What, why, and how?
Reviewing literature
Designing the study
Interviewing
Observation on the move: Shadowing
Following objects and quasi-objects
Tools for fieldwork
Surviving in the field: Practicalities and personalities
Excursions into the cyberspace
Analysing field material
Text analyses
Writing it up
Good academic writing: Beauty & credibility
When to stop, and what to do next

This clear, straightforward textbook embraces the practical reality of actually doing fieldwork. It tackles the common problems faced by new researchers head on, offering sensible advice and instructive case studies from the author's own experience.

Barbara Czarniawska takes us on a master class through the research process, encouraging us to revisit the various facets of the fieldwork research and helping us to reframe our own experiences. Combining a conversational style of writing with an impressive range of empirical examples she takes the reader from planning and designing research to collecting and analyzing data all the way to writing up and disseminating findings.  

This is a sophisticated introduction to a broad range of research methods and methodologies; it will be of great interest to anyone keen to revisit social research in the company of an expert guide.

Barbara Czarniawska was Professor of Management Studies at GRI, School of Business, Economics and Law at University of Gothenburg, Sweden. Doctor honoris causa at Stockholm School of Economics, Copenhagen Business School and Helsinki School of Economics, she was a member of the Swedish Royal Academy of Sciences, the Swedish Royal Engineering Academy, the Royal Society of Art and Sciences in Gothenburg and Societas Scientiarum Finnica. Czarniawska took a feminist and constructionist perspective on organizing, recently exploring the connections between popular culture and practice of management, and the organization of the news production. She was interested in methodology, especially in techniques of fieldwork and in the application of narratology to organization studies.