The Ethnographer's Pause: “qua” and the Epistemic Status of Abstraction in Governance Level Organisational Ethnography

Purpose This paper clarifies the role of abstraction in governance-level organisational ethnography. The problem of abstraction is not unique to organisational ethnography, but it becomes especially visible in board and committee settings, where strategy, accountability, regulation, fiduciary duty, interpersonal history and documents such as papers, dashboards, minutes and risk reports are densely entangled. The paper asks how ethnographers can focus on one aspect of such complexity without implying that the selected focus exhausts the episode. Design/methodology/approach The paper develops a conceptual argument supported by a governance vignettes. They draw on Aristotle's idea of considering something qua something else, or under a specified respect, to explain how ethnographers focus analysis. The paper describes this as aspectual specification: the practice of stating which aspect of a complex situation is being examined. The vignette shows how the same governance episode may be read as strategic deliberation, fiduciary accountability, documentary inscription or analytic coding. Findings The paper argues that ethnographic abstraction need not be understood as fragmenting a complex episode into separate pieces. Instead, it can be understood as a responsible act of analytic limitation. A board meeting may be analysed qua strategic deliberation without claiming that it is only strategic. Aspectual specification enables the ethnographer to explain what is foregrounded, why that focus matters and what remains present but outside the main analytic frame. Originality/value The paper contributes a practical vocabulary for governance-level organisational ethnography by reframing abstraction as aspectual specification. It clarifies how ethnographers can make analytic focus explicit without denying relational complexity. The article also extends reflexivity beyond researcher positionality by treating it as a declaration of analytic aspect. This helps writers, readers and reviewers assess ethnographic claims according to the aspect foregrounded, rather than expecting any single account to represent the totality of a governance episode.