The ethnomethodological lens

By approaching the qualitative interview through an ethnomethodological lens, one can relate to the interview as an ethnographic encounter (Baker, 2002). With the ethnomethodological approach, the interview material is treated as a matter of storytelling, not as a factual report.

Historically, ethnomethodology and ethnography have many overlapping aspects (Atkinson, 2007; Atkinson, Coffey, Delamont, Lofland & Lofland, 2001). Ethnomethodology and

ethnography engage with the lifeworld of the social actor from an interpretative view, and challenge the quantitative outlook. The main difference between the two concepts is that ethnomethodology is understood as insisting on pursuing the ‘native’ perspective, meaning the

‘lived order’ of the social actors studied.

With an ethnomethodological lens, analysis of interview material makes it possible to ‘go well beyond the conventional “content” or “thematic” explications, where interviewee talk is seen as information about interior or exterior realities’ (Baker, 2002, p. 2). In this project, this specific approach has facilitated an analysis and discussion that I believe encompass the dimension of the interactive, co-creative dynamics between myself as a researcher and the leaders as interviewees in our conversations.

The ethnomethodological approach as a means to understand the qualitative interview allows for recognising the interview moment as just as ‘real’ as any other moment, and thus, makes it possible to understand it as a real ‘field moment’. This becomes particularly relevant in this case considering the fact that the words ‘trust’ and ‘self-trust’ were never present in my initial project proposal or in my interview guide. If it was not for the ethnomethodological lens as an interpretative alternative, I am not sure if I would have been able to grasp the trust and self-trust dimension as I eventually ended up doing.

As in any other field context, in the qualitative interview, both I and the interviewees draw upon

‘resources recruited from their memberships in other settings’ (Baker, 2002, p. 2). Applying the ethnomethodological lens to the qualitative interview implies that the interview is understood to be an arena for negotiating identities and mutual sensemaking, wherein there is a reciprocal attempt to establish intersubjective appreciation. Thus, the interview itself is not treated as a technique but as content in which identities are situated and accounted for.

In this sense, rephrasing Baker (2002), an ethnomethodological investigation applied to the qualitative interview setting builds on ‘a sense of fascination with how’ leaders ‘accomplish their identities, their activities, their settings, and their sense of social order’ (p. 3). The ethnomethodological outlook matches the social constructionist stance, recognising the interactional dynamics in the conversational questioning and answering process and how the participants—both the researcher and the interviewee—make sense of each other, how they negotiate identities, and how they depict and associate with the realms they talk about.

Simultaneously, considering the ethnomethodological viewpoint and Alvesson and Kärreman’s eight categories for the qualitative encounter, there is an aspect of interaction in the interview material that ought to be recognised as potentially vital for the identity narrative. The interview setting and the communication between the researcher and the interviewee is also a relational happenstance where identity is accounted for and negotiated.

To build further on this aspect of ethnographic intersubjectivity and the ethnomethodological approach, broadening the methodological perspective concerning the qualitative interview as the basis of my work, I find value in referring to the emic-etic distinction in ethnographic theory (Berry, 1999; Harris, 1976; Morris, Leung, Ames, & Lickel, 1999, Olive, 2014, Pike, 1967).

Recognising that the debate concerning the origin and use of the emic-etic distinction in ethnographic studies has a long history with many opposing views (Harris, 1967), the concept still provides a useful tool to distinguish between the local language used by informants and the researcher’s interpretation and conceptualisation of that language. Here, I apply the emic – etic distinction referring to the emic as the actual, local language used by the leaders to tell their stories, while referring to the etic as abstractions and interpretations of local language, made by the researcher for analytical purposes (Olive, 2014). Emic is local meaning and knowledge in use, etic is the researcher’s language of abstracted interpretation used to create new knowledge (Berry, 1999).

I see the concept of emic-etic as a useful distinction of viewpoints to describe how I have attempted to apply both the emic and the etic perspective in organising the process of data coding and interpretation. In the interactive interface between the leaders’ stories and the actual language they apply, and my interpretations of that language, my understanding of what is going on in the leaders’ stories is informed both by the emic and the etic. During the interviews with the leaders, I often found myself being highly attentive to, intrigued by, and sometimes fascinated by the leaders’ representations of their lives as leaders and how we through dialogue engaged in their stories. The conversational flow was how Janesick (2000) described it—an improvised dance emerging in the moment. In the interview moment, I many times had what I recognised as an

‘emic’ connection with the story being told, meaning that I perceived the experience of being granted a real, authentic glimpse and feeling of the leaders’ universe—an instant and brief insight into their lifeworlds.

During later stages, when processing the interview data in several rounds, this perspective was replaced with what I experienced as a much more detached moment and analytical view, where I shifted my viewpoint from a more emic (in context) to a more analytic, etic (outside context) point

of view. However, I cannot say that at any point during the project have I been able to fully distinguish between the empiric and analytic influences. I believe that the two dimensions continuously co-influenced my interpretation and understanding, simply because they continue to coexist as analytical sizes in my mind as well as in my language. Yet, for the sake of clarity and validity when it comes to the origin of my findings and the concepts for exploration in the forthcoming analysis and discussion, I find it relevant to try and distinguish between concepts with an emic origin and concepts that have been developed from etic categories. In particular this concerns the two main concepts of trust and self-trust being a core for attention in this project, but also other related concepts that I see playing a role in the stories on leadership identity as they are presented here.