Vignettes of interviews to enhance an ethnographic account

This paper explores some challenges of applying an ethnographic approach combining participant observation and interviews, to a study of organizational change. The exploration is connected to reform changes as they are constructed in the interaction between managers and teachers in a Danish Upper Secondary High School. The data material is presented in four vignettes from the organizational field. The vignettes present the insights of the study and they emphasize the value of interviews. In this way the article makes a case that interviews add analytical depth and complexity to the study to counter the view that they are context stripping and are the minor partner in the ethnographic relationship between observational fieldwork and interviews.