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Renewal is not just about natural cycles of waxing and waning: sometimes it means a leap forward. The progress of ethnographic praxis in industry has been a gradual but steady evolution. Yet recent economic events and academic trends suggest that the moment has arrived for ethnographers to expand our influence by codifying our practices. This paper proposes the establishment of an Ethnographic Praxis Professional (EPP) certification based upon an Ethnographic Body of Knowledge (EBOK). A professional credential and an authoritative repository of shared concepts and methods would benefit clients, employers, professors, students – and most of all ourselves as practitioners.
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INTRODUCTION
Renewal is not just about natural cycles of waxing and waning, like the phases of the moon or the seasons of the year or the bull and bear episodes of the capital markets. Sometimes it means a leap forward.
The progress of ethnographic praxis in industry has been a gradual but steady evolution. In response to the “scientific management” doctrines espoused by Frederick Taylor and his disciples during the first decades of the twentieth century, emphasizing efficiency based upon time-and-motion task studies (Taylor 1997), the Depression era in the U.S. gave rise to an alternative viewpoint. Beginning in the 1930’s, the Human Relations movement sought to demonstrate the effect of social dynamics upon productivity and to focus management attention on the people doing the work (Mayo 2003). Meanwhile the creation of the American Marketing Society encouraged social scientists to employ qualitative and quantitative research methods in the service of product design, advertising and customer relations (Burns 2009).
The Society for Applied Anthropology was founded in 1941, and World War Two elevated the urgency of studying how workplace communities interacted with new machinery. Human Factors Engineering emerged initially as a means of verifying the safety of aircraft for combat. Later these methods proved helpful in evaluating the usability of other innovative technologies and the ergonomics of Human-Computer Interaction (Wickens 1997). Postwar industry adopted Quality Management methods for manufacturing that regarded understanding workers’ needs, attitudes and habits as a prerequisite for implementing effective process improvements (Deming 1982).
As computers spread beyond laboratory clean rooms into offices and homes, the demand for anthropological insights into the work environment grew. The National Association for Practicing Anthropology was established in 1983. That same year saw the creation of the Institute for Research and Learning at the Palo Alto Research Center; this initiative became the renowned Work Practice and Technology Group in 1989 (Szymanski and Whalen 2011). The new fields of Requirments Engineering (Robertson 2006) and User Experience Design (Norman 1990) gained influence in the 1990’s as developers recognized the importance of researching users’ sensory, emotional and cognitive responses. With the inauguration of EPIC in 2005, many of these occupations which historically had been distinct but related soon discovered their common purposes and methods. Ethnographic research has proved a worthwhile investment for an ever-expanding range of industries, businesses and commercial endeavors (Cefkin 2009, Jordan 2012).
During this period of growth, a recurring topic for water cooler discussions and nowadays for chatter in cyberspace has been the creation of a professional certification for ethnographers. Codifying ethnographic praxis would indeed be a big leap, and it’s time to give the idea more serious consideration. This paper is intended to stimulate brainstorming and debate, as well as to mobilize any EPIC colleagues who may wish to develop an action plan. Regardless of the ultimate outcome, envisioning alternative future directions for our community should foster a sense of renewal.
BUSINESS CASE
Goal and Deliverables
The goal of professional certification would be to expand the influence of ethnographic praxis in industry: more jobs; greater impact upon business strategy, operations, and workplaces; and higher compensation in recognition of the value of the contribution to the enterprise.
Based upon comparisons with certifications in other domains, the components of a certification would include:
- An Ethnographic Body of Knowledge (EBOK) that would comprise an agreed-upon set of standards and procedures.
- An Ethnographic Praxis Professional (EPP) certification that would be awarded to candidates who passed an exam demonstrating sufficient familiarity with the EBOK, who obtained training in ethnography through either an academic institution or an approved provider of continuing education, and who documented work experience related to ethnography.
- An Ethnographic Praxis Institute (EPI) that would create and maintain the EBOK content and EPP certification process.
- Financing for the EBOK, EPP and EPI would be obtained through revenues from the EPP applications as well as sales of the EBOK and EPI annual membership dues.
Problems to be Solved
Outside academic anthropology departments, the definition of ethnography is not well understood. Concepts and methods that ethnographers routinely employ in social science research studies undergo significant modifications for use in business environments, and the results of customized approaches to data gathering and analysis become less verifiable and reproducible. While there will never be one “right” way to “do” ethnography for industrial purposes, the absence of common principles, methodologies, standards and vocabularies can foster an attitude of “I’m an ethnographer because I say I am.” Without peer reviewers or Institutional Review Boards to evaluate proposals and works-in-progress it is difficult to determine the boundaries of competence, ethics and professional conduct.
From the perspective of many clients and employers, it is hard to shop around if you do not know what the price should be, what features are standard vs. optional, and what normally is included in the warranty. Experienced clients who hire ethnographers for consumer research projects have developed checklists to compare different vendors’ services. In response, experienced consultancies that market ethnographic research services to large corporate and government clients have created tiered packages of offerings with clearly defined deliverables. Each customer relies on its own needs assessments, insights and lessons learned for establishing the goals and evaluation criteria, cross-pollinated to some extent by the movement of client sourcing specialists between jobs. Likewise, organizations that employ ethnographers as individuals or as members of a research staff vary widely in the degree to which they label the work as ethnography and in the responsibilities they assign for policy making, product and system design, or customer service. It is possible that if ethnography’s menu and ingredients were clearer, more new clients and employers would develop an appetite.
Professional life as a practicing ethnographer can be rather lonely and solipsistic. Nowadays many practitioners attend EPIC, but one gathering per year has a limited effect upon sustaining a community. There are some excellent on-line forums such as the AnthroDesign Yahoo listserv, the NAPA LinkedIn discussion group, and the Open Anthropology Cooperative website. Yet compared with other occupations, opportunities for professional development are limited. When new technologies give rise to new ethnographic methods, knowledge transfer is ad-hoc and informal. When an individual ethnographer is promoted and given funding to build a research staff, trial-and-error rather than systematic study of best practices is the typical approach to learning. If a mid-career businessperson in another field wishes to become an ethnographer or understand how to manage ethnographers, non-academic training courses are scarce. Creating a standard body of knowledge and a professional certification could lay the foundation for a human network infrastructure that nurtured the discipline’s ongoing growth and continuous improvement.
In the current economic climate, academic institutions are under pressure to cut costs, increase enrollment and provide graduates with marketable skills. Students want internships that lead to jobs, and after graduation a steady career path that enables them to pay their debts. Some anthropology departments are having difficulty demonstrating the ROI of their curricula both to their own universities and to future job-seekers. Student ethnographers who develop an interest in law, medicine, international development, government and other well-established specialties can more readily find internships and follow in the footsteps of successful mentors in those fields. By contrast student ethnographers who prefer to focus on business, technology, and other forms of industry are less likely to receive support and encouragement from their anthropology professors, and may find themselves at a disadvantage when competing for internships with students from business, engineering or design schools. A professional certification for ethnographers could enhance collaboration between universities and their surrounding communities. It could enable anthropology professors to better explain how ethnography can serve the purpose of designing, making and selling things. It could help recruit more anthropology students who hoped to apply their humanistic perspective throughout a career in industry.