Frustration, schizophrenia and a touch of sneakiness: insights in the process of doing ethnographic research

By Michelle van Weeren, Université Paris Dauphine

Winner of the inaugural Best Paper Award at the 2019 CSEAR International Congress

This summer, I participated for the first time in the Emerging Scholar Colloquium and the International Congress on Social and Environmental Accounting Research hosted by the University of St. Andrews from the 25th to 29th of August. I was quite positively surprised as I discovered the approachability of the senior researchers, it was clear that this was an open community willing to help and encourage future members. I was even more surprised as it turned out that my co-author Clarence Bluntz and me had been awarded with a prize for the best paper of the conference for our article “It’s not about manipulating the results, it’s about refining the methodology”- creative friction in the production of sustainability ratings. I was actually just about to sneak away to my room in the Agnes Blackadder Hall to practice this paper’s presentation that I was supposed to hold for the next day as Michelle Rodrigue stopped me and summoned me back to the conference room, where the award ceremony was just going to start. I was flabbergasted to hear we had won (to be honest, I wasn’t really aware of the existence of this ceremony that was organized for the first time this year) and unable to say a word, but luckily for me, this was not required for my picture being taken (it would have been better to keep my eyes open, though). All this did not exactly lower my level of tension for the next day’s presentation, but I am of course very grateful and happy with CSEAR’s recognition of our work.

The paper was, in the words of inaugural Best Paper Award Committee member Matias Laine, “not the most polished paper”, but the result of an “innovative approach in an area that needs more research”. For this blogpost, I thought it might be interesting to write a few words about this innovative approach.

The article is the result of an ethnography I conducted in the young sustainability rating agency where I used to work as an analyst for a period of three years. Just like most of my colleagues, I started working there with the firm conviction that sustainability ratings could help to bring ethics to the financial sector, thus making it a powerful lever for conducting a positive change in the world. This idea was reflected in the features of the agency’s rating methodology, that was based on strong sustainability principles but at the same time relied on the analysts’ capacity to ask the right questions rather than on quantitative and standardized checklists. This qualitative approach to evaluation worked out fine within the borders of our organisation but was, as it turned out as the agency matured and confronted its products to the market, not quite understood by the companies we rated. The result was a non-linear standardisation process of the rating methodology, with the analysts struggling with the tension between an internal pressure to make sense of sustainability performance while sticking to a case-by-case and common sense-based form of judgment, and an external pressure to communicate their ratings on sustainability performance in a way that was acceptable for external parties. This process was full of paradoxical situations and moments of bricolage where analysts had to make arbitrations between these two types of pressure.

Of course, the above-described analysis did not occur to me as precisely as I now write it down while I was still working there. The starting point of the project was rather one of general wonder about what was going on. Fascinated with the struggles my colleagues and I were going through but also fairly frustrated with the concessions we had to make to comply with external expectations, I started to keep a diary about one and a half year after my hiring. As my colleagues and me were working in an open space with all doors and walls made of glass and my screen was facing the hall where everybody continuously passed to grab a coffee in the kitchen, I had to be very careful with the Google Doc I used. I also had to be careful with What’s App that was installed on my desktop and that I used to talk to my friend Clarence Bluntz, who was in the second year of his Ph.D. at the time and with whom I shared my observations.

As my notes piled up and thanks to discussions with Clarence, who came to the company twice to conduct interviews with my colleagues (this part of the data collection was thus fully uncovered), I was more and more able to see the events at the agency from a distance. At the same time, I still was one of the analysts and had to complete my ratings and attend meetings just like all of my colleagues. When something occurred at the company everyone was upset about (this happened quite frequently), I at first felt just as troubled as everyone else, but quite quickly I was also able to analyse the events from a greater distance, thanks to Clarence and to the observing approach I had taken and that had become natural. The result was a sort of schizophrenic state of being, switching back and forth from playing the role of a devoted employee to being a kind of undercover agent. This was not always easy and more than once I felt scared or guilty about my sneaky behaviour.

It is now more than a year ago since I left the company and started my Ph.D., which can be regarded as the continuation of this ethnographic work. Because I wondered whether the tensions my colleagues and I experienced are shared more widely in the field, I have been doing interviews with analysts and other actors from the French sector for responsible investment during the past year. Thanks to these discussions and to my readings, I now understand that the company I used to work actually was an exception in the field, sticking to a strongly ethically-driven approach to sustainability analysis in a sector where this type of analysis is more and more instrumentalised to better identify financially material risks and opportunities. This does not mean that tensions are not felt by analysts in other organizations, but generally, they do not get the same degree of autonomy from their managers to develop and refine their own methodologies, that are often highly formalized. In other words: if we wanted to attract mainstream investors, who are used to quantitative reports and data, we did not have any other choice than to adapt ourselves, and it is rather praiseworthy that our employer gave us the freedom to carry out this adaptation process as we wished, thus leaving room for our own interpretation of the compromise between ethics and efficiency.

The frustration that led to this inquiry at the start has thus made place for a more nuanced view on my period as a sustainability analyst. The schizophrenia has disappeared, as I am now a full-time academic. The guilt about the sneakiness that my covert participatory observation implied stayed, as I never disclosed my full intentions and the detail of the data collection process to my former employer (the project would not have been possible if I had). The odds are low that he will ever read this blogpost, but if one day he would, I can only hope that he will be able to appreciate the honesty of this confession.

Living on CSEAR island: Do we have a problem? Tell us what you think!

CSEAR will celebrate its 25th anniversary this year. The network has developed from a small number of UK-based researchers in 1991 to an international network of academics and practitioners engaging in various social and environmental accounting related activities.

At this year’s Summer School, two workshops will be held on the topics of the Future of the Field and CSEAR Future(s). Conference attendees are invited to share thoughts and ideas on these topics during the workshops and on poster boards located in the open space in the Gateway.

These are opportunities to celebrate achievements, discuss the messiness, and imagine possibilities of SEAR field and the CSEAR community in the past, now and in the future. There is no expectation for the participants to develop ‘one voice’, ‘one view’ and ‘one way forward’ for CSEAR. Rather, these activities aim to create space to discuss, connect and create possibilities for research, teaching, and engagement which may emerge.

In the first of these two important workshops, Carmen Correa, Matias Laine, Colin Dey and Ian Thomson will lead a debate that seeks to confront some of the issues - and problems - facing the CSEAR community. The starting point for the workshop is the forthcoming SEAJ article, "Struggling Against Like-Minded Conformity in Order to Enliven SEAR: A Call for Passion", written by Carmen and Matias. Their paper reflects upon the behavioural and attitudinal issues of scholars within the community of social and environmental accounting research and seeks to stimulate debate by discussing the authors' views on how the CSEAR community operates. 

Correa and Laine acknowledge that many within our community may feel happy and 'at home' within CSEAR, and that CSEAR has been of great importance in establishing social structures to foster research activity. However, they also suggest that:

"such an institutionalisation of social structures is not without problems: many basic issues come to be taken-for-granted and thus move beyond discussion (Spence, Husillos, and Correa-Ruiz 2010). We concur with Gray, Dillard, and Spence (2009, 564) that SEAR scholars need to expose our taken-for-granted assumptions more explicitly. Not only do such issues easily bring the development of this research genre to a standstill, but also they may lead to in-breeding and clubbishness (Spence, Husillos, and Correa-Ruiz 2010)."

A key concern for the authors is a lack of passion within the community, which is dominated instead by conformity:

"Many SEAR scholars tend to agree with each other, but when they do not agree, the issue is not taken up in discussion at all... There is too much of an obsession with appearance and coherence, and so frequently there is neither self-questioning nor any intention to really challenge others’ assumptions. Similar arguments can be directed towards the audience. Instead of listening, we audience members often only hear. We simply interpret the ideas of others according to our own research approach and do not acknowledge the premises and taken-for-granted assumptions behind them. Indeed, these are rarely, if ever, challenged at a conference."

To address these concerns, they argue that:

"We need to engage with others in order to learn. Spence, Husillos, and Correa-Ruiz (2010) emphasised that ‘what is needed is to show the political imagination to engage with actors other than simply other members of the SER cargo cult’. However, what we here call for is a different attitude of SEAR scholars, as individuals, irrespective of the type of forum or scientific gathering that they use to interact and dialogue about their research. Engagement takes place on the individual level – organisations, communities or strands of literature do not engage. Rather, we argue that engagement starts with the ability to listen to the other. Through listening, one comes to learn what the other has to say. Instead of simply dismissing views that are not coherent with one’s own worldview, such encounters should be seen as opportunities. Then, there is the possibility of coming to understand the other. However, such engagement may not be realised if we hold on to taboos – that is, if we are not willing to expose and get deeper into the taken-for-granted assumptions underlying each piece of research."

During next week's workshop, the intention is to explore Correa and Laine's call for deeper engagement and listening. In anticipation of this, we would welcome views and thoughts on the issues and challenges raised by this paper:

• Do you agree/disagree that there is a lack of passion, and too much conformity within the CSEAR community?
• Are these issues symptomatic of a wider structural problem within the community - as notoriously described by Spence et al (2010) as a 'cargo cult' of CSEAR 'islanders'?
• To what extent do structures such as the CSEAR conferences and SEAJ contribute to or alleviate these problems?
• Is the publication of a journal article in SEAJ and the running of workshops at CSEAR likely to resolve these problems, or are we simply talking to ourselves and repeating well-worn arguments that have been raised before?
• Rather than exhorting the CSEAR community for being passionless, should we be encouraging and helping them to be more free to pursue their passions?
• Where, if at all, are the positive examples or role models of existing CSEAR work that demonstrates what can be achieved?   

Follow the debate here, on Facebook, and on Twitter, using the hashtag #CSEAR2013.

Future Earth: possibilities for SEA

On a sticky summer’s day, 200 or so individuals came together in the hallowed halls of the Royal Society to hear about Future Earth and to discuss challenges and opportunities for UK research and stakeholder communities. Jan Bebbington and I joined the meeting with a view to understanding the programme and considering how social science, and in particular the CSEAR communities may engage with Future Earth.

Future Earth is a new 10-year research programme on global sustainability launched in June 2012 at Rio +20.  The programme is organised around three research themes (i) dynamic planet; (ii) global development; and (iii) transformations towards sustainability and seeks to answer questions such as

• ·       How can governance be adapted to promote global sustainability?
• ·       How can societies adapt to the social and ecological consequences of a warming world, and what are the barriers, limits and opportunities to adaptation?
• ·       What lifestyles, ethics and values are conducive to environmental stewardship and human welfare and how might these contribute to support a positive transition to global sustainability?

Informed by an idea of co-design and co-production of knowledge, the initiative seeks to integrate natural science, social science, engineering and the humanities research and to engage with various stakeholder communities including policy-makers and the business community. The global nature of the programme will lead to the development of a distributed knowledge network with regional centres. Research nodes aim to ‘be responsive to needs and priorities of decision-makers at regional and national level, encourage broader participation of users in the research, coordinate global environmental change research agendas and activities, and disseminate knowledge and capacity on science for sustainability across the globe’.

Despite the call for social science research, we noted the apparent absence of management and business researchers as well as limited presence of civil society NGOs. Members of the CSEAR network have a long tradition of engaging with various communities, including those within the public and private sector in relation to sustainability challenges. Recent work concerning accounting for climate, biodiversity and water evidences both theoretical and practical contributions to sustainability. CSEAR is an international network with activities underway around the globe. This creates a rich opportunity to perhaps engage with Future Earth activities.

As the initiative develops, how might social and environmental accounting research contribute or engage with these initiatives? More generally, what lessons have been learnt or gleaned from within the CSEAR community about interdisciplinary projects that seek to address sustainability challenges? How might we build further capacity and capabilities across the community to engage through praxis, as individuals and collectively, for transitions to sustainability?

If you are interested in finding out more about the programme, the Initial Design Report of Future Earth via the Future Earth webpages on the ICSU website.

For another view on the Future Earth meeting, check out Victor Anderson's post 'Does Future Earth get the big picture?' at the Green Economy Coalition. 

Jan Bebbington & Shona Russell (June 2013)