INTRODUCTION - Authors: Sylvie GROSJEAN, University of Ottawa, Canada & Frédérik MATTE, University of Ottawa, Canada.
The introduction will present a review (“state-of-the-art”) of existing form of video-ethnography for studying work practices (Christianson, 2018; LeBaron, 2018; Jarrett & Liu, 2018; Hassard et al., 2018). We will propose a methodological reflection about video-based studies in organizations, especially in regard to the material, embodied, and sensory dimensions of everyday work activities. The purpose of this review is to highlight how these researchers address the material, embodied and sensorial dimensions of the workplace with video-ethnography.
Based on this review, we will discuss the ongoing debates related to innovative methodologies such as “affective ethnography” (Gherardi, 2018), “sensory ethnography” (Pink, 2013); “mobile video-ethnography” (Vannini, 2017). For example, organizational video ethnography captures detailed interactions and provides opportunities for researchers to link these to broader organizational processes. However as mentioned by Jarret & Liu (2018) there is an apparent methodological gap: “Studies that focus on the detail of the interactions “zoom in.” Others that focus on the interactions in context “zoom out.” But few go further and “zoom with”––that is, incorporate participants’ interpretations of their video-recorded interactions.” (p. 366). Finally, this introduction will allow us to discuss how experiential and unspoken ways of knowing produced through a video-based approach can be made meaningful and relevant to study the material, embodied and sensory dimension of work practices.
PART 1- VIDEO-ETHNOGRAPHY AND REFLEXIVITY-IN-PRACTICE: MAKING VISIBLE BODIES, AFFECTS AND SENSES THROUGH PRACTICES
Part 1 will focus on the use of video-ethnography to support collective reflexivity and group dynamics in organizational contexts. Video recordings are used by researchers to stimulate a reflective process that explicitly solicits the participants’ interpretations of their video-recorded interactions. The illustrative cases presented in Part 1 will contribute to underline the contribution of video reflexivity to study affects and senses in workplace practices (i.e. Caroll et al., 2008). Our objective is to show how such a methodological focus contributes to the understanding of the way bodies, senses and affects in organizations are constitutive of workplace practices (e.g. clinical decision-making, medical radiology, care processes).
Chapter 1 - Involving Healthcare Professionals, Service Users and Researchers in Learning about Care Using Video Feedback
Author: Rick IEDEMA, King's College London, UK
This chapter sets out the premises, practices and achievements of video-reflexive ethnography or VRE (Iedema et al., 2019; Iedema, Mesman & Carroll, 2013). VRE focuses on engendering an affective, deliberative and pragmatic dynamic among its participants by visually representing and negotiating both mundane and complex facets of the care processes in which participants are involved. This makes VRE a uniquely participative and appreciative endeavour: rather than researcher-analysts deciding what are the critical analytical categories and procedures, and what are the most significant findings and conclusions, VRE invites and encourages participants (professionals, patients, families, and so on) to articulate their responses to footage portraying their own and their colleagues’ work practices and circumstances.
The reflexive meetings where these discussions take place enable participants to respond to each other’s views, responses and suggestions (Iedema, 2011). The dynamic that results is one through which participants come to realise and contextualise what are their own, what are others’, and what are not-yet-considered perspectives on the work and work contexts thus depicted (Iedema et al., 2018).
The chapter further explains that VRE’s participative-appreciative approach has specific theoretical and philosophical underpinnings. Delving into the mundane aspects of everyday organisational events and practices using video feedback makes it possible for researchers and participants together to highlight and confront the complexity of the ‘here and now’ (Iedema, 2018). Complexity scientific endeavours define complexity as inherent in ‘complex adaptive systems’ (Braithwaite et al., 2017), and characterise complexity as all-encompassing yet rooted in phenomena at several removes from ordinary (epiphenomenal) healthcare practice (Braithwaite, 2018). In contrast, VRE’s complexity theoretical position is that complexity may be observed, as William Blake noted, ‘in a grain of sand’ (Blake, 1863). Accordingly, VRE posits that complexity is neither objectively inherent in phenomena as such, nor an attribute of any specific phenomena, but is always already observer-dependent and observer-defined (Iedema & Bezemer, under review). This complexity-theoretical stance lends legitimacy and significance to VRE’s practice of bringing professional and patient participants into a zone where footage of in situ care activities can act as a springboard for collectively elaborating and reframing experiences, knowledge and enactments of care.
The chapter presents case study examples to illustrate VRE's philosophy which aims not to reconstruct the real from knowledge about the past, but to construct futures from collaborative learning about the present. The chapter demonstrates that aside from data and analysis, reflexivity, interpretation and deliberation are the primary drivers for actors to gain awareness of and expand control over their in situ customs, structures and systems of care. Since learning about the present in this way puts identities, knowledge, practice and relationships at risk, the chapter concludes by suggesting that VRE is necessarily premised on an ethic of mutual care, flexibility and acceptance (Iedema et al., 2019).
Chapter 2 - Video Reflexivity-in-Practice: Making Visible the “Sensory Ordering" in Telemedicine
Authors: Sylvie GROSJEAN, Frédérik MATTE, Isaac NAHON-SERFATY, University of Ottawa, Canada
In this chapter, we will describe how video reflexivity could be used to study the ways in which sensory information is redistributed by the use of telemedicine technologies (Lupton & Maslen, 2017). As Oudshoorn (2008) and others have found, sensory work is a key feature of the redistribution and delegation of work in telemedicine. Maslen (2016, 2017) explores the problems encountered by physicians when sensory experiences are constrained by technology. For example, it is impossible to touch a wound, a limb, or to smell and sometimes even hear a particular sound from a cluttered or difficult breathing. And as said Maslen: “The lack of access to tactile and olfactory information may compromise a physician’s ability to make diagnose, while lowering confidence in the diagnose made” (Maslen, 2017). Few studies analyse the “sensory work” in telemedicine because it’s an emergent theme. And, as mentioned by Maslen, making visible the sensory work in context of telemedicine is also a methodological challenge. We propose to address this challenge with a methodological approach based on video-ethnography.
More specifically, we will present a method based on observations of telemedicine consultations with video recordings (Heath et al., 2010; Iedema et al., 2006) and self-confrontational inter
