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Purpose – The use of organizational ethnography has grown significantly during the past decades. While language is an important component of ethnographic research, the challenges associated with language barriers are rarely discussed in the literature. The purpose of this paper is to open up a discussion on language barriers in organizational ethnography.

Design/methodology/approach – The author draws on her experience as a PhD student doing an organizational ethnography of an emergency department in a country where she initially did not speak the local language.

Findings – The paper examines the author’s research process, from access negotiation to presentation of findings, illustrating the language barriers encountered doing an ethnography in parallel to learning the local language in Sweden.

Research limitations/implications – This paper calls for awareness of the influence of the ethnographer’s language skills and shows the importance of discussing this in relation to how we teach and learn ethnography, research practice and diversity in academia.

Originality/value – The paper makes three contributions to organizational ethnography. First, it contributes to the insider/outsider debate by nuancing the ethnographer’s experience. Second, it answers calls for transparency by presenting a personal ethnographic account. Third, it contributes to developing the methodology by offering tips to deal with language barriers in doing ethnography abroad.

Denna avhandling tog sin utgångspunkt i den relativa bristen på forskning rörande samspelet mellan roller och rutiner. Mot bakgrund av att roller och rutiner simultant både möjliggör för individer att utföra arbete autonomt samtidigt som de upprätthåller kontinuitet så ställdes den övergripande frågan: hur samspelar roller och rutiner för att möjliggöra flexibla ageranden? Frågan operationaliserades genom tre delfrågor: (1) varför är roller och rutiner flexibla, (2) hur samspelar roller och rutiner, och (3) vilka kontextuella aspekter påverkar vilka roll- och rutinmönster som materialiseras? Syftet med avhandlingen var att öka förståelsen för samspelet mellan roller och rutiner i organisationer.

Den teoretiska grunden byggdes upp i tre steg. Först utforskades grunderna för roll- och rutinteori separat, vilket utgjorde basen för vidare konceptualiseringar. Därefter undersöktes de överlapp i forskning som existerar mellan roller och rutiner samt dess bidrag till hur vi förstår fenomenen idag. Som ett tredje steg diskuterades de gemensamma dragen i de två områdena. Centralt i detta steg var den gemensamma ontologiska utgångspunkten i återskapande av dualiteten struktur-agentskap. Det teoretiska arbetet utmynnade i ett konceptuellt ramverk där roller och rutiner integrerades och som ligger till grund för vidare förståelse av samspelet.

För att uppfylla syftet och i linje med synen på roller och rutiner som mönster av handlingar, genomfördes en organisationsetnografi vid en akutavdelning på ett svenskt universitetssjukhus. Med dess egenskaper representerade detta empiriska sammanhang en unik möjlighet att studera samspelet mellan roller och rutiner. Studien baserades huvudsakligen på observationer, totalt 25 fältbesök (136,5 timmar), 19 intervjuer och hundratals dokument, ett material som analyserades iterativt. Narrativ, visuell kartläggning och narrativa nätverk var analytiska strategier som användes i arbetet att gå från en initial förståelse av sammanhanget till att identifiera roll- och rutinmönster.

I utvecklandet av det konceptuella ramverket påvisades hur roller och rutiner samspelar i och genom handlingar. Beroende på individuella, interpersonella och miljömässiga aspekter, situeras skriptade och oskriptade handlingsmönster, vilket utlöser mönsterbildning av roller och rutiner. Sammanfattat i ett integrerat teoretiskt ramverk lyftes de viktigaste resultaten fram vilka visar på hur samspelet mellan roller och rutiner ger organisationer både stabilitet och flexibilitet. Dessa resultat har konsekvenser inte bara för teoribildning om roller och rutiner, utan också för organisationsteori i stort. Resultatens konsekvenser för arbete vid akutavdelningar och andra organisationer, samt för utbildare och samhälle presenterades slutligen.

Purpose: While previous research acknowledges the influence of roles on routine dynamics, roles are largely taken for granted. The purpose of this paper aims at examining how roles and routines interplay in accomplishing work in organizations.

Design/methodology/approach: A four-year ethnography of an emergency department (ED) at a university hospital was conducted through observations, interviews and documents.

Findings: Roles and routines are formed by scripted and unscripted patterns, which are brought into performances following a situational assessment. Performances trigger patterning processes prompting the co-construction of role and routine patterns.

Practical implications: This study highlights the importance of designing flexible structures. Managers can benefit from identifying unscripted patterns critical to work performance and making them part of scripted patterns. Managers should contemplate the influence that individuals, their relations and context have on how work is done.

Social implications: This study suggests that the existence of different patterns impacts the length of wait times in EDs, a societal issue worldwide because of the effects that waiting can have on the patient's health condition and the unnecessary costs it carries. This study can help design solutions to decrease wait times.

Originality/value: This paper contributes to research on routine dynamics by providing a more nuanced explanation of the sources of endogenous change and how these enable organizational stability and flexibility.

In this paper, we examine the unfolding process of newcomers’ learning in routine dynamics. Mainly viewed as cognitive schemas, previous research has provided evidence for the storage of routines as procedural memory. As mindful accomplishments, studies in routine dynamics have shown that learning can be an ongoing process, as individuals adapt their performances and pattern routines accordingly. Nonetheless, little is known about how learning takes place when routines are not to change but the organizational members performing them are. We address the questions of how organizational members learn to competently perform routines, and how this learning process shapes routine dynamics, through a four-year ethnographic study of an emergency room at a university hospital characterized by high rates of personnel turnover. We find that, in learning how to perform routines, newcomers draw on four learning practices (stunt performing, virtual performing, collegial learning, and self learning), which result in routine stretching. Our findings lead to a theoretical framework which outlines the learning process newcomers go through and its influence on routine dynamics. Our study contributes to research on routines by articulating the learning process organizational members undergo in becoming skillful at performing routines and how this enables new and old routine participants to align their lines of actions in reproducing routines as patterns-in-variety.

Research on coopetition has largely been based on collaborative relationships between competitors. Building on this body of knowledge and addressing recent calls for research on intra-organizational and emergent coopetition, the purpose of this paper is to further our understanding in regard to these issues. The study is based on an in-depth qualitative study at the Emergency Department of Umeå University Hospital and consists of more than 80 hours of participant observation and interviews. The paper analyses the collaborative and competitive practices that exist among medical doctors and nurses, and discusses what seems to be triggering intra-organizational coopetition and its consequences. The analysis illustrates that coopetition emerges among individuals and groups not necessarily as the result of the implementation of an intended strategy. On the contrary, triggers of emergent intra- organizational coopetition include the organizational structure, diversity of professions, division of work activities, availability of resources, uncertainty and workload levels. All this makes a distinct contribution to the understanding of intra-organizational coopetition as an emergent practice, knowledge that should be of use from both a theoretical and a practical point of view.