Ethnography in health services research

Abstract

Qualitative research, and in particular ethnography, has traditionally been considered as representing anthropology par excellence. The perception that the ethnographer has to ‘go native’, immersing him or herself in the local culture, dominated lay understanding, and as a result managers saw it as an esoteric and uneconomical way of studying the organizational problems they were faced with. The knowledge generated by ethnography was considered to be idiographic, which implied that there was a problem of confidence in the generalizability of findings. The emergence of specific case studies in health policy and management which draw on ethnographic principles has demonstrated the value of this approach in understanding subjectivity, experiences and processes, all important aspects of human relations in organizations.