Constructing for Staying in "Edareh": Understanding the Dynamics of Social Construction of Reality in the Light of Organizational Ethnography

Authors
Seyed Hosein Kazemi 1
Hassan Danaee Fard 2
Ali Rezaeian 3
Adel Azar 4
1 . Associate Professor, Faculty of Management and Economics, Tarbiat Modares University, Tehran, Iran.
2 Professor, Faculty of Management and Accounting, Shahid Beheshti University, Tehran, Iran.
3 Professor, Faculty of Management and Economics, Tarbiat Modares University, Tehran, Iran.
4 . PhD. student, Faculty of Management and Economics, Tarbiat Modares University, Tehran, Iran
Abstract
This paper is based on an interpretive ethnography conducted in a public organization ("Edareh"). This paper attempts to achieve some part of the ethnography’s goal to describe how "ideal worker" is socially constructed by the different organization’s stakeholders (managers and employees), so as to stay and to be “advantaged". This goes through the light of analyzing the two key events, that is to say "management changes" and "layoff". At first, drawing on Schneider and Ingram framework, the characteristics of “ideal worker” construct from new managers’ view, their sense making of the employees with this framework and trying to move into the full realization of the construct is expressed. Then, based on social construction efforts on the part of employees, their struggles to stay, to not being fired, and even to get promoted - intended to changing and modifying the new manager’s “ideal worker” construct - is described in the form of a manifesto for staying in “Edareh”.
Keywords
Interpretive ethnography
Ideal worker
Social construction of reality
Personal construct theory
 
 
 
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Organizational Resources Management Researches
Volume 3, Issue 3
December 2013
Pages 71-88