of the public
nature of work and its visibility
to others. This need for aware-
ness contrasts with traditional
individualistic approaches to
work design. Highlighting the
need for sharing promotes an
awareness of the activities of
others and emphasizes the
fundamentally social and
cooperative nature of work.
c a s e s t u d y
Mark Rouncefield
Centre for Research in
Computer-Supported
Cooperative Work
Department of
Sociology
Lancaster University
Lancaster LA1 4YL
+44-15-2459 4186
Fax: +44-15-2459 4256
ac.uk
Steve Blythin
Project Manager,
Support Services and
Design,
NatWest Bank Plc.
Network Strategy &
Development,
101-117 Finsbury
Pavement
London EC2A 1EH
+44-374-245375
Fax: +44-171-7148617
co.uk
John Hughes
Sociology Department,
Lancaster Universtiy
Lancaster LA1 4YR.U.K.
+44-524-594174
Fax: +44-524-594256
j.hughes@lancaster.
ac.uk
The preceding description of the casestudy barely does justice to the find-ings of the field work. However,
through discussions with the bank’s projectmanager a set of recommendations was for-mulated for the management group of the ser-vice center. What became clear was that thelarge-scale strategic changes that the bank wasundergoing had created organizational prob-lems that impinged directly on middle levelunits and their managers who were ultimatelyresponsible for implementing the necessarychanges in working practices. This level ofmanagement was involved in managing con-current changes in procedures, culture, andtechnology that were not and could not be inphase with each other. “Implementing theplan” was, in effect, ‘fire fighting.’
Accordingly, the role of the field workturned out to be to provide senior manage-ment with a picture of how the work was cur-rently carried out, which then served as abaseline for recommending changes in thepatterns of working. Among the more salientaspects was the lack of communicationbetween the various units of the center andhow “functional baronies” and a blame cul-ture served to hinder the smooth interdepen-dence of work flows. However, “lack ofcommunication” is hardly a diagnosis specificto the particular problems faced by this ser-vice center. A set of practical recommenda-tions was required that, if not spectacularly
radical, at least offered the prospect of“doable” incremental changes for this center.
CommentsIt would be wrong for the reader to infer thatall of the specific recommendations set outabove were directly derived from the ethno-graphic field work done at the center beingstudied. They were also informed by researchin other areas of the bank. When tried else-where, for example, the job swaps at the cler-ical level were viewed as successful; the mainbenefit was an increased awareness of thework of employees at other sites. As one cler-ical officer summarized the experience:
“…It was a good eye opener because
I’ve never worked there when it was a
Branch… and it really shows you up all
the problems that they can have…we
think that they do interview and then come
out and then write the interview up…
whereas they come out from doing an
interview and find that they’ve got to go
to the counter or answer inquires:so it was
very helpful for seeing problems for the
other end.”
Besides this general empathy was a devel-oping recognition of work as a cooperativeprocess and knowing its importance for com-pleting work and passing it on in a state thatenabled others to do their work effectively.Similarly, the multifunctional managementteam also proved to be such an effectiveforum for discussing areawide progress and
R e c o m m e n d a t i o n s
46 i n t e r a c t i o n s . . . m a y + j u n e 1 9 9 7
• Establish a management review system to
regularly review the performance of individual
units and of the service center as a whole. This
recommendation was intended to improve the
integration of the management team and break
down the functional baronies.
• Assign a team of assistant managers to
(1) address problems arising from the reviews
under strict deadlines, (2) report back to the
whole management team, and (3) implement
and review any changes. Again, the aim of this
recommendation was to improve team working.
• Rotate assistant managers’ roles to provide
wider experience with and objectivity about
he center’s work and to encourage a common
outlook.
• Create cross-sectional teams at the clerical
level to examine lower-level process problems,
thereby promoting a greater awareness of each
unit’s problems at the level at which the work
gets done.
• Ensure that all changes be accredited within
the center with full and regular communication
on success rates and reviews.
• Pay attention to the location of assistant
managers and supervisors relative to their
units. Bank supervisors should work close to
those for whom they are responsible in order
to deal with contingencies as they arise.
• Arrange job swaps at the clerical level
between sections and between the center and
other units. The aim of this recommendation
was to improve the awareness of others’ work.
For example, knowing and experiencing
customer pressure at a branch between noon
and 2:00 p.m. suggests that telephoning during
this period is pointless unless the task is
urgent. Everyone saves time, and customer
service at the ‘front end’ is improved.
• Hold regular monthly meetings of a multi-
functional management team with guests
from other units whose agenda is to review
performance, service standards, and areas of
current concern and to instigate and review
activity across the units. Again, the purpose
was to improve communication at the highest
level and generate the feeling that the center’s
problems were shared by everyone.
T h e f o l l o w i n g i s a s u m m a r y o f t h e m a i n
r e c o m m e n d a t i o n s t h a t e m e r g e d f r o m t h e s t u d y .
S u m m a r y
47i n t e r a c t i o n s . . . m a y + j u n e 1 9 9 7
c a s e s t u d y
improvements that the bank is now consider-ing translating the idea to other sites.
The main virtue of ethnography in thiscontext was its abilityto portray the work asit was actually doneand experienced dailyby those doing it.This was preferable torelying on variousindices of perfor-mance. Importantly,the bank was also ableto gain sufficientfocus on the interde-pendencies of workand place them with-in their subculturalcontext, a context inwhich, before the rec-ommendations werecarried out, failed toprovide effective sup-port to the smoothworking of the inter-dependencies.
Despite the impor-tance of the fieldwork study, the appropriate presentation ofthe materials to those responsible for manag-ing the service center was key. Because thestudy concerned the work as it was actuallydone, the team was able to use presentationalmaterials that resonated with the practicalexperience of the managers, who needed to beconvinced of the nature of their problems.Once the researchers could see the managersthrough the fieldwork results, the managerscould then better see what sorts of thingsneeded to be changed and improved by bettercommunication. They came to “own” theproblems and take steps to share them as ameans of coming to an agreed solution.
Apart from the field work reports anddebriefings, which are the main methods of
ethnographic reportage, it became clear thatthe use of “what if ” scenario planning wasenhanced by the inclusion of the ethnograph-
er in the discussions.After all, he or shewas in a position toprovide insights intooption generation orto the implementa-tion of change. Inaddition, once astrategy had beendecided on, ethnog-raphy could providesenior and middlelevel management,indeed, all levels ofstaff, with“vignettes” thathelped ground pro-posed changes in theknowledge of theactual work. Oncemanagers began tosay, “I can relate tothat,” the wholedebate changedfrom “so what” to
“do what...and when.” Also important, espe-cially given the tone of urgency in much ofthe commercial world, allowing ethnogra-phers to work closely with an organization’smanager can mean that much productivedetail is assimilated at an early stage and theresults of the field work are interwoven withproposals for change.
Of course, none of this is perhaps so radi-cal, nor is it suggested that by these meansorganizational change can be guaranteed tobe more effective. There are too many factorsinvolved to make any method for effectingorganizational change a panacea. However,we believe that ethnography can make a sig-nificant contribution to managing organiza-tional change.
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Once a strategy had
been decided on, ethnography
could provide senior and
middle level management,
indeed, all levels of staff,
with “vignettes” that helped
ground proposed changes
in the knowledge of the
actual work. Once managers
began to say, “I can relate
to that,” the whole debate
changed from “so what” to
“do what...and when.”
