The uses of observation: combining problem structuring methods and ethnography

In this paper, we examine conceptual and practical aspects of carrying out cross-disciplinary, multi-method, interventions that bring together methods from operational research (OR) with ethnographic tools drawn from sociology and anthropology. We note that such methodological hybridization is not a new development, although historically, the role of ethnography in OR has not always been explicit in written accounts. We illustrate such usage by means of a number of concrete examples. We then describe recent work in which we have successfully combined problem structuring methods with ethnographic investigations in order to address disparate problem issues.