Rumbling on performativity_Frits Simon

2.5 Ethical responsibilities regarding my research
During the start of my research some ethical issues were dealt with, for instance the
permission to write about my experiences in my working environment. In due course I
came to understand the importance of paying attention to ethical issues regarding my
research. To illustrate: in recent years I was invited several times to give a lecture or a
master class in conferences. In my presentation I told what actually the case was. I
gave a sketch of the muddle we departed from and how behind the shining results
there was a world of lucky coincidence, pragmatic decisions and still unrealized ambitions.
In general the ratings for my contributions were high, obviously participants
liked realistic stories. However, in one of my last contributions to a conference I was
taken off guard by a question whether it was allowed for me to sketch all this messy
business. Although in a general sense I have arranged that I can publish and tell about
the results of my research I suddenly felt a heavy responsibility because I realized that I
did not know who was in the audience, let alone have an idea what the consequences
of my contribution could be. Suppose a high ranked civil servant of the Ministry of
Education was one of the listeners to a story about some muddle in the UAS?
Within the tradition of a complex responsive process-perspective on research I would
expect a lot of attention for ethical questions about auto-ethnographic oriented
research, because of all the potentially indiscrete consequences of the research. However,
the attention is very restricted, in literature and to my experience in the learning
group. In their book on a complexity approach on researching organizations
Stacey and Griffin (2005) acknowledge the importance of ethical considerations. “The
first matter has to do with writing about people with whom one is interacting and the
related issue of disclosing confidential material. In a more conventional approach,
involving, say, interviews, the ethical approach is usually to inform those whom one is
writing about of what one is doing and to show them what one has written, concealing
identities as appropriate. However, a researcher writing about his or her own
personal experience of his everyday work activities can hardly keep informing people
that he may possibly write about what they are doing together. The best that can be
done is to inform colleagues in general about what one is doing and then to write
about the experience in a way that does not reveal their identities but still presents a
'reliable' account of what is going on. Other than this, there is no general ethical rule
to guide the researcher in the traditional sense of thought before action. Consistent
with the complex responsive processes approach, the ethics of what one does as a
researcher, as with what one does in all other situations, is contingent upon the situation
and the emerging and ongoing negotiation with those with whom one is interacting.”
Stacey and Griffin continue that “the second ethical matter has to do with
inviting people to undertake a form of research that can carry with it considerable
risks. The risks are potentially hostile responses from others whom one is writing
about and the threats what is written may present to existing power relations and
2. Research from a complex responsive process-approach | 53