Before the rise of professional ethnography, untrained methods to investigate `other' cultures prevailed among various Western actors: travelers, missionaries, colonial administrators, and traders. This article analyzes how such informal ethnography is still treated as an epistemic guide in a post-colonial and transnational business world. A particular case is examined: Swedish and Swedish-Polish businessmen working in emerging markets in Poland and neighboring countries in Eastern Central Europe after the fall of Communism. Situated in what they regard as commercially attractive but relatively unknown cultures, these businessmen oscillate between classic fieldwork and profitable control, pragmatically linking their eagerness for knowledge with their ambition to get things done. The overall vision is a folk version of ethnography, rhetorically celebrated but practically complicated.
Alasuutari, P. (1996) Researching Culture: Qualitative Method and Cultural Studies. London: SAGE.
2.
Alvesson, M. (1993) Cultural Perspectives on Organizations. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
3.
Arnould, E.J. and M. Wallendorf (1994) `Market-Oriented Ethnography: Interpretation Building and Marketing Strategy Formulation', Journal of Marketing Research31(4): 484-504.
4.
Atkinson, P. (2001) `Ethnography and the Representation of Reality' , in R.M. Emerson (ed.) Contemporary Field Research: Perspectives and Formulations, pp. 89-101. Prospect Heights, IL: Waveland Press.
5.
Baker, C.D. (2002) `Ethnomethodological Analyses of Interviews', in J.F. Gubrium and J.A. Holstein (eds) Handbook of Interview Research. Context & Method, pp. 777-95. London: SAGE.
6.
Bakhtin, M.M. (1981[2000]) The Dialogic Imagination. Four Essays by M.M. Bakhtin. Austin: University of Texas Press.
7.
Clifford, J. (1983) `On Ethnographic Authority', Representations1(2): 118-46.
8.
Denny, R.M. and P.L. Sunderland (2005) `Researching Cultural Metaphors in Action: Metaphors of Computing Technology in Contemporary U.S. Life', Journal of Business Research58(10): 1456-63.
9.
Emerson, R.M. (2001) `Introduction. The Development of Ethnographic Field Research', in R.M. Emerson (ed.) Contemporary Field Research: Perspectives and Formulations, pp. 1-26. Prospect Heights, IL: Waveland Press.
10.
Emerson, R.M., R.I. Fretz and L.L. Shaw (1995) Writing Ethnographic Field-notes. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
11.
Engel, D.M. (1993) `Origin Myths. Narratives of Authority, Resistance, Disability, and Law', Law & Society Review27(4): 785-826.
12.
Garfinkel, H. (1967[1999]) Studies in Ethnomethodology. Cambridge: Polity Press.
13.
Girod, S.J.G. (2005) `The Human Resource Management Practice of Retail Branding: An Ethnography within Oxfam Trading Division', International Journal of Retail & Distribution Management33(7): 514-30.
14.
Gubrium, J.F. and J.A. Holstein (1997) The New Language of Qualitative Method. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press.
15.
Herzfeld, M. (1997) Cultural Intimacy: Social Poetics in the Nation-State . New York: Routledge.
16.
Katz, J. (2001a) `Analytic Induction', in N.J. Smelser and P.B. Baltes (eds) International Encyclopedia of the Social and Behavioral Sciences , pp. 480-4. Amsterdam: Elsevier.
17.
Katz, J. (2001b) `Ethnography's Warrants', in R.M. Emerson (ed.) Contemporary Field Research: Perspectives and Formulations, pp. 391-423. Prospect Heights, IL: Waveland Press.
18.
Kelly-Holmes, H. (1998) `The Discourse of Western Marketing Professionals in Central and Eastern Europe: Their Role in the Creation of a Context for Marketing and Advertising Messages', Discourse and Society9(3): 339-63.
19.
Kostera, M. (1995) `The Modern Crusade: The Missionaries of Management Come to Eastern Europe', Management Learning26(3): 331-52.
20.
MacCannell, D. (1976[1999]) The Tourist. A New Theory of the Leisure Class. Berkeley: University of California Press.
21.
Pryor, S. and S. Grossbart (2005) `Ethnography of an American Main Street', International Journal of Retail & Distribution Management33(11): 806-23.
22.
Rosaldo, R. (1989[1993]) Culture and Truth: The Remaking of Social Analysis. Boston, MA: Beacon Press .
23.
Sampson, S. (1998) `Exporting Democracy, Preventing Mafia - The Rebirth of "Eastern Europe" in an Era of Post-Post-Communism', in K.-G. Karlsson, B. Petersson and B. Törnquist-Plewa (eds) Collective Identities in an Era of Transformations: Analysing Developments in East and Central Europe and the Former Soviet Union, pp. 151-86. Lund : Lund University Press.
24.
Smith, M.P. and A. Favell (eds) (2006) The Human Face of Global Mobility: International Highly Skilled Migration in Europe, North America and the Asia-Pacific . New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Press.
25.
Van Maanen, J. (1988) Tales of the Field: On Writing Ethnography. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press .
26.
Wästerfors, D. (2004) Berättelser om mutor: Det korruptas betydelse bland svenska affärsmän i Öst- och Centraleuropa. [Stories about Bribes: The Meaning of Corruption among Swedish Businessmen in Eastern Central Europe]. Stehag: Symposion.
27.
Wolff, L. (1994) Inventing Eastern Europe: The Map of Civilization on the Mind of the Enlightenment. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
