Ethnographic Accounting Research: Field Notes from the Frontier

• Published in: Accounting Perspectives
• Main Authors: Kalyta, Pavlo, Malsch, Bertrand
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: Wiley 2018
• Subjects: Arctic
• Online Access: http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/1911-3838.12169; https://api.wiley.com/onlinelibrary/tdm/v1/articles/10.1111%2F1911-3838.12169; https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/1911-3838.12169

Abstract Ethnographic fieldwork in accounting is scarce and remains a “frontier” methodology, unfamiliar to most accounting researchers. Building on our field research project on corporate accountability and stakeholder engagement, set in the Canadian Arctic, we illustrate in this article the use and explanatory power of ethnographic methods for studying social groups and individual actors in the broader accounting universe. We share our fieldwork strategies and provide a few practical tips for conducting ethnographic research in both corporate and community environments. We then argue that ethnographies provide accounting researchers with untapped opportunities to discover vast reservoirs of knowledge inaccessible to other research methods, and offer a path to humanize accounting research.