La cadena de suministro del sector automotriz

In order to review the studies where EM was used, the articles will be examined in relation to what are arguably the two most fundamental elements of Garfinkel’s program. These are the use of the unique adequacy requirement of methods and ethnomethodological indifference.

5.3.2.1 The unique adequacy requirement of methods

The unique adequacy requirement of methods was only mentioned by one of the authors. In his study of family placement social workers, Hicks (2008) stated that:

In order to produce gender adequately, we must all become competent practitioners of it, we must develop ‘unique adequacy’ in the practical methods of gender. (Hicks 2008 p.52)

Unfortunately, this is not an accurate use of the term: it is only researchers who must become uniquely adequate; members need to become ‘vulgarly competent’ (Garfinkel and Wieder 1992 p.182). Even though it is not clear from the article, Hicks may well have been uniquely adequate in the weak sense if he had previously

worked as a family placement social worker. Again, although it was not stated, other researchers may have met the unique adequacy requirement in this weak sense. For example, the research by Törrönen (2006), Carey (2008) and Rasanen (2011) were ethnographic studies which would suggest that they had become uniquely

adequate. Although their article was based on the recordings of case discussions that the child protection workers themselves taped, both Forsberg and Vagli had undertaken previous ethnographic studies (see Forsberg, 1999; Vagli, 2001) on child protection practices. In this way, Forsberg and Vagli (2006) may well have met the unique adequacy requirement for EM researchers. It is notable that this

fundamental tenet of EM research was ignored by these researchers even though they are likely to have met the requirement.

177

5.3.2.2 Ethnomethodological indifference

Only one of the articles made any reference to the policy of ethnomethodological indifference. Although she did not explicitly use the term, Taylor (2008) stated that:

Here I intend to bracket the making of normative judgements about the quality of records. I am less interested in whether they are ‘good’ or ‘bad’ than in the conventions used within this genre of writing to relay facts in an authoritative way. (Taylor 2008 p.30)

Thus, Taylor maintained EM indifference in this sense of the term throughout her analysis of writing practices.

The authors of three of the six EM articles stated that they had used EM alongside another approach to analysis. Hannele Forsberg and Åse Vagli (2006) used

ethnomethodology and ‘Goffmanesque’ frame analysis as a tool to explore the central role of emotions within the daily work of child protection workers. Stephen Hicks (2008) specified that he used feminist work, discourse theory and

ethnomethodology to analyse his interviews with family placement social workers. Finally, Carolyn Taylor (2008) stated that she used ethnomethodology and literary criticism to explore writing practices in social work. While there may be similarities between some of these approaches to analysis, there are also some major

differences which may make combining them problematic. Indeed, Garfinkel and Wieder (1992 p.175) explicated the fundamental difference between EM and ‘classic’ sociology and described the two as ‘incommensurable, asymmetrically alternate technologies’. Furthermore, the policy of ethnomethodological

indifference is ‘an indifference to the policies and methods of formal analysis…It is a procedure of not needing to consult the corpus of classic methods and findings’ (Garfinkel 2002 p.170). Thus, by using a formal method such as discourse analysis or the conceptual work of Goffman, the authors are not applying EM indifference to the process of analysis.

178

The remaining two articles exclusively used ethnomethodology. The stated aim of the article by Maritta Törrönen (2006) was to analyse what community means in the framework of social network for young residents of a children’s home. Again, the interaction between the young people (clients/residents) and the contacts between young people and adults (personnel/ staff) were not displayed in the article. In addition, Törrönen (2006 p.131) explained that she used the computer program Atlas.ti to code the data and to identify themes based on the ideas of grounded theory. The findings are presented as themes and the extracts used to support the theme are in the form of field notes which do not contain details of the interaction.

The final article where EM was used exclusively was by Jenni-Mari Rasanen (2011). Rasanen (2011) examined emergency social workers’ interview accounts on case recording in IT-based case files: how they described case recording as part of their work and how they explained, justified and made sense of it in the interview

situation. The analysis focused on such instances in interviews where social workers described what kind of case records they should produce and what are the criteria of good case recording: namely, the ‘norm talk’ of good case recording, this being the interviewees’ descriptions of shared and normal ways of doing case records and of complying with them. Rasanen (2011) provided detailed extracts from the

interview data in which the interview as an interactional accomplishment was kept intact. For example, Rasanen (2011 p.13) demonstrated how the interviewer ‘strengthens the worker’s response’:

1 I: (. . .) So the recording, is it based more on facts then?

2 E: Yes, because you can’t actually put in anything but facts, except assessments [then,

3 I: [Yes

4 E: that has to be clearly, it must be seen, that I as a social worker (I: mm) assess

5 or a question like this occurred to me or something made me consider or something, but

6 yes, facts and what you might call reflection mustn’t get mixed together.

179

Here the part played by the interviewer in accomplishing the interview as an

interaction is clearly shown. For example, the interviewer’s question is included (line 1) and the extract shows how the interviewer provided very strong affirmative acknowledgment tokens (line 7). The article by Rasanen (2011 p.13) can be viewed as an exemplar of the use of ethnomethodology in social work research.