Fieldworking Relational Complexity: Becoming Entangled in Managerial Dynamics

This organizational ethnographic study of innovation practices in a company product development department explores the relational complexity encountered by researcher accessing the field to do research-aimed co-design collaborations with the industrial partner. Initiating research and developing relationships with different organizational actors at a time of organizational change and competition between the actors, researcher finds herself involved in the tangle of interdependencies in the organization. A process theory-informed perspective drawing on Norbert Elias’ figurative account of social life informs researcher’s emergent strategy of involvement with field actors in a process of responding to surprising events of deepening and widening relationships with particular field actors. Empirical narratives of the paper are based on researcher field notes from workshops and project meetings, semi-structured interviews and researcher autobiographic accounts of informal conversations with organizational actors.