Doing ‘Boards‐in‐Action’ Research — an ethnographic approach for the capture and analysis of directors’ and senior managers’ interactive routines

This paper is the first of two papers which will introduce a research approach where groups of directors and senior managers have, not only been observed, but also captured interacting with each other on audio tape recordings. It represents a move from asking board members questions during interviews to seeing and hearing them interactively perform in the boardroom (and elsewhere) over a period of time. When we undertake such ethnographic research what we primarily see is directors and senior managers talking to each other. We suggest that through a close study of their talk‐based interpersonal routines, a detailed account of their skills and how factors such as knowledge or know‐how and experience are deployed to influence boardroom process is possible. In this first paper our objective is limited to: making a case for a focus upon talk‐based interpersonal routines in the boardroom/top management team (TMT); an introductory outline of our theoretical and analytical infrastructure drawn from sociology and; reproducing one illustrative extract of directors’ talk to show what this data ‘looks like’. We conclude by outlining an emerging alternative avenue for developing boards/TMTs in a grounded and reflective fashion.