Accommodating an Autoethnographic PhD: The Tale of the Thesis,the Viva Voce,and the Traditional Business School

Abstract

The authors explore how a traditional U.K. business school accommodated an autoethnography for a PhD thesis and the evaluation of the quality of innovative textual form. The authors argue that scholars can view the quality of an autoethnography in terms of two dimensions: the relationship with criteriology (consensus/dissensus) and context of quality judgment (focused on completed process/embedded in practice of completing). The authors further argue that the final judgment of thesis quality is shaped by the extent of match (or mismatch) between two dimensions: the awarding higher education institution’s (HEI) relationship with quality (i.e., its research traditions) and the context of quality judgment for the thesis (how the final thesis demonstrates quality). The authors show that supervisors and examiners are crucial for reinterpreting criteria to accommodate contemporary ethnography, particularly within traditional HEIs, and may exploit bounded discretion to do so.