This authoritative research review presents classical, contemporary and critical texts that have influenced the development of the field of organizational culture and symbolism. This indispensable collection includes seminal papers relating to meaning-making in organizations and the subjective dimensions of organizational life as well as those which chart the field's historical roots.

Exceptionally clear and well-written chapters provide engaging discussions of the methods of accessing, generating, and analyzing social science data, using methods ranging from reflexive historical analysis to critical ethnography. Reflecting on their own research experiences, the contributors offer an inside, applied perspective on how research topics, evidence, and methods intertwine to produce knowledge in the social sciences.

Research design is fundamentally central to all scientific endeavors, at all levels and in all institutional settings. This book is a practical, short, simple, and authoritative examination of the concepts and issues in interpretive research design, looking across this approach's methods of generating and analyzing data. It is meant to set the stage for the more "how-to" volumes that will come later in the Routledge Series on Interpretive Methods, which will look at specific methods and the designs that they require. It will, however, engage some very practical issues, such as ethical considerations and the structure of research proposals. Interpretive research design requires a high degree of flexibility, where the researcher is more likely to think of "hunches" to follow than formal hypotheses to test. Yanow and Schwartz-Shea address what research design is and why it is important, what interpretive research is and how it differs from quantitative and qualitative research in the positivist traditions, how to design interpretive research, and the sections of a research proposal and report. It demonstrates how interpretive researchers engage with "world-making," context, systematicity and flexibility, reflexivity, investigation, bottom up concepts, and explanatory description.

What do we mean in the U.S. today when we use the terms "race" and "ethnicity"? What do we mean, and what do we understand, when we use the five standard race-ethnic categories: White, Black, Asian, Native American, and Hispanic? Most federal and state data collection agencies use these terms without explicit attention, and thereby create categories of American ethnicity for political purposes. Davora Yanow argues that "race" and "ethnicity" are socially constructed concepts, not objective, scientifically-grounded variables, and do not accurately represent the real world. She joins the growing critique of the unreflective use of "race" and "ethnicity" in American policymaking through an exploration of how these terms are used in everyday practices. Her book is filled with current examples and analyses from a wealth of social institutions: health care, education, criminal justice, and government at all levels. The questions she raises for society and public policy are endless. Yanow maintains that these issues must be addressed explicitly, publicly, and nationally if we are to make our policy and administrative institutions operate more effectively.

This book offers a new, interpretive way of understanding organizations and policy by analyzing how they convey meaning through symbolic language, objects, and act. Yanow argues that contested facts in policy often reflect different policy meanings, which are often known tacitly and communicated through the symbols used by an implementing organization.

Yanow argues that policy and organizational actions are often as expressive of group or national identity as they are instrumentally oriented. Drawing on the Israel Corporation of Community Centers as an extended illustration of her arguments, she shows how policy meanings may be communicated to multiple audiences through the agency's actions. Using language, physical artifacts, and acts, Yanow explores how one vision of Israeli identity was communicated tacitly, at a time when Jewish Israeli "ethnicity" was publicly undiscussable. In reading public policies and administrative practices as ways in which a polity constructs and narrates its identity, Yanow shows how the case example raises questions of what it means to be a "good" Israeli.

Unlike most policy studies which consider organizations within a void, "How Does a Policy Mean?" puts policy in a societal context. Yanow's interpretation of the policy process extends beyond the field of public policy to examine the way organizations establish identity and image for themselves and for the wider public. Her analysis will be of value to those involved in political science, public administration, and organizational studies.

What do we mean in the U.S. today when we use the terms "race" and "ethnicity"? What do we mean, and what do we understand, when we use the five standard race-ethnic categories: White, Black, Asian, Native American, and Hispanic? Most federal and state data collection agencies use these terms without explicit attention, and thereby create categories of American ethnicity for political purposes. Davora Yanow argues that "race" and "ethnicity" are socially constructed concepts, not objective, scientifically-grounded variables, and do not accurately represent the real world. She joins the growing critique of the unreflective use of "race" and "ethnicity" in American policymaking through an exploration of how these terms are used in everyday practices. Her book is filled with current examples and analyses from a wealth of social institutions: health care, education, criminal justice, and government at all levels. The questions she raises for society and public policy are endless. Yanow maintains that these issues must be addressed explicitly, publicly, and nationally if we are to make our policy and administrative institutions operate more effectively.

Exceptionally clear and well-written chapters provide engaging discussions of the methods of accessing, generating, and analyzing social science data, using methods ranging from reflexive historical analysis to critical ethnography. Reflecting on their own research experiences, the contributors offer an inside, applied perspective on how research topics, evidence, and methods intertwine to produce knowledge in the social sciences.

This insightful book poses interesting theoretical and methodological questions for the processes of spatial design and the treatment of workspaces in organizational settings of various kinds. The contributors expertly answer the need for practical field research on spatial settings and materiality in organizations of various sorts.Organizational Spaces explores a wide range of interfaces between built spaces and organizational actors, including the ways the former can potentially affect and shape the behaviours and acts of employees at all levels, as well as clients, other visitors and onlookers. Using innovative interpretive methods, the book provides detailed empirical and theoretical analyses of field research that focus on the meanings that organizational spaces can communicate to multiple audiences.Scholars and graduate students in the areas of organizational culture, cultural change and intervention in organizations, international business, design sciences, as well as in organizational studies more broadly, should not be without this important and highly original resource.

Research design is fundamentally central to all scientific endeavors, at all levels and in all institutional settings. This book is a practical, short, simple, and authoritative examination of the concepts and issues in interpretive research design, looking across this approach's methods of generating and analyzing data. It is meant to set the stage for the more "how-to" volumes that will come later in the Routledge Series on Interpretive Methods, which will look at specific methods and the designs that they require. It will, however, engage some very practical issues, such as ethical considerations and the structure of research proposals. Interpretive research design requires a high degree of flexibility, where the researcher is more likely to think of "hunches" to follow than formal hypotheses to test. Yanow and Schwartz-Shea address what research design is and why it is important, what interpretive research is and how it differs from quantitative and qualitative research in the positivist traditions, how to design interpretive research, and the sections of a research proposal and report. It demonstrates how interpretive researchers engage with "world-making," context, systematicity and flexibility, reflexivity, investigation, bottom up concepts, and explanatory description.

Just as newspapers do not, typically, engage with the ordinary experiences of people's daily lives, so organizational studies has also tended largely to ignore the humdrum, everyday experiences of people working in organizations. However, ethnographic approaches provide in-depth and up-close understandings of how the 'everyday-ness' of work is organized and how, in turn, work itself organizes people and the societies they inhabit. Organizational Ethnography brings contributions from leading scholars in organizational studies that serve to unpack an ethnographic perspective on organizations and organizational research. The authors explore the particular problems faced by organizational ethnographers, including: - questions of gaining access to research sites within organizations; - the many styles of writing organizational ethnography; - the role of friendship relations in the field; - problems of distance and closeness; - the doing of at-home ethnography; - ethical issues; - standards for evaluating ethnographic work. This book is a vital resource for organizational scholars and students doing or writing ethnography in the fields of business and management, public administration, education, health care, social work, or any related field in which organizations play a role.

This book in the QRM series is designed for a wide variety of research methods courses taught in various departments. It will be of most interest to those in Political Science and Public Administration departments, but will also be of interest to researchers in Sociology, Anthropology, Communication and Education departments, among others. The book will fill a gap in the traditional policy analysis coverage, which is usually heavily quantitative. It will also fill a gap in the QRM series in covering the discipline of political science, which is warming to qualitative methodology?slowly.

There has been much in the journal literature in the past 15 years calling for more interpretive approaches to the study of public policy; Yanow has been in the middle of it. She is well published and has worked with Van Maanen in the past.