Harnessing Emotions for Embodied Reflexivity in Organizational Ethnography

Abstract

Qualitative researchers experience a myriad of emotions during fieldwork. Yet, a reluctance to display and openly discuss emotions in relation to research practice means little insight on how these can inform the research process exists. In this paper, we explore the researcher’s emotions in an organizational ethnography of an emergency department during the COVID-19 pandemic. We identify three emotional triggers (uncertain field access, disrupted research practices, and researcher exposure) and discuss the researcher’s embodied experiences and reflexive responses. We present four ways in which the researcher’s emotions can be used as a resource for embodied reflexivity: (i) deepening field engagement through a focus on collective experiences, (ii) using the researcher’s agency to refocus data collection and enhance creativity, (iii) merging inward and outward focus to reframe the research project, and (iv) visualizing emotions throughout the research process to avoid mind-body dualisms. This paper joins recent discussions on qualitative methods and reflexivity and answers calls for making the researcher’s field presence visible in qualitative research. We contribute by delineating ways in which emotions, as a resource for embodied reflexivity, can inform qualitative research.

Introduction

It is widely acknowledged that “qualitative research is a fully reflexive practice in which the researcher and the researched co-create each other, none of them remaining still in the course of this practice.” (Gabriel, 2020, p. 194) Yet positivist ideals such as objectivity remain paramount in ensuring methodological rigor (Hordge-Freeman, 2018) and the portrayal of the researcher as non-affected seems to dominate management and organization studies (Kunda, 2013; Langley & Klag, 2019; Yanow, 2012). Personal involvement seems to be at odds with professional distance and “the prevailing advice about publishing one’s findings seems to be to convey distance and suggests a fairly blank researcher entering a distant field” (Anteby, 2013, p. 1278; Dumont, 2022; Langley & Klag, 2019). This is also seen in the lack of reference to embodiment in much of the mainstream methodology texts used for training researchers (Hedican, 2006; Mazzetti, 2016) and in the widespread use of methodological templates – as opposed to more original methods – in qualitative research (Pratt et al., 2020).

Emotions, embodied experiences connecting mind and body, are largely treated as separate from the research process (Hordge-Freeman, 2018) and discussions about the emotional struggles of doing fieldwork are scarce (Dickson-Swift et al., 2009; Punch, 2012). Furthermore, research which incorporates emotions in organizations usually deals with research participants’ emotions and research accounts are often “sanitized, emotion-less texts” (Whiteman et al., 2009, p. 47; see also Cunliffe & Karunanayake, 2013). We continue to “consider and adopt emotional detachment as an automatic and unthinking guarantor of good social science” (Down & Hughes, 2009, p. 88) ignoring the generative power of the researcher’s emotions and emotional work in guiding the research process (Whiteman et al., 2009; Yousfi & Abdallah, 2020). Consequently, little we know about the emotions and related methodological challenges experienced by the researcher (Dickson-Swift et al., 2007; Hedican, 2006). In particular, the challenges associated with doing organizational ethnography remain largely unaddressed (Rosales, 2021; Vincett, 2018; Warden, 2013).

In contrast to the methodological literature within management and organization studies dealing with reflexivity as primarily cognitive (thinking) and surrounding discourse (talk and text) (see e.g., Alvesson & Sköldberg, 2020), we position our paper alongside literature which discusses reflexivity as embodied and emotions as an integral part of research (Bergman Blix & Wettergren, 2015; Field-Springer, 2020; Holland, 2007; Hordge-Freeman, 2018; Hickey & Smith, 2020). As Field-Springer points out, “at research locations, we are neither bodies alone nor are we solely minds. Rather, we interconnect our physical sensations and mental activity as embodied subjects who create meaning” (Field-Springer, 2020, p. 195). An embodied approach to the ethnographic self can therefore function as an aporia, both ‘a site of unknowing’ and ‘of generative possibility’ (Hickey & Smith, 2020). We thus frame the researcher’s experiences from the field as embodied practices, and contribute by showing how an embodied approach to reflexivity allows for emotions to become a methodological resource which can inform the research process.

In this paper, we offer a “confessional tale” (Van Maanen, 2011) based on an ethnography of an emergency department during the COVID-19 pandemic. The circumstances and events that unfolded as the spread of the virus ebbed and flowed in waves meant that planning and executing the research project took on new levels of practical problems as well as emotional toil. We identify three emotional triggers – uncertain field access, disrupted research practices, and researcher exposure – and discuss how the researcher’s embodied experiences and reflexive responses were implicated in the research process. We show four ways in which the researcher’s emotions can be used as resources for embodied reflexivity: (i) deepening field engagement through a focus on collective experiences, (ii) using the researcher’s agency to refocus data collection and enhance creativity, (iii) merging inward and outward focus to reframe the research project, and (iv) visualizing emotions throughout the research process to avoid mind-body dualisms. The paper joins recent discussions on qualitative methods and reflexivity in the face of obstacles (Capurro, 2021; Hare, 2020) and answers calls to make researchers’ field presence visible in qualitative research and organizational ethnography (Anteby, 2013; Cunliffe & Karunanayake, 2013; Hordge-Freeman, 2018; Langley & Klag, 2019; Rosales, 2021; Wajsberg, 2020; Warden, 2013). The paper contributes to the reflexivity literature by suggesting ways in which emotions, as embodied experiences, can inform qualitative research.

Researcher’s Emotions and Embodied Reflexivity

Although embodied field accounts are not prominent within published management and organization studies (Gilmore & Kenny, 2015), adjacent method discussions have paved the way for the case of taking emotions seriously in research (Holland, 2007) and bringing the whole self, body and mind, to research (Hordge-Freeman, 2018). Such an engagement with the field can serve as a source of knowledge (Dumont, 2022).

Studies report from diverse contexts such as hospital emergency rooms (Capurro, 2021; Hickey & Smith, 2020), social movements (Yousfi & Abdallah, 2020), fire departments (Mazzetti, 2016), refugee sites (Wajsberg, 2020), war-zones (de Rond, 2012), red-light districts (Warden, 2013), and immigrant detention centres (Vincett, 2018). Others focus on specific practices which may in themselves give rise to a multitude of deep emotions, such as the euthanasia of animals (Tallberg et al., 2014). While some emphasize the importance of the field site (de Rond, 2012; Yousfi & Abdallah, 2020) and the physicality of place (Hickey & Smith, 2020), others question the field boundaries, framing the sites where research practices take place as emergent and multiple (Czarniawska, 2008; Field-Springer, 2020; Wajsberg, 2020).

Several authors delve into one specific emotion and show how emotions can be used to justify deeper engagements with their interpretations of field experiences. Koning and Ooi (2013), for example, explore the emotion of awkwardness and argue that awkward ethnographic encounters are intrinsic to researchers’ state of being and should therefore be part of a more inclusive reflexivity. Teasing out the awkward affects the credibility and trustworthiness of research “because uncomfortable situations do not only exist, they also matter in how fieldworkers affect the situation and how that situation is understood.” (Koning & Ooi, 2013, p. 30) Exploring fatigue as an analytical object and a methodological tool to engage in reflexivity, Wajsberg (2020) emphasizes the qualities, movement and effects of the emotion. Connecting her own fatigue with the context of migration and research participants’ experiences of fatigue, Wajsberg shows how emotions can be interlinked in a geographical site and “reveals the reach, legitimacy and possibilities of different emotional spaces. Fatigue […] has the power to alienate us from our ‘fields’ as we struggle to understand our place in it, but it can also lead us to ask how we can position ourselves within or against these dynamics.” (Wajsberg, 2020, p. 133).

Others provide more descriptive reflections of their ethnographic work and share stories of emotional labor, suffering and vulnerability. Vincett (2018), for instance, discusses how meeting with others’ pain and suffering resulted in compassion fatigue. She further suggests self-care strategies to deal with the unwanted effects of fieldwork, such as working with a self-assessment to identify emotional risk factors and a personal self-care plan. Warden (2013) describes how her fieldwork with sex workers in Guatemala led to post-traumatic stress disorder, and Hedican (2006) discusses how a research participant’s death affected his field experience. Kisfalvi (2006) explores how anxiety and sadness related to a common history as Holocaust survivors shaped her interaction with research participants. She highlights how cultural and sociological factors as well as the researcher’s personality may affect the relationship with research participants.

Yet others highlight the range of emotions experienced through the different phases of an ethnography. Bergman Blix and Wettergren (2015), for instance, analyze emotional labor as strategic emotion work, emotional reflexivity and work to cope with emotive dissonance in relation to the toil of gaining and maintaining field access. Sikic Micanovic et al. (2019) share how their work with vulnerable populations impacted them and led their research team to address and manage researcher vulnerability. Mazzetti (2016) describes feelings of frustration during access negotiation, and fear during her fieldwork in different fire and rescue organizations. de Rond (2012) uses multiple perspectives from the war zone to compare the soldier, the surgeon, the photographer and the ethnographer, and discusses the emotions of differently witnessing life and death scenarios. Hordge-Freeman (2018) focuses on how research participants perceive the ethnographer’s body and emotions and suggest how to manage “our bodies, emotions and identities in the field” (p. 7).

While many provide self-reflective accounts focusing on describing emotions (cf. Hedican, 2006), only a few papers offer concrete suggestions on how to portray emotions as an integral part of the research process. To illustrate, Tallberg et al. (2014) use the concept of crystallization, a multi-genre representation of lived experiences from the field, to challenge the notion of a fixed truth, and Yousfi and Abdallah (2020) portray emotion in two ways, as resource and critical identity tool. Gilmore and Kenny (2015) use the innovative pair interview to interview each other and enhance emotional reflexivity. Other authors have also suggested writing freely to visualize and articulate emotion, portraying their experiences from the field using poetry (Mandalaki & Pérezts, 2022) or other forms of creative expression.

Many papers which discuss emotions in the field are after-the-fact reports from PhD students’ field encounters (e.g., Capurro, 2021; Kisfalvi, 2006; Mazzetti, 2016; Vincett, 2018; Warden, 2013; Wajsberg, 2020). These authors often discuss the wish to share their experiences in hopes to prepare younger scholars for what they may encounter, as they themselves lacked guidance in terms of the emotional challenges they would face as part of ethnographic work. Further, they seek to stimulate reflection and change in supervisors and those responsible for designing research programs. This suggests that questions regarding emotions in research are raised mainly by young scholars who feel a need to come out from a place of emotional frustration and isolation and warn others, rather than enjoying a sustained methodological interest from organizational ethnographers.

Much of the literature shows that ethnographic studies can lead the researcher to experience emotions. Yet, despite an interest in emotions and a few exceptions (e.g., Hedican, 2006; Kisfalvi, 2006; Koning & Ooi, 2013; Sikic Micanovic et al., 2019), it is unclear how the researcher can make use of emotions in relation to the field. We explore this and show how emotions can be used as a methodological resource to inform the research process.

Methods

In this paper, we explore the role of emotions in an organizational ethnography of an emergency department (ED) in Quebec, Canada, during the COVID-19 pandemic. The ED, as part of a hospital, can be described as “a site of intense emotional, physical, psychic and cultural investment – a site that ‘draws out’ the ethnographer as a setting that ‘requires’ something from those situated within it.” (Hickey & Smith, 2020, p. 820) Further, as the pandemic evolved into a global event in 2020, affecting everyone worldwide and persisting in time, it added an extra layer of complexity to the research project. The pandemic put a strain on hospitals and healthcare workers, also intensifying the challenges faced by researchers (Capurro, 2021).

I, Virginia, ¹ collected the empirical material mainly through observations: I spent over 200 hours shadowing research participants, including emergency physicians, residents, nurses, and orderlies, in their daily activities. I also gathered documents and conducted informal interviews. For this paper, we relied on the documented research process and traces of data (such as email correspondences, field notes, and memos) referring to the challenges and emotions experienced in relation to the field. We analyzed the data in four main phases.

1. Constructing and Exploring Narratives – First Round of Coding. The first analytical phase started with me, [Virginia], writing two narratives: one based on my experiences planning the research project and another one based on my experiences from the field. The second author read through the narratives and noted a split between the description of the research process and the researcher’s emotions. While the second narrative delved into the emotions experienced as a result of the research process and field encounters, the first narrative was an emotion-less text (cf. Whiteman et al., 2009): a descriptive, chronological account of the events that took place from access negotiation until the end of data collection. The two narratives showed different ways of experiencing and describing the field. This triggered several rounds of peer debriefing (Lincoln & Guba, 1985) where we explored if and how events and emotions were connected. The second author acted as a reflexive partner, posing questions, giving feedback, and helping me [Virginia] reflect on my experiences from the field. To illustrate, the second author asked questions related to specific parts in the narratives, such as: what did this mean for you? Were you stressed? What were you, as a researcher, thinking? And how were you coping? Peer debriefing served to “explor [e] aspects of the inquiry that might otherwise remain only implicit” (Lincoln & Guba, 1985, p. 308). Between these sessions, I went back and reworked the narratives, using the questions posed by the second author as writing prompts. This helped identify my emotions throughout the research process. ²

• 2. Iterating With the Literature – Reframing Emotions as Resource. In our continuous analysis of the narratives, we iterated with literature on embodiment and emotions in ethnography attempting to make sense of my [Virginia’s] experiences and identify how I was able to move forward in the research process. We noticed that the narratives portrayed my emotions as a consequence of the lived events, when in fact these emotions were also prompting actions/inactions for dealing with the situations I was encountering. To illustrate, the uncertain field access triggered distress, which I dealt with by engaging in peer debriefing and writing. Building on this, we reframed our view of emotions as not only an outcome but also a resource for action.

• 3. Identifying Emotional Triggers and Responses – Second Round of Coding. With this new understanding of the role of the researcher’s emotions, we separately went back to the data and reworked the findings by identifying emotional triggers and responses. Emotional triggers included events and happenings related to the research field which prompted the experience of emotions. To illustrate, having to wear personal protective equipment (PPE) constantly required a complete adaptation in terms of self-protection and affected the possibilities to collect data triggering distress. This, together with the inability to take notes and dealing with a meaningless research goal, were later labelled as “disrupted research practices” and constitute one of our emotional triggers. Responses were (in)actions that I, the researcher, took fueled by an emotion to deal either with the trigger or the emotion. For example, practicing self-compassion was one way to cope with the distress experienced by having to wear PPE.

• 4. Iterating With the Literature – Framing Emotions as Resource for Embodied Reflexivity. Having identified emotions, triggers, and responses, we worked on developing a framework that could help us visualize our findings. We articulated a cyclical process where emotional triggers prompt researcher’s emotions which elicit responses to either deal with the trigger or the emotion. We further iterated between our findings and empirical studies on emotions in organizational ethnography to identify potential contributions. We realized that most of these studies were stopping at the experienced emotions without further exploring how the researcher’s emotions were implicated in the research process. With this in mind, we engaged in peer debriefing (Lincoln & Guba, 1985) to explore how emotions could be harnessed to inform the research process. We identified four ways in which the researcher’s emotions can serve as a resource for embodied reflexivity, which we present in the discussion section.

In what follows, we first present an overview of the main events that took place throughout the research project. Thereafter, we explore the researcher’s embodied experiences and reflexive responses based on three key emotional triggers. Finally, we suggest four ways in which emotions can be used as a resource for embodied reflexivity.

A Brief Chronology of the Research Project

My first contact with the ED was in June 2019. After a meeting with the head of research, I was granted informal access in a second meeting with the head of the ED and two emergency physicians interested in qualitative research. I was assigned an internal sponsor to supervise me along the process. In July 2019, I submitted the research project to my institution’s Research Ethics Board (REB), which was approved in September. A much more elaborated research protocol was requested by the hospital’s REB and submitted in August 2019. Figure 1 summarizes the timeline of events.

Figure 1.

Timeline of events.

In November 2019, while waiting for the REB’s approval, I presented the project to all emergency physicians in the ED Research Committee Meeting (RCM). In late January 2020, still waiting for the approval, I conducted a pilot study under the internal sponsor’s supervision. Quebec reported its first case of COVID-19 in late February and, a couple of weeks later, the project was finally approved. As I started to plan my field visits though, the local government declared a Public Health Emergency and the hospital stopped all research projects.

Between March and September 2020, the research project was on hold and it was not until mid-September that the internal sponsor emailed me to ask if I was still interested in doing research at the ED, as research had resumed. Before being allowed in the field though, I had to write an amendment to the research protocol and adapt the research goal considering the influence of the pandemic in order to justify to the hospital’s REB why the project was still relevant to do, as all activities deemed non-essential had been cancelled. In October 2020, I submitted the amendment and presented the updated project at the ED RCM. I also had to undergo PPE training, as the pandemic meant a complete adaptation in terms of self-protection.

While waiting for the REB’s approval, I re-established contact with staff members, and started my field visits once approval was granted in late October 2020. I did observations for six weeks until December 15, 2020, when the Quebec Prime Minister announced a tightening of restrictions due to an increase in the number of COVID-19 cases and the research project was put on hold again. In late January 2021, the internal sponsor informed me that research projects were being resumed, following the end of the lockdown initiated in December. I re-established contact with research participants and field visits resumed in February, ending my observations in August 2021.

Embodied Experiences and Reflexive Responses

The circumstances that unfolded as the world made sense of the COVID-19 outbreak contributed towards several challenges associated with Virginia’s planned ethnography. We identified three main aspects that acted as emotional triggers throughout the research process, namely: uncertain field access, disrupted research practices, and researcher exposure. These triggers prompted various emotions giving rise to embodied experiences, which in turn fueled responses by the researcher. In what follows, we discuss each of these experiences.

Uncertain Field Access

The sponsor says that once the ED figures out how to work under the new normal, I’ll be able to go in. “It’s really panicky right now. We are under extreme measures […] completely reorganizing activities. […] Maybe you can come in two weeks. But do you really wanna come in with covid?” She says they have cancelled all projects and sent home all medical students. [Excerpt from phone call notes, Mar-2020]

The first emotional trigger we identified in the research process was the uncertain field access. The uncertainty generated by the long access negotiation with the hospital’s REB and the changing restrictions imposed due to the pandemic resulted in an unpredictable research process. Overall, I had to adapt my data collection from the original plan of doing a six-month-long ethnography to intermittent observation periods. Further, in adhering to governmental restrictions, I was only allowed to collect data during daytime during a period where there was a curfew between 8 pm and 5 am. Apart from creating temporary disruptions in the data collection process, the unpredictability following each new wave meant my ability to complete the study remained one of the most pressing questions. Despite the temporary restrictions, which put the research project on hold on several occasions, the time frame regarding the funding available for my postdoctoral project did not change.

The uncertain field access triggered emotional ambivalence and exhaustion. First, emotional ambivalence was associated to the contradiction between the quick initial (and informal) access granted by the physicians, which I received with excitement and hope, and the long access negotiation with the hospital’s REB, which triggered doubts about the feasibility of conducting the study and feelings of unease about the expected self-neglect while highly protecting research participants in the standard protocols. Second, emotional exhaustion resulted from, on the one hand, the long access negotiation process which led me to feel hopeless on various occasions. On the other hand, once access was granted, the pandemic outbreak and governmental restrictions resulted in intermittent field access with the research project paralyzed for undetermined periods. This generated distress as it was unclear when research would be allowed back in the hospital and if the postdoctoral financing would continue. Collecting data intermittently also meant having to renegotiate access with research participants every time I was allowed back in the field. Even when staff members had given consent, I could not assume they were still willing to participate or even working in the ED, as the increasing staff turnover due to the pandemic meant some people that had agreed to participate were no longer there.

The emotions triggered by the uncertain field access elicited three main responses. First, practicing resilience was a way for me to keep insisting on the access negotiation and collecting data instead of giving up the research project (which I thought about more than once). The motivation to complete the research project was key in pushing forward despite the challenges and I stayed connected to the field through my internal sponsor pretty much throughout the whole process. Second, engaging in reflective discussions with academic and non-academic peers helped to deal with the emotions experienced. For instance, I presented my experience in the Extreme Context Research brown bag seminar and was positively surprised by the community support. Third, paper writing was another way to cope with the emotions triggered. On one hand, putting things down on paper had a sort of therapeutic effect; the power of writing is too often underestimated. On the other hand, there is still little research on the intricate relationship between the researcher’s emotions and research process, which only adds to the complexity of the issue. In this respect, working on this paper felt like a constructive way to address and channel the emotions triggered by this embodied experience.

Disrupted Research Practices

[The doctor] has a hat covering her head, with buttons on the sides to hold masks. I realize most nurses have these hats. [My sponsor] told me about it last Friday, “to not kill my ears with the masks”, so I got some bandanas and a fanny bag as she said it could be useful to put my notebook in when putting the coats on to go into patient rooms. [Excerpt from field notes, Nov-2020]

The second emotional trigger we identified was the disrupted research practices, namely the limitations of wearing PPE, the inability to take notes, and a meaningless research goal.

First, while before COVID-19 I was only required to wear the hospital scrubs and my ID badge, after the outbreak different PPE were required depending on the location where I was. For instance, I had to wear a procedural mask in the office and a mask with an incorporated visor or mask and goggles or face visor whenever going into a patient room. Further, before going into a patient room, I had to disinfect my hands, put a long-sleeve isolation gown on top of the scrubs, disinfect hands again and put gloves on, which should be big enough to pull over the gown sleeve. In this way, no part of the body was directly exposed. Once the meeting with the patient was over, another procedure followed: I had to take off the gloves pulling from the inside to avoid touching the outside of the gloves, put them in the trash and disinfect my hands while still in the patient room. Then, I had to take off the isolation gown and put it in the laundry basket outside the room and wash my hands again. This process had to be repeated for every patient met.

Doing ethnography clad in fully covering PPE triggered distress and frustration, due to my inability to make contact through facial expressions and a severely reduced ability to communicate with research participants. This was further intensified as the ethnography was conducted in a francophone ED, a language I was not fluent in when I started my study. The requirement to wear facial masks prevented me from relying on lip reading as an aid for communication, making communication even harder. Further, being constantly aware of the highly contagious virus, as a result of having to wear so much PPE, accentuated the emotional distress.

Second, given the risk of transmission of the virus, I could not bring my notebook and take notes while in patient rooms. The only things allowed were things that would most likely not come back into the ED, such as tongue depressors (which would go directly to the trash in the room after usage), medicine to be administered during the visit, and tools needed for the patient assessment (e.g., stethoscope) or rapid test kits. Patient dossiers, which physicians and nurses used to bring into the room prior to the pandemic to write down the patient history and any task performed, were now forbidden.

I thus had to adapt my note taking from freely taking notes wherever I was to taking notes before and after meeting patients. This required an extra effort, especially when shadowing staff members that moved from one patient to another before going back to the office, as I had to remember as much information as possible to be able to write it down when having the chance. This inability to take field notes freely caused overwhelmedness as I had to make an extra effort to remember the details of the observations made until I could write them down. It also caused worry and anxiety as it was hard to remember and write everything down.

Third, while the original goal was to investigate how staff members understand and perform work and identify the organizational causes leading to long ED wait times in Quebec, counterintuitively, the pandemic caused a massive reduction in the number of incoming patients. Between 2019 and 2020, the ED went from receiving over 90,000 patients a year to only 54,000, which represented a 40% drop. This meant an unexpected turn from having patients waiting long hours to see a doctor, to doctors waiting for patients to be able to work. Consequently, the original research goal became meaningless, as the main empirical drive behind the project did not make sense any longer. This meaningless research goal triggered an emotional overload, as many different emotions were experienced simultaneously. First, the flipped organizational dynamics caused confusion as I was left with a meaningless research project and at the same time was not strictly denied access to the field. Second, the loss of meaning triggered distress as I could not justify the pursuit of my research project to the REB. Third, I felt hopeless: after all I had already been through with this project, obstacles kept on arising. Fourth, I felt worried; how was I supposed to complete my project if it did not make sense anymore?

The disrupted research practices essentially left me with feelings of vulnerability and reduced control over my ability to move, to be in, and to navigate the field. To deal with the emotions experienced, I drew on two main responses. First, practicing self-awareness was a response to cope with the emotional overload. Instead of drowning in a sea of negative emotions, I had to find a way to manage these. Staying in touch with myself through the acknowledgment and exploration of the emotions I was feeling allowed me to ultimately shift perspectives and relativize the circumstances. Second, I practised self-compassion. This involved (a) relying on people close to me for emotional support and keeping active through fun experiences outside the ED to refill my batteries in order to have the strength to go back, and (b) connecting with an outsider (the second author) who took a vow of silence regarding any sensitive topics that I needed to vent, and together turning these experiences into an opportunity to reflect on and learn from. Overall, talking to others pushed me to verbalize what I was feeling and get support.

Researcher Exposure

23:28. I’m in the metro on the way to the hospital. The station is almost empty, same as the metro. […] I’m wondering what I’m doing. I feel anxious about starting my data collection. I couldn’t sleep much during the day, even when I knew I was doing a night shift and wouldn’t survive the tiredness. We’ll see what happens. In the worst case, I think, I have to make it to 5:30 when the metro starts working again. [Excerpt from personal notes, Nov-2020]

The third emotional trigger we identified was researcher exposure, which led to feeling emotional ambivalence as a result of taking the dual role of researcher and citizen. In the beginning, while I was excited about having the privilege to collect data, especially as many researchers lost access to organizations due to the pandemic, I also experienced discomfort in having to deal with conflicting prescriptions for action. On the one hand, I had to adhere to local restrictions as a ‘good citizen’; on the other hand, I had to undertake the ethnography as a ‘good researcher’, which meant purposefully exposing myself to the virus. The constant fear surrounding the risk of getting infected triggered distress.

Later, emotional ambivalence was exacerbated as I became pregnant and therefore also had to take extra precautions as a ‘mother to be’. For one thing, I knew I would not stop seeing patients with suspected symptoms because that would basically mean avoiding most patients, as any symptom like fever, cough or a runny nose made a patient COVID-19 suspect. Yet, I had to draw a line regarding orthopedic patients that needed to undergo a procedure because witnessing such procedures would mean exposing myself to radiation. For instance, after a few hours shadowing a physician for the first time, I had to disclose that I was pregnant and that I was not sure about participating in the reduction – a procedure where a broken bone is put back in place and where X-rays are taken. The physician recommended me to not take the risk and offered to explain the procedure afterwards [field notes, May-2021]. While the physician was understanding, I was not planning to inform her about my pregnancy. This exposure triggered emotional ambivalence.

Furthermore, being exposed to others’ suffering fueled my distress. Even in “normal” conditions, i.e., a non-pandemic context, doing observations in a healthcare facility will involve seeing sick patients. On top of this, the studied ED was in a pediatric hospital which added an extra layer of sensitivity as seeing children suffering turned out to be more distressing than adults, probably because children are more vulnerable and dependent on their parents. Being exposed to and witnessing children’s pain and parents’ heightened distress about the virus triggered all sorts of emotions: sadness, anger, frustration, hopelessness, anxiety. Once, I was feeling so overwhelmed by what I was seeing and hearing that I felt a sudden heat rush in my body, started sweating and my blood pressure dropped, so I had to leave the patient room and sit down on the floor outside in the corridor, as I felt I was going to faint.

Feelings of emotional and physical exhaustion were ever present. After a shift in the ED, the tiredness felt was such that I could not even think straight. At some point, I would start feeling like things were happening in autopilot, not able to absorb any more input, just waiting for the shift to be over. The field notes were a clear proof of this, as the details of the observations made progressively faded away. There is an overwhelming feeling of having seen too much, which is accentuated by physical fatigue; legs and feet hurt from walking and standing most of the shift, fingers feel numb from taking notes, and the brain does not react to stimuli as fast. The usual responses were (a) to go home, take a shower right away and put the clothes to wash to minimize any risk of carrying the virus (and the fear that this possibility triggered), and (b) engage in some mindless activity – like playing games on the phone – or (c) sleep; anything that would not imply socializing or require any deep involvement.

I noticed that physical exhaustion may go away after a day or two of resting but sometimes it remained longer or reappeared when transcribing the field notes. The emotions experienced usually remained longer and were revived during transcriptions and analysis. While things happening in the ED were “normal” for the staff, at least most of the times, as an outsider it was unsettling to see a kid with a broken bone, a strong skin reaction or a big laceration. While feeling compassion for those researched came naturally, I had to make a bigger effort to consciously practice self-compassion and deal with the emotions raised by being exposed to the field. I realized that, as social science researchers, we are trained in methodology but not to deal with the emotions that may arise from being immersed in the field. Counting with a trusted person outside the field helped me immensely in decompressing after each visit to the ED.

Emotions as a Resource for Embodied Reflexivity

Researcher-field relations trigger emotions, which can provide insights otherwise neglected (Gabriel, 2020). However, organization studies and organizational ethnographies seldom disclose the methods or procedures through which emotions can be harnessed and inform the research process (cf. Cunliffe & Karunanayake, 2013). Below we discuss four ways in which emotions can be used as a resource for embodied reflexivity: (i) deepening field engagement through a focus on collective experiences, (ii) using the researcher’s agency to refocus data collection and enhance creativity, (iii) merging inward and outward focus to reframe the research project, and (iv) visualizing emotions throughout the research process to avoid mind-body dualisms.

Deepening Field Engagement Through a Focus on Collective Experiences

Accounts of emotional experiences as suffering and framed as ‘emotional labor’ (Capurro, 2021; Sikic Micanovic et al., 2019) tend to overemphasize the negative aspects of emotions experienced in the field and attribute these as personal and individual. Realizing that emotions are triggered, i.e., something outside the body prompts the emotions in the researcher, allows us to connect the embodied experiences with the research field and frame them instead as contextual and collective experiences (with a possibility to be) shared by researchers and research participants alike. Furthermore, acknowledging triggers as the starting point allows a framing of the researcher as a conduit with the capacity to carry embodied, emotional knowledge within and to re-channel this knowledge into insights of relevance for the research process, harnessing emotions. Experiencing emotions in the field, hence, can be seen as a strengthening experience associated with growth in terms of becoming more aware, more resourceful, and more adaptable, to use more creative ways of doing research and not become a slave to methodological templates (Pratt et al., 2020).

Sikic Micanovic et al. (2019) discuss how the vulnerability of research participants made the researchers aware of their own vulnerability. In our case, however, the disrupted research practices allowed the first author to get a deepened field engagement as she realized that she was not alone in her struggles but rather sharing the same experience with her research participants. This shows that shared discomfort/restrictions can help the researcher deepen the field engagement by connecting with the research participants’ experience. To illustrate, not being able to take notes helped the first author see that the research participants were not able to take notes (and do the patient history) either. This raised several questions (e.g., how does this influence the research participants’ practice?) which allowed for a deeper immersion in the field.

It has been acknowledged that a shared cultural heritage (Kisfalvi, 2006) or researcher identity (Hordge-Freeman, 2018) can facilitate a deepened engagement with the field, encouraging reflexivity and connection with research participants. Our findings further show that engaging in completely new practices, which were unusual and uncomfortable for both researcher and participants, allowed for a deeper engagement with the field, theoretically prompting new explanations, methodologically becoming more aware and realizing that many of the researcher’s embodied experiences might also be shared by her research participants. Overall, framing the embodied experiences as collective, instead of personal and individual and discounting their relevance for research, may allow to connect with the research participants in a different way and deepen the field engagement.

Using the Researcher’s Agency to Refocus Data Collection and Enhance Creativity

We show that the field affects the researcher in that it may trigger emotions, but more importantly also, due to her agency, the researcher possesses the ability to process these emotions and respond in ways such that she may harness and redirect the knowledge gained through her engagement with the field. By highlighting the agency of the researcher (Langley & Klag, 2019), we wish to emphasize both the researcher as affected by emotion and as capable of affecting the research process by allowing emotions to guide her.

Emphasizing the generative power of emotions is important because it changes how we view and approach emotions – and therefore make use of them. If we just ignore emotions as irrelevant, we miss on potential opportunities to generate new insights. If instead we embrace them, no matter how painful, uncomfortable, or hard that may be, we create a generative space for ourselves where we can develop new insights that have the potential to feed back into our research. This perspective also changes the way we look at ourselves as researchers: instead of denigrating our presence in the research (Gilmore & Kenny, 2015) or ignoring the emotions triggered by unexpected turns, we can become active agents and use our embodied experience to guide our research.

In our study, by focusing on what could be learned from the embodied experiences, rather than only the vulnerability of the researcher, new avenues to refocus the data collection emerged. For instance, the discomfort triggered by constantly wearing PPE evoked an interest in sensorial work: how does it feel for the research participants to have these “intermediaries” between their bodies and the patient body? How does this change their sensorial sensitivity? These questions were not part of the original project but, instead, came up through working-through the emotions triggered by the disrupted research practices.

Restrictions may also shift our focus and not only disable but also enable different features. For example, not being able to write down on the spot changes the visual focus to people and interactions (and embodiment) instead of looking down on a paper and “cognitively” processing observations into notes. While there is more to remember (as notes cannot be taken right away), more is also “seen” and sensed. Personal involvement thus, in aiding the collection of experiential data, can lead to “better theoretical insights” (Anteby, 2013, p. 1283). The stress triggered by the uncertain and intermittent field access was also channeled into focusing on other research activities (such as transcription, analysis, and even working on other projects). Being “forced” to stop and do something else with our out-of-field time can also help find alternative ways forward with data collection. In short, one way in which emotions can be used as a resource for embodied reflexivity in informing research is by finding new leads to follow and look at.

Merging Inward and Outward Focus to Reframe the Research Project

While we add to the list of already recommended self-care strategies (Vincett, 2018), we also argue in line with Bergman Blix and Wettergren (2015) that both inward (confidence building) and outward (trust building) emotional work is needed in order to harness emotions. In our case, the inwardly focused emotional work involved practicing resilience, self-compassion and rest and the outwardly focused emotional work involved engaging in reflective discussions with the research community about how emotions affect the research process, writing about emotions in ways that connect them with the research process, and counting with trusting persons outside the field to both vent and analyze in order to meaningfully reframe the research project.

Oscillating between inward oriented and outward oriented emotional work shows that embodied reflexivity is a process which connects researcher to herself, to her research participants and also to a wider research community. In our case, this helped understand the research participants were also dealing with a sensemaking dilemma. So much was new to those in the field now, that rather than the researcher being the newbie observing how others carried out their routine tasks, now everyone was a newbie. A sense of empathetic relating to the individuals in the field, rather than the typical ‘othering’ (see also Hickey & Smith, 2020), allowed to see research participants’ work also as embodied practices. This informed the reframing of the research project with a focus on sensemaking and embodiment of healthcare professionals.

Visualizing Emotions Throughout the Research Process to Avoid Mind-Body Dualisms

Overall, this paper points to the importance of acknowledging and visualizing emotions throughout the research process, and not only as something experienced in the field. This is in line with Bergman Blix and Wettergren’s (2015) argument that we need an active rather than a reactive approach to emotions in order to improve the quality of research. Our findings show that emotional triggers give rise to emotions which not only demand resilience as they occur, but which also may be recurrently triggered (see also Warden, 2013) and demand time to be processed before they can become a resource. Our findings further indicate that it is necessary to be able to reach a point where emotions can be seen as a strength and resource rather than something raw, negative and draining.

In order to visualize emotions as an integral part of the research process, we argue that the researcher needs to conceptualize emotions as something which is a natural part of a field experience, i.e., something which will inform the researcher, if properly processed and harnessed. This means that emotions must both be dealt with as an embodied physical impulse, and also be treated as an informant for cognitive reflexivity. It is thus when both mind and body are allowed to work in unison that emotions can be harnessed for embodied reflexivity (Field-Springer, 2020).

To keep emotions relevant throughout the research process we believe it is important to conceptualize these as something in-between, something connecting the researcher and the field. We note that emotions in ethnography have often been attributed to the site (e.g., de Rond, 2012; Yousfi & Abdallah, 2020), which risks accentuating a distance between the researcher and the field and foregrounds emotions as something related only to being in the site. Framing the researcher’s emotions as related to the field, rather than dissociated from one another, allows for a more compassionate view of the research self (Dickson-Swift et al., 2007) and the field. As our findings show, the emotions experienced usually remained over longer periods and were revived during transcriptions and analysis.

Conclusions

Increasingly, qualitative researchers are showing the not-so-often-discussed issues faced when conducting research. In this paper, we joined these efforts and argued that it is paramount to discuss emotions as an integral part of the research process and not as separate from it. We presented a reflective account of the triggers, emotions and responses experienced in doing an organizational ethnography of an emergency department during the COVID-19 pandemic. The paper showed how field encounters trigger emotions, which can be harnessed for embodied reflexivity by deepening field engagement, using the researcher’s agency, merging inward and outward focus, and visualizing emotions throughout the research process.

We contribute to a growing literature on emotions in qualitative research and join studies on the researcher’s experience in the field, answering calls for transparency in the research process (Anteby, 2013; Langley & Klag, 2019). Highlighting the researcher’s emotions, instead of seeing them as a hindrance or bias, can serve as a source of impetus to pursue meaningful research and question taken-for-granted assumptions (Hedican, 2006; Whiteman et al., 2009). It also emphasizes the emotional work needed for the researcher to remain resourceful and creative in order to make reflexive decisions and relevant analytical moves (Pratt et al., 2020) to inform the research process.