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Shadows of a Culture in ‘Native’ Reflections on Work in an Abortion Clinic
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Shadows of a Culture in ‘Native’ Reflections on Work in an Abortion Clinic Robert W. WITKIN, Robert POUPART There has been a growing interest in recent years in the study of organisational cultures (Pettigrew, 1979; Dandridge, Thomas et al., 1980; Smircich, 1983). Some of the impetus for this work stems from a real desire to see the organisation in more human terms, to see it in the life process of its members as a living and lived reality. Inevitably, attention has been focused on the importance of ‘native’ views of the organisation (Sanday, 1979; Warner, 1981; Gregory, 1983). The term ‘native’ is a technical term used by anthropologists to refer to those who belong to the communities they study. Sociologists, particularly those who have been concerned to study the operations of practical reasoning in everyday life, frequently use the word ‘member’ in a similar way (Garfinkel, 1967; Douglas, 1970; Sudnow, 1972; Turner, 1974). Perhaps the most important legacy of this group of sociologists, labelled ethnomethodologists, has been to direct the attention of researchers to the world of everyday encounters in which action is seen as a skilful accomplishment and in which everyday, taken-for-granted understanding are made problematic. Ethnomethodology is defined by Garfinkel (1968) as “an organisational study of a member’s knowledge of his ordinary affairs, of his own organised enterprises where that knowledge is treated ... as part of the same setting that it also makes orderable.” In the study reported here, we were concerned to discern the possible outlines of the culture of an abortion clinic. This was a small pilot study intended to yield qualitatively rich data quickly and inexpensively to guide the design of a larger program of research. We would define a ‘corporate culture’ as an ordered set of practical values, themes and routines originating in, and providing solutions for, problems directly encountered in the work process. The corporate culture of the clinic is not separable from the work itself. It is “part of the same setting that it makes orderable”. We distinguish below between the corporate culture of an organisation and the various segmental cultures e.g. professional and managerial, which serve to crystallise the interests of various groups within the organisation. In the study we sought to elicit the intimate reflections of a doctor and a nurse on the everyday encounters in which they accomplish their actions and realise their projects. The problems of managing this type of work stem from the powerful feelings and values which surround the issue of abortion. The study sought to engage these values and feelings by eliciting native reflections on ‘critical’ events in the work process. It was felt that the distinctive culture, centred on the particular character of abortion work in a Francophone, Catholic community in Canada would be disclosed, at least in shadow relief, in these native reflections. By eliciting native reflections on ‘critical’ events within the work process, the corporate culture supporting that process is made more visible. By critical events we mean those events (selected by the researcher a priori or discovered in the course of a preliminary investigation) which render the accomplishment of the work most problematical, or which are central to the resolution of fundamental problems. A fuller description of the method has been presented elsewhere. It involved treating our two as (potentially) skilful informants on the lived experience of the work process, capable of making their ongoing thoughts, feelings and perceptions, in the very process of imaginatively re-living events in their work, fully visible to us. We did not interview the subject in the normal way but utilised a technique which we felt would better permit the sense of her lived experience to determine the content and form of the utterance. We asked each subject to relive imaginatively certain real, historical events that had occurred in the course of her work. We asked her to treat these events as though they were happening right now and to run a commentary on them, to tell us everything that occurred to her, all her thoughts, feelings and perceptions, everything that would enable us to know as much about what was happening as she did. We asked her to make these events present to us and we required that she use the present tense throughout her commentary. This latter constraint was considered essential and was more or less strictly adhered to. The culture that we see shadowed in these reflections is what we would term the ‘corporate culture’ of the clinic...