Alterethnography: Reading and writing otherness in organizations

Abstract

Inspired by the alternative ethnographic tradition, the aim of this article is to contribute with an approach to organizational ethnography informed by the radical imperative to encounter and understand the Other in his/her complex otherness and difference. The approach is conceptualized in terms of alterethnography and it is outlined as a way of doing research/writing for change at odds with dominant patriarchal scientific writing orders. Illustrated by a study of creativity, written in the form of an academic postmodern detective novel fiction, alterethnography is envisioned as uncontained and disruptive, unpatriarchal and disconformist: it is an approach that transgresses the boundaries of the ego, striving to embrace otherness as togetherness.