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Volume 9, No. 3. Special Issue:
“Doing Case Study Research in Organizations”
Guest Editors: Ann Langley and Isabelle Royer

� Veronika Kisfalvi 2006
Subjectivity and Emotions as Sources of Insight
in an Ethnographic Case Study: A Tale of the Field,
M@n@gement, 9: 3, 109-127.

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Veronika Kisfalvi HEC MontréalService de l’enseignement du management
eMail: veronika.kisfalvi@hec.ca

Subjectivity and Emotions as Sources
of Insight in an Ethnographic Case Study:
A Tale of the Field

This article argues that case studies conducted within an ethnographic framework
always contain an element of subjectivity and emotionality given the close relationships
that researchers establish with participants in the field, and that while these elements
can be a source of bias, they can also be transformed into valuable sources of insight
as long as they are acknowledged and examined. Through the example of a lived field
experience, this paper discusses how the subjective and emotional quality of the rela-
tionship established between researcher and participant, once examined, brought a
deeper level of understanding and a greater degree of objectivity to findings obtained
during an ethnographic case study carried out in an entrepreneurial firm. The method-
ological implications of the roles played by subjectivity and emotions in this type of
research are also discussed.

INTRODUCTION

Organizational research using a case study design has enjoyed
increasing popularity and legitimacy in the literature since the seminal
work of Eisenhardt (1989) and Leonard-Barton (1990) in organizations
and of Yin (1984) in qualitative methodology. A case study approach is
often the method of choice when the researcher is interested in pro-
cess issues, in exploring areas about which little is known, in theory
building (Langley, 1999), and in ethnographic research. The results of
such research, like those obtained through any other method, are
reported in the form of articles published in scholarly journals. These
articles usually follow a relatively fixed set of conventions in terms of
structure and tone; the literature is reviewed, the theoretical ground-
work is laid, the methodology outlined, and the findings presented and
discussed; in most cases, this is done as impersonally and objectively
as possible. Until recently, there have been few articles in which the
emphasis is placed on exploring the lived experience of researchers
involved in the actual process of gathering and treating the material
which is ultimately used to identify the relevant data and to write up the
results of such case studies for scholarly publication. The post-modern
turn in the organizational literature at the end of the 1990s and into the
new century has been a notable exception in that it has interjected

mailto:veronika.kisfalvi@hec.ca


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issues of perspective, voice, subjectivity, emotion and reflexivity into
the methodological conversation (Calás and Smircich, 1999;
Humphreys, Brown, and Hatch, 2003). This enlarged conversation,
while quite recent and still somewhat marginal in the organizational lit-
erature, has had a longer and more prolific history and has moved
closer to center stage in the sociological literature, where both the sub-
jective nature of research and the necessity for reflexivity have been
ongoing concerns starting as early as the 1970s (Irwin, 2006). In fact,
according to Irwin, in the area of ethnographic studies in sociology, «To
throw oneʼs self into the field, body and soul, is now not only a valid
stance, but marks investigatory excellence» (2006: 157).
Conducting research that brings —and is in fact intended to bring (Van
Maanen, 1979, 2006; Lofland and Lofland, 1995; Irwin, 2006)— the
researcher closely in contact with individuals in the field, can be an
intensely personal experience and also one that can have important
methodological implications. The aim of this article is to introduce
these elements of ethnographic case study research into the context
of organizational research, where they have been less reflected upon,
and to explore what can happen around these issues in the field and
how the researcher might wish to deal with them. To do so, it uses the
authorʼs own experience while carrying out empirical research in an
entrepreneurial firm for her doctoral dissertation.
I argue that ethnographic case study research is an inherently subjec-
tive and emotionally charged method of inquiry given the sustained
contact and the particular closeness that is developed between
researchers and informants. While these elements can easily become
a source of bias if they are defensively denied or otherwise unexam-
ined, both subjectivity and emotions can also become valuable
sources of insight if they are acknowledged and explored. This paper
will discuss the potential role that the researcherʼs subjective, emo-
tional reactions can play in bringing a deeper level of understanding
and a greater degree of objectivity to findings obtained through such a
research approach.

SUBJECTIVITY, ANXIETY, EMOTIONS:
CONCEPTUAL UNDERPINNINGS

Some background of a conceptual nature is necessary here, dealing
with the role of subjectivity and the seemingly inevitable presence of
anxiety and emotions in research conducted in the behavioural sci-
ences in general and when using ethnographic methods in particular.
My primary source on subjectivity and anxiety (and to a lesser degree,
emotions) is a work entitled From Anxiety to Method in the Behavioural
Sciences by Georges Devereux (1967), anthropologist, psychoanalyst
and ethno-psychoanalyst. Devereux (1967) attributes the source of
subjectivity in part to cultural and sociological factors, but also in part
to the researcherʼs personality and the past experiences that it reflects:
«The scientistʼs personality is relevant to science, in that it accounts for
that distortion of the material which is attributable to his intrapsychical-



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Subjectivity and Emotions as Sources of Insight in an Ethnographic Case Study

ly determined lack of objectivity» (Devereux, 1967: 42-43). These sub-
jective distortions are «especially marked where the observed materi-
al mobilizes anxiety» (1967: 43).
Devereux (1967) maintains that because the object of study is at once
the other and the self (human beings are studying other human
beings), the anxiety aroused by the inevitable confounding of self and
other in this type of research is «the most significant and characteris-
tic data of behavioural science research» (Devereux, 1967: xvii).
Using examples from his own research, Devereux identifies some pos-
sible sources of anxiety in anthropological field work, and then extends
these to the behavioural sciences in general:
On a more subjective level, anxiety is aroused by material which: 1/
threatens the basic vulnerability of any human being; 2/ revives
idiosyncratic anxieties related to past experiences; 3/ threatens to
undermine major defences or sublimations; 4/ exacerbates current
problems, etc. (1967: 45).
He concludes that «[a]ny effective behavioural science methodology
[… m]ust use the subjectivity inherent in all observation as the royal
road to an authentic, rather than fictitious, objectivity» (Devereux,
1967: xvii). According to Devereux (1967), all research in the
behavioural sciences (both qualitative and quantitative) has an ele-
ment of subjectivity in it. In order to reduce the distortions caused by
the researcherʼs own idiosyncratic subjectivity in this type of research,
she or he must first and foremost acknowledge (rather than defen-
sively deny) this subjectivity; then, particular attention must be paid to
the moments of anxiety that arise during the research process (when
interacting with others in the field, for example, or when analyzing
data, or even when developing questions for a survey). Furthermore,
Devereux links subjectivity, anxiety and emotions (or affect, as he
terms it) and the importance of recognizing and taking them into
account and in order to attain greater objectivity: «Objectivity results
from the creative control of consciously recognized irrational reactions,
without loss of affect» (Devereux, 1967: 100, emphasis in original).
Rather than advocating the removal of affect from research, Devereux
criticizes the fact that «some behavioural scientists (…) dissociate
themselves from their subjects and assume a more or less extra-
human observer position [which] is a source of unconscious anxiety,
giving rise to a variety of defences» and argues that «The resulting
loss of feeling and the impairment of the (…) sense of oneʼs own
humanity would in themselves be sufficient reasons for avoiding aloof-
ness, even if it were not obvious that the most productive way in which
one can study man is through the medium of oneʼs own humanity»
(1967: 156).
Before addressing the question of subjectivity and emotions in my own
research, I would like to now address the issue of terminology when
discussing emotions, as well as the issue of the usefulness and posi-
tive contribution of emotions to research and particularly to ethno-
graphic approaches that take place in social settings. I have thus far
used the words emotions, feelings and affect almost interchangeably,
and would now like to clarify their usage for the rest of this article. I will



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use the work of Antonio Damasio (1994, 1999) —a clinical neurologist
and neuroscientist researching the role of emotions and the body in
rational decision-making and in consciousness— in order to address
both the issue of terminology and the importance of paying attention to
emotions when conducting ethnographic research.
Damasio maintains that while learning and culture can alter the
expression of emotions and give them new meanings, emotions them-
selves are «biologically determined processes, depending on innately
set brain devices, laid down by a long evolutionary history» (1994: 51).
Furthermore, he proposes the following working definitions: «An emo-
tion, be it happiness or sadness, embarrassment or pride, is a pat-
terned collection of chemical and neural responses that is produced by
the brain when it detects the presence of an emotionally competent
stimulus —an object or situation, for example. The processing of the
stimulus may be conscious but it need not be, as the responses are
engendered automatically. A working definition of feelings is a different
matter. Feelings are the mental representation of the physiological
changes that characterize emotions. Unlike emotions, which are sci-
entifically public, feelings are indeed private» (Damasio, 2001: 781-
782).
Damasio links the feeling of emotions to the bodily sensations accom-
panying them and to the image of the body produced in the brain: «a
feeling depends on the juxtaposition of an image of the body proper to
an image of something else, such as the visual image of a face or the
auditory image of a melody (…) To feel an emotion it is necessary (…)
that neural signals from viscera, from muscles and joints, and from
neurotransmitter nuclei —all of which are activated during the process
of emotion— reach certain subcortical nuclei and the cerebral cortex»
(1994: 145).
He proposes that «the term feeling should be reserved for the private,
mental experience of an emotion, while the term emotion should be
used to designate the collection of [bodily] responses, many of which
are publicly observable» (Damasio, 1999: 42, italics in original). He
also explicitly connects feelings to consciousness: «To the simple def-
inition of emotion as a specifically caused transient change of the
organism state corresponds a simple definition for feeling an emotion:
It is the representation of that transient change in organism state in
terms of neural patterns and ensuing images. When those images are
accompanied, one instant later, by a sense of self in the act of know-
ing, and when they are enhanced, they become conscious. They are,
in a true sense, feelings of feelings» (Damasio, 1999: 282).
According to Damasio «Feelings let us mind the body (…) They let us
mind the body “live,” when they give us perceptual images of the body,
or “by rebroadcast,” when they give us recalled images of the body
state appropriate to certain circumstances [that we are currently expe-
riencing]» (1994: 159, italics in original).
In addition, «Feelings offer us a glimpse of what goes on in our flesh,
as a momentary image of that flesh is juxtaposed to the images of
other objects and situations; in so doing, feelings modify our compre-
hensive notion of those other objects and situations. By dint of juxta-



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Subjectivity and Emotions as Sources of Insight in an Ethnographic Case Study

position, body images give to other images a quality of goodness or
badness, of pleasure and pain» (Damasio, 1994: 159). Furthermore,
«feeling your emotional states, which is to say being conscious of
emotions, offers you flexibility of response based on the particular his-
tory of your interactions with the environment» (1994: 133). For Dama-
sio, then, emotions are automatic and visceral reactions that have the
potential to become the conscious feelings that help us evaluate, make
meaning of and navigate through our experiences. I will use his termi-
nology in the rest of this article to refer to emotions as unconscious or
preconscious mind/body reactions and to feelings as emotions made
conscious and available for examination to the subject as he or she
experiences situations.
It is also clear from Damasioʼs work that feelings are ubiquitous in
healthy humans and are essential for self-preservation and self-aware-
ness; in this sense, having feelings is by itself obviously useful. But
beyond their value in these processes, Damasio (1994: 245) also sug-
gests that «feelings are a powerful influence on reason [… T]he brain
systems required by the former are enmeshed in those needed by the
latter, and (…) such specific systems are interwoven with those that
regulate the body» ; furthermore, «emotions and feelings may not be
the intruders in the bastion of reason at all: they may be enmeshed in
its networks, for worse and for better» (1994: xii).
Echoing Devereuxʼs (1967) contention about the importance of con-
sidering feelings (or affect in Devereuxʼs terminology) as a way toward
a more holistic and less biased science, Damasio (1994: 246) sug-
gests that «taking stock of the pervasive role of feelings may give us a
chance of enhancing their positive effects and reducing their potential
harm». For him, far from being a luxury or an epiphenomenon, feelings
and emotions «serve as internal guides, and they help us communi-
cate to others signals that can also guide them (…) They are the result
of a most curious physiological arrangement that has turned the brain
into the bodyʼs captive audience» (1994: xv).
Calling on evidence gathered during his and othersʼ clinical work with
patients suffering damage to the brain regions involved in the feeling
of emotions, Damasio (1994: 54) concludes that when there is damage
to these regions, «[t]he powers of reason and the experience of emo-
tion decline together». While it may be surprising given our long-held
bias toward reason and the widespread belief that feelings hinder
objectivity and hence rationality, «certain aspects of the process of
emotion and feeling are indispensable for rationality» (Damasio, 1994:
xiii). Damasioʼs clinical evidence reveals that «selective reduction of
emotion is at least as prejudicial for rationality as excessive emotion.
It certainly does not seem true that reason stands to gain from operat-
ing without the leverage of emotion. On the contrary, emotion probably
assists reasoning, especially when it comes to personal and social
matters involving risk and conflict» (1999: 41-42). This seems to be
particularly the case when it comes to evaluating and appropriately
responding to social situations (which characterize both organisations
and the ethnographic research carried out in them). «The smooth inte-
gration of this process is what allows us to make social judgments



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leading to the decisions that in turn make us into effective social
beings» (Damasio, 1994: 38). Damasioʼs contention that «[w]ell-tar-
geted and well-deployed emotion seems to be a support system with-
out which the edifice of reason cannot operate properly» (1999: 42) is
a major cornerstone of the current wave of research in the area of
emotional intelligence, increasingly seen as an important and very
desirable skill to possess in the workplace (Goleman, 1995).
Taken together, Devereuxʼs and Damasioʼs positions provide strong
support for the necessity to seriously reflect upon the subjective expe-
riences, anxieties and other feelings that accompany any research
with an ethnographic orientation (and perhaps all research in the
behavioural sciences, as Devereux [1967] has suggested). Such a
reflection holds out the possibility of making us into more aware, more
transparent and less biased researchers. It offers a tool with which to
enhance our understanding of our experiences in the field and of the
data we thus obtain as well as of the relationships we form with our
subjects, and to reflect upon the impact of all of this on our findings,
analyses and ultimate theorizing.
To sum up, the ethnographic research process in particular seems
inevitably fraught with issues of subjectivity, anxiety and emotions,
although these disturbances can often be denied or obscured by a
methodological pseudo-objectivity (Devereux, 1967). We have every-
thing to gain from not denying but rather addressing these aspects
consciously and from using them as yet more data (albeit of a different
nature) that can inform our subsequent understandings of the phe-
nomena we are studying. Devereux argued, as early as 1967, that
«[t]he next objective in behavioural science research must therefore be
the reintroduction of affect into research» (1967: 156). What follows,
then, may be seen in part as a response to this call. In the rest of this
article, I explore the subjectivity inherent in my research project as well
as the anxiety and some of the other feelings that the project itself and
the relationship I formed with the main subject of my inquiry aroused
in me during the fieldwork and the subsequent data analysis and writ-
ing.

THE STUDY

The research study that is described in this paper, conducted during
my doctoral studies, forms the basis of several subsequent articles
(Kisfalvi, 2000, 2002) that follow the standard presentation protocol for
journal articles such as the ones described in the introduction here. I
present here what lay behind the scenes of these articles, the actual
lived experience of one researcher in the process of conducting an
ethnographically informed single-case study that primarily focused on
one individual. In this respect, this paper is an example of what Van
Maanen (1988) has referred to as a confessional tale of the field.
The study in question concerned strategic leadership and in particular
the role of emotions and character in strategic decision-making. It
focused on one entrepreneur and his character, the business he had



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Subjectivity and Emotions as Sources of Insight in an Ethnographic Case Study

built up, and the interactions between this person and his top man-
agement team. The conceptual framework was psychoanalytic in
nature. Psychoanalytic approaches can be distinguished from the
more traditional and essentially cognitive approaches in the area of
strategic leadership in that many of the latter consist of synchronic cor-
relation studies. These cognitive studies have been heavily influenced
by cybernetic models (Stubbart, 1987) that can address neither the
feeling aspects of choice (Langley, Mintzberg, Pitcher, Posada, and
Saint-Macary, 1995) nor the personal meaning with which a top man-
ager might imbue a particular strategic option. While the sensemaking
literature (spearheaded by Weick, 1995) comes closer, it too is domi-
nated by a cognitive bias and leaves out considerations of personal
history and emotions. As such, I considered these approaches poorly
suited to the task of exploring the more subjective elements involved
in strategic decision-making, which were the focus of my research
study. A more holistic and ethnographic approach was called for, one
that could look at how strategistsʼ past histories might affect their pre-
sent lives, and whose present actions likely resonate with deep per-
sonal meaning that is not always consciously apprehended by the
strategist.
The psychoanalytic conceptual framework is particularly suited to
exploring personal, emotional and biographical factors. The psychoan-
alytic literature suggests that the cognitive processes involved in
strategic decision-making are intricately interwoven with the strate-
gistʼs emotional experience and personal history (a position that
Damasioʼs [1994, 1999] work in the area of neuroscience seems to
support). It considers thinking, feeling and acting (which constitute
behaviour [Moore and Fine, 1990]) as integrated and deeply rooted in
past formative experiences. In addition, while much of the strategy lit-
erature treats strategic issues as if they were emotionally neutral and
atemporal, certain issues are inevitably highly meaningful and emo-
tionally charged hot issues for a particular strategist because of past
formative experiences (Noël 1989; Kets de Vries, Miller, and Noël,
1993). The psychoanalytic literature, on the other hand, recognizes the
importance and influence of past experiences and associated emo-
tions on current behaviours. Further description of this somewhat
unconventional conceptual approach in organizational research and
the literature that it has inspired can be found in Kisfalvi (2000, 2002)
and in Kisfalvi and Pitcher (2003). The reflections developed in the
present article (like the published work mentioned above) are inspired
by concepts drawn from the psychoanalytic literature; as such, the
subjective, personal and emotional aspects of my research experience
—reflecting also the idea that in ethnography «our past is present in us
as a project» (Fabian, 1983, cited in Humphreys et al., 2003: 9)— are
the ones emphasized.
Methodologically, the study I conducted can be described as ethno-
graphic in nature; it consisted of a single-case design and relied pri-
marily on interviews with the entrepreneur and with the members of his
team, on non-participant observation and on consultation of archival
material for data gathering. My fieldwork was carried out on site over



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a nine-month period during which time I developed a relationship with
my principal research subject that on examination turned out to be
quite complex, and that was quite different from the objective relation-
ships between researcher and research subject that tends to be report-
ed in journal articles.
In what follows, and in keeping within the psychoanalytic paradigm of
both this article and the research study itself, I will concentrate on two
particular aspects of my subjective and emotional experience which
accompanied the carrying out of the study: my anxieties and their
causes and the sadness (associated with mourning) that was evoked
at various points during the research experience. Although there was
some overlap, feelings of anxiety were most prevalent during the data
collection phase, that is, during the entry into the field and the fieldwork
conducted on site, while the sadness was most prevalent upon leaving
the field and during the data analysis and writing phases. Sources of
anxiety included the difficulties of finding a site and a principal research
subject given the nature of the research question, which had to do with
business strategy and character; the particular history of the research
subject, as it related to that of the researcher (he was a Holocaust sur-
vivor, while I am the daughter of survivors); and the particular dynam-
ics of the interaction between the personalities of the research subject
and the researcher. The sadness associated with the process of
mourning, on the other hand, was related more to the transitions
between different phases of the research, each with their particular
characteristics.

SOURCES OF ANXIETY
DURING DATA COLLECTION

Anxiety was never very far during the beginning phases of my study
and during the entire data collection period, although its sources were
often quite distinct. Unravelling and understanding the sources of this
anxiety became crucial for my understanding of my research experi-
ence, and particularly when it came time to interpret the findings.

THE NATURE OF THE RESEARCH QUESTION

The first source of anxiety had to do with the difficulties of finding a
research site, given the nature of my research question. Repeatedly,
and perhaps quite understandably, when my potential subjects heard
me link the words “the CEOʼs character” and “business strategy”, they
would immediately decline my request to use their firm as my research
site. Ben Levitsky1 himself initially responded to my request by push-
ing the desk chair in which he was sitting further and further away from
me during our first meeting, communicating nonverbally but unmis-
takeably the reticence that he was feeling. When he finally accepted to
become my research subject, I was extremely relieved and grateful,
but also extremely aware of how difficult it would be to find another site
in case this one did not work out. As a result, I became inordinately

1. A pseudonym.



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concerned about not making a false step, and hypersensitive to the
quality of my relationship with Ben. This hypersensitivity, while difficult
to live with day-to-day in the field, was ultimately helpful in my ability to
subsequently reflect on the nature of this relationship and its impact on
my findings.
My concerns about the relationship were intensified by the fact that
even for me, my research question seemed somewhat indiscreet, and
made me feel like I was prying, an aspect of case study research to
which, by nature, I am particularly sensitive. The voyeuristic element of
doing case research on an individual was therefore intensified for me,
and further highlighted the tenuousness of my relationship with Ben.
The importance that the seeming fragility of this relationship had
assumed for me from the very beginning of the study would clearly
have consequences for the kind of data that I would be able (and will-
ing) to acquire. I believe that my feelings of tenuousness and my anx-
iety about the appropriateness of my study somewhat curtailed the
types of questions that I felt free to ask, and therefore formed the first
boundary or limitation of my research. This limitation was somewhat
attenuated when about half-way into the study I decided to search for,
and eventually found, a second site which could have served as back-
up if needed.

THE NATURE OF THE RESEARCH SUBJECT

WHO BEN WAS FOR ME…
Ben was from Eastern Europe, easily identifiable as an orthodox Jew
through his dress and a survivor of the concentration camps; while the
conditions he endured were terrible, he also told me that he had
learned to become a businessman in the camps, as it was the only way
to survive. I myself come from a Hungarian Jewish family, and both my
father and grandfather had been interned in, and survived, Nazi labour
camps during the war. Not only had I been personally affected by the
Holocaust through my familyʼs experiences, I had become intensely
interested in this moment of history; in addition, at the time of the study,
I was feeling it increasingly important to openly affirm my Jewishness.
Ben was in his mid seventies when I met him, and because of his war
experiences and his age, I could not help but see in him some of my
grandfather, with whom I had been very close as a child (what, in psy-
choanalytic terms, may be described as a typical transference reac-
tion: see Devereux [1967] and Hunt [1989]). I was therefore favourably
disposed toward him even before starting the fieldwork, although as it
turned out he was not an easily approachable person. Ruthless in
business, emotionally volatile and prone to anger, stern, but also high-
ly intelligent and perceptive when it came to people, he presented a
daunting combination both as an individual and as a research subject.
I wanted desperately to be able to like him nonetheless: «I want to like
Ben,» says one of my journal entries, «all the Holocaust stuff, suffer-
ing (…) His overcoming victimization, asserting his “thereness” like I
feel the need to». And I was terrified, in this case on a more personal,
emotional and not yet fully conscious level, of being rejected by him,



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as is evidenced by some of the dreams I had during the time I was con-
ducting the research. (Devereux [1967: 54] himself suggested that
researchers use their dreams as a way to make more conscious and
to understand their anxiety reactions. Listening to the body constitutes
another way, as is implied by Damasioʼs [1994, 1999] work, since such
anxieties are experienced in the body [Damasio, 1994, 1999; LeDoux,
1996]; when we perpetrate what Damasio [1994] has called Descartesʼ
error, the splitting of the body from the mind in the quest for rationality,
we lose the insights to which our physical reactions to situations can
lead us [Damasio, 1994]).
The following is an account of two of my dreams that occurred close
together during the fieldwork and that I noted in my field journals.
Dream 1: «A dream sometime over the long weekend: I am at a meal
with Ben and a number of other people. It is very relaxed. I feel a part
of things. I suspect this is a Passover seder [ritual meal], since one of
the fantasies I had was to be invited to his house or his sonʼs for the
first seder (…) the idea of breaking through, of belonging, of being a
part of his life (…) and of feeling comfortable, relaxed, normal around
this person. A wish that others share?»
Dream 2: «Again, the sense of well-being, of things going well, and
then going a bit too far —too intimate— I touch Benʼs hands in the
dream, and he violently recoils and yells at me “I donʼt want to be
touched! Donʼt touch me!” (…) Whose dream is this? (…) Getting too
close, hurting, to be violently rejected. Breaking through the anxiety —
how do we do it? How do I? How does my subject? Is there relief on
the other side?»
This fear of rejection was transformed into a constant anxiety that I
would do the wrong thing and that Ben would ask me to stop my
research and leave, one that dovetailed neatly with the other anxieties
I have described above. The anxiety got so intense that at times I
would literally feel immense relief at not seeing Benʼs car in the park-
ing lot when I arrived at the research site in the mornings. The irony of
this was not lost on me, as is evidenced by the following excerpt from
my field notes: «Ben is in —I see his car in his spot. I get out of my car
with a sinking feeling (…) I feel strongly that Iʼm happier and much
more at ease, that my research goes “better” when he is out of the
office —wonderful, since heʼs my research focus!»
To put it mildly, Ben simply terrified me. While I could have attempted
to ignore this feeling as not objective and therefore as having no place
in the research (after all, it was “just an emotional reaction”), I decid-
ed not to do so. My reasoning was that if after being exposed to him
for only a short while I felt scared, fragile and tenuous around Ben, it
was possible that his managers experienced similar reactions. So one
day, when I was speaking to Benʼs assistant, I told him that Ben terri-
fied me. His response: «Oh yeah? Youʼre not the only one!» This
exchange subsequently led to a whole new line of inquiry dealing with
Benʼs emotional impact on his managers and how they coped with it,
and ultimately provided me with a fuller understanding of the impact
of Benʼs personality and personal history on top management team
dynamics and strategy making processes in the firm. Had I decided to



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discount my own feelings because they interfered with my objectivity,
the initial conversation with the manager could never have taken
place.
It is clear that for me, Ben represented something that went beyond that
of a mere research subject (if such a thing actually exists) with whom I
could maintain a certain distance and scientific objectivity. But I was not
the only one to be anxious; I, too, represented something for Ben that I
believe in turn elicited a certain amount of anxiety on his part.

WHO I WAS FOR BEN…
On a number of occasions, Ben made reference to his lack of formal
education and the fact that he came from a simple family, and to his
pride in accomplishing as much as he had in his life despite his hum-
ble origins. For example, he underscored the fact that he had suc-
ceeded despite his lack of formal education, and that back in Europe,
he had held his own «with doctor chemists (…) They came up with
ideas, but how to actually carry them out in a practical way, how to put
them to work, they were unable. This was my job». He spoke with dis-
dain of these people who, unlike him, were highly educated but so
impractical: «I went to a kind of technical school [and not to a college
or university]. More in practice (…) because in practice you should be
able to avoid accidents and things like that». His emphasis of these
issues, coupled with certain references to his mother who had been
one of the more educated women in his village, and to his sister who
had married a highly-educated man, left the impression that Ben
might be sensitive about the level of education he had been able to
achieve.
Faced with someone like the researcher, a doctoral candidate at the
time, these anxieties about his level of education may well have been
brought to the forefront. For example, as we were setting up our first
interview, he asked «How long will you want to talk to me?» When I
told him that it would be between one and two hours, and that «actu-
ally, itʼs you who will be doing most of the talking», he seemed sur-
prised and slightly taken aback: «Oh, you want me to talk to you?»
One incident in particular made me aware that my level of education
could be troubling to him. It is reproduced below from my field notes.
«Ben: Are you doing work about us or for yourself now?
«Veronika: About you!
«Ben (pointing to the computer): No, you are working for yourself on
your computer.
«Veronika: Iʼm working on my notes from here. Do you want me to do
some work for you? Give me some work to do, and Iʼll happily do it.
«Ben (smiling): You want work? I will ask you to cook for me!
«Order clerk: Sheʼs a good cook!
«Veronika (thinking of the daunting task of cooking kosher food): I
donʼt know…
«Ben (to no-one in particular, walking away): She doesnʼt even know if
sheʼs a good cook…»
Here I was, a highly educated doctoral student, yet like those «doctor
chemists» back in Europe, unable to do practical things like cooking!



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Had this been an isolated incident, I would have attributed my own anx-
iety about my inability to cook kosher food to my insecurities in the field-
work situation (“Iʼm not good enough…”). But if we look at this incident
in light of the satisfaction he seems to have gotten out of being more
practical than those impractical «doctor chemists», a pattern seems to
emerge, centered around his insecurities about his level of education,
and a need to show up those who are better educated than he is.
Thus, we were both feeling anxious, insecure and a little exposed, but
for quite different reasons. And in fact, we were both observing each
other. For example, after my first formal interview with Ben, as I was
driving home, I suddenly realized with a sinking feeling that he had
actually found out as much, if not more, about my personal life and my
life history than I had about his. Incidents such as these led me to con-
clude in my field notes that «Ben must be somewhat uncomfortable
and anxious to know that I am doing what he also does (…) watching
minutely the workings of his company, the movements and actions of
his people, and of course, himself». These incidents also confirmed
what I had been told about him —that he was extremely good at fer-
reting out information from people. In this sense, some aspects of the
relationship I had formed with him were prototypic of the relationships
he formed with his managers, and I thus treated them as data.
What Ben and I were feeling, I believe, was a sort of double or mir-
ror anxiety, one that created a certain level of confusion in me, caus-
ing me to ask myself whose anxiety it was that I was feeling (or as I
put it in my field notes, whose dream I was dreaming), his or my own.
From my field notes: «After a while it is hard to tell if all of this is a
major projection —transference on the researcherʼs [my] part, or
really based on “observation”». Working within a psychoanalytic
framework, I knew that in field research it was not at all unusual to
confound oneʼs own feelings for those of oneʼs subjects and vice
versa (Devereux, 1967; Hunt, 1989), and that I personally, even in
day-to-day life, had a marked tendency to feel other peopleʼs feelings
—a facility to fall into what psychoanalytic authors such as Devereux
(1967) and Heimann (1950) would describe as counter-transference
reactions. I also knew I had to make a special effort to try to unravel
the sources of this anxiety (to own my own, but only my own). As
social psychologist Alain Giami (2001: 6) in a recent reworking of
Devereuxʼs theories states: «A researcherʼs counter-transference
can be defined as the sum of unconscious and emotional reactions,
including anxiety, affecting his/her relation with the observed subject
and situation. These reactions produce distortions in the process of
knowledge construction that remain hidden from the researcher.
Notions of “inappropriateness” and “resistance” (…) become central
in understanding the cognitive processes affecting the researcher,
because they highlight the researcherʼs reactions to aspects of real-
ity emerging in fieldwork. Counter-transference points to the
researcherʼs difficulty in clearly distinguishing material that comes
from outside (the subject, the field) and from inside (his/her own
emotional reactions). The researcher has to struggle with these emo-
tional reactions and anxieties».



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The attempts to tease apart my own anxieties and emotions from those
of my research subject allowed me to become more objective, and to
achieve a better understanding of my subject based on the feelings that
he aroused in me (in fact, counter-transference reactions are often used
by therapists in clinical psychoanalytic settings for just this purpose:
Heimann, 1950; Giami, 2001). In the end, I gained a greater under-
standing of my subject and myself and the consequences of our inter-
action for the research process, and confirmed what I had jotted down
in my field notes about halfway through the study: «Everything is data».

SADNESS AND MOURNING
DURING DATA ANALYSIS

One might think that given the emotionally challenging nature of the
fieldwork, I would have felt great relief at the prospect of leaving the
field, and this was what in fact did happen, but only in part. At the
same time, it was difficult to leave the richness of the field for the more
austere and emotionally neutral work of data coding. In addition, the
anxiety that surrounded the data gathering during this study com-
pounded the qualitative researcherʼs common anxiety about leaving
the field too soon, before enough data had been gathered. While text-
books on qualitative research attempt to deal with this concern by
advising that the researcher continue until a point of saturation is
reached, it often remains unclear to the researcher what this satura-
tion would actually look (or feel) like. I know that in my case, not only
was I sure that I could have gone farther and been more probing with
my questions to Ben had I felt somewhat less inhibited, I also could
not rid myself of the thought that just one more day, one more inter-
view, one more good contact with Ben or with another informant would
give me the definitive piece of data that I felt I must still be missing to
complete my study.
Mourning the fieldwork thus consisted in dealing not only with the
sense of sadness and loss that I felt saying goodbye to the people with
whom I had established sometimes intense connections, as well as to
the day-to-day concrete organizational reality; I had also, and perhaps
more importantly, to deal with the feelings of anxiety associated with
the sense that I was leaving the field without having all of the data I
would have hoped to have. Mourning at this phase of the research
therefore consisted of coming to accept that I had conducted a less-
than-perfect study, and its logical corollary, that I was a less-than-per-
fect researcher. The realization that although not complete, my data
was adequate, and that although not perfect, I was a good enough (to
use Winnicottʼs [1965] expression) researcher, came later during the
coding and analysis phases and represented the resolution of this par-
ticular phase of mourning.
Once I began to actually code my data, I entered a phase that, on an
emotional level, was almost the diametrical opposite of being in the
field. Whereas data gathering had often been accompanied by intense
anxiety, the neutral, even cold, nature of data coding was its very



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antithesis. This inherent characteristic of the coding process is partic-
ularly enhanced by the computerized tools now available to the quali-
tative researcher, in the form of qualitative data analysis software such
as NUD*IST, the software package that I used for my data coding, or
NVivo, a more recent version. The relative facility with which coding
can be carried out with the help of such software encourages the
researcher to develop a very extensive database containing a large
number of codes and categories. In fact, it can be hard to stop.
I myself compulsively coded data for several months, deciding on and
reworking the code or category to which a particular word or a phrase
best belonged, or whether a new code needed to be created for it.
This compulsive, seemingly more objective and quite emotionless
activity was not only a welcome refuge from the difficult emotions and
feelings encountered in the field, it was also in a very real sense a
mask. First, because the software allowed me to generate so many
codes and categories, it served to reassure me of the richness of my
data and to allay my anxiety about not having enough. Then, precise-
ly because it was such an emotionally neutral refuge, it effectively cut
me off from my own feelings (self-estrangement masking itself as sci-
entific objectivity, as both Devereux [1967] and Kleinman and Copp
[1993] would put it), and consequently from the meaning of my data,
fragmenting it into hundreds of disconnected chunks of information
that remained meaningless on their own, waiting to be reshaped and
recombined into the story I would later tell.
Only I found that I could not tell it. After I had coded data ad nauseam
for months and felt that I had reached the point of diminishing returns,
I literally could not write a sentence for three full weeks. In allowing me
to submerge (but thankfully, as it turned out, not entirely drown) my
emotions about my subject in a sea of codes and categories, the data
coding had, ironically, cut me off from Benʼs reality and from access to
the story my data could tell, the meaning that it held. I could not write
about Ben until I could feel his reality once again. In effect, the impres-
sion of being more in control and more professional that electronically
coding and categorizing my data had given me now had to be aban-
doned, at least to a degree, another aspect of the research process
that had to be mourned.
I vividly remember sitting in my office one afternoon in front of my com-
puter, frustrated to no end by my inability to write, and I found myself
thinking about Ben and his life. As I did so, he began to emerge for me
once again, not as data, but as a real person with a past, someone
with whom I had forged a real, albeit complex and often problematic
and difficult relationship; I began once again to feel for him the mixed
feelings I had felt in the field: the empathy for his hard life and terrible
experiences, the admiration for his accomplishments, the fear of his
moods, the anxiety that given the context, his power over me had gen-
erated, etc. But mainly, I felt a deep sadness for this man whose life
experiences had made him into the complex and difficult individual he
had become, a person with whom I (like his managers) had found it so
hard to establish a caring relationship, and I began to cry. I believe that
in that moment, in which I had once again gained access to the emo-



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tions that the fieldwork and Ben had aroused in me and in which rather
than suppressing them, I allowed these emotions to become conscious
feelings, I began to truly mourn all that could have been, both in Benʼs
life and in the personal and professional relationship that I had devel-
oped with him during the research project. The next day I began to
write, and once I started, there was no stopping it. I wrote 200 pages
of what largely amounted to gibberish that needed to be severely edit-
ed for an academic audience, but a text that nonetheless contained the
germ of my thesis as well as the essential elements of my subsequent
articles.

SOME FINAL REFLEXIONS

Traditional research orthodoxy would have it that feelings and emo-
tions have no place in research, and that as researchers we should be
very wary of our emotional reactions lest they make us stray from the
path of objectivity. Such advice can easily incite us to suppress our
emotional reactions to our research subjects entirely, or in more psy-
choanalytic terms, to repress these reactions or to deny their exis-
tence. Such repression and denial, however, may not make us more
objective but perhaps just the reverse; although we can drive these
reactions underground, the risk is that they might emerge in more indi-
rect ways that are perhaps harder to pinpoint and therefore even more
likely to distort our perceptions and so pose an even greater threat to
the very objectivity for which we are striving.
It is true that my emotional reactions and subsequent feelings affected
my findings. But it was by confronting and trying to understand these
and by attempting to examine precisely in which ways they affected my
perceptions and reactions that I could arrive at a greater objectivity, as
well as a better understanding of both my subject and my chosen
methods. Had I not examined the sources of my own anxiety —had I
not asked myself who Ben was for me— would I have dismissed the
unlikeable and difficult aspects of Benʼs personality that not only I but
also his managers found hard to deal with? Had I not examined Benʼs
anxiety about my presence —had I not asked who I was for him—
would I have unearthed his intense need for recognition, rooted in his
desire to prove to himself and to others that he was at least the equal
of those much better educated than he? Had I considered my emo-
tionless data coding and analysis to be a triumph of objectivity, would
my paralysis have lasted longer? And had I not allowed myself to feel
Benʼs reality again in an attempt to maintain this supposed objectivity,
could I have written anything at all? And if I did, might I have missed
the flavour of Benʼs personality entirely?
In addition, it was precisely because of who I was, with its conse-
quences for the relationship that formed with Ben —what he repre-
sented for me, and I for him— that I was able to access certain types
of data about my subject. Another researcher, one who was perhaps
more self-confident and less worried about being intrusive, someone
who was not the child of Holocaust survivors —a researcher with a dif-



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ferent personality, a different set of past experiences and subjective
issues— would have in all likelihood developed a different kind of rela-
tionship with the subject, would have had access to somewhat differ-
ent data as a consequence, and would perhaps have produced quite
a different —and differently partial— study. In either case, generalizing
would have been problematic.
This last observation raises interesting ontological questions concern-
ing the ability of ethnographic research (and qualitative research in
general) to objectively depict the world, and underscores the impor-
tance of a serious reflection on the consequence of our chosen
methodological approach. It implies that wherever possible, such
research should be carried out using multiple informants who can cor-
roborate and enlarge each otherʼs views and by at least two
researchers working closely together to compare and enrich their per-
ceptions (for an example of using more than one researcher as a way
to work through counter-transference reactions, see Giami, 2001). It
does not imply, however, that an individual researcher working with an
individual subject is inevitably too subjective or wrong. Even when con-
ducted by an individual alone, such research holds a mirror to a par-
ticular facet of reality, and will always yield a partial truth based on the
particularities of the relationship developed between these two part-
ners in the research. Methodological rigor might mean in this case a
commitment on the part of the researcher to fully account for how this
partial truth has been arrived at, and to communicate the process to
the scientific community. As Devereux (1967) proposed, the royal road
to such rigor might very well consist of a thorough recording and exam-
ination of the subjective and emotional aspects of the fieldwork. Such
reflexivity can also keep ethnographic researchers honest by helping
them avoid confounding the boundary that separates their experience
from their subjectsʼ or establishing a potentially damaging intimacy with
them (Irwin, 2006). As Kleinman and Copp (1993: 13) have said, «we
must consider who we are and what we believe [and I would add feel]
when we do fieldwork. Otherwise we might not see how we shape the
story».

CONCLUSION

This article has underscored the need to unravel and to understand the
subjectivity, anxiety, emotional reactions and feelings that are experi-
enced by researchers who conduct ethnographic case study research.
I do not claim for a moment that my own particular idiosyncratic reac-
tions can be generalized to other researchers and other field relation-
ships; the difficulty of generalizing from this type of research is in fact
one of the points I have tried to raise in this article. Nor do I feel a great
need to generalize; as Van Maanen (2006: 18) has recently pointed
out, «ethnography maintains an almost obsessive focus on the “empir-
ical”. The witnessing ideal with its intense reliance on personalized
seeing, hearing, experiencing in specific social settings continues to
generate something of a hostility to generalizations and abstractions



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Subjectivity and Emotions as Sources of Insight in an Ethnographic Case Study

not connected to immersion in situated detail»; and it is a stance he
considers legitimate in this type of research. But if pushed to do so, I
would maintain that ethnographic research in general, which often
focuses on cultural and social settings, and ethnographic case study
research in particular, which almost always aims to get up close to indi-
viduals and social situations, seems to be inherently subjective and
emotional in nature, although as organizational researchers we may
be hesitant to admit this for fear of damaging our credibility (Kleinman
and Copp, 1993). It is not a question of choice, as some of the more
controversial field practices (such as sexual intimacy with informants,
drug use and the like) described by Irwin (2006) seem to be, but rather
it is the nature of the beast —and perhaps the nature of research in the
behavioural sciences in general, as Devereux (1967) proposed.
Whatever our reticence, as researchers we must consciously acknowl-
edge and examine these aspects of ethnographic case study research.
If we do not do so but simply repress them or sweep them under the
rug, we risk unconsciously compromising our objectivity and separat-
ing ourselves from the meaning of our data. We also risk missing occa-
sions to arrive at a deeper understanding not only of our data, our sub-
jects and ourselves as researchers, but of the impact of our chosen
methods on the types of data that we will be able to gather. It has been
said that when doing ethnography, the researcher becomes the prima-
ry research instrument (Humphreys et al., 2003). As such, adjusting for
our own disturbing reactions (Devereux, 1967) as researchers forms a
part of the calibration of that instrument; an acknowledgement and
examination of these reactions can only improve the ability of the
instrument to do its job, and by extension, improve the quality of our
research results.

Note. An earlier version of this paper appeared in the proceedings of the 17th Annual
International Conference on Case Method Research and Application (WACRA), held in
Budapest, Hungary, 2-5 July, 2000.

Veronika Kisfalvi (Ph.D., McGill University) is an associate professor at HEC Mon-
tréal, where she has been teaching courses on leadership, management skills and deci-
sion making since 1986. Her research focuses on the relationships between personali-
ty, emotions and strategic decision making in top management teams. She has given
executive seminars in Switzerland, Holland, Tunisia, West Africa, Bulgaria, Trinidad,
Romania and the USA. Prof. Kisfalvi currently holds the position of Director of the Grad-
uate Diploma Program at HEC.



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