Ethical issues in shadowing research

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore ethical issues associated with using the shadowing method. Design/methodology/approach – Ethical issues that arose during a 12-week shadowing study that examined the work activities and practices of Canadian healthcare CEOs are discussed. Findings – Dividing the ethics process into two phases – those addressed by ethics committees (procedural ethics) and those that revealed themselves in the field (ethics in practice) – issues and relating to sampling, informed consent, researcher roles, objectivity, participant discomforts, the impact of research on participants, confidentiality, and anonymity are investigated. This paper illustrates that while useful, procedural ethics committees are unable to establish ethical practice in and of themselves. In response, it suggests that the concept of reflexivity be applied to ethics to help researchers consider the implications of using the shadowing method, and develop a contingency for possible challenges, before they enter the field. Practical implications – This paper provides researchers considering using the shadowing method with critical insights into some of the ethical issues associated with the method. A number of questions are posed and a number of suggestions offered as to how ethical practice can be attained in the field. Given practice-based similarities between shadowing and other qualitative methodologies such as participant observation and ethnography, many of the lessons derived from this case study are also pertinent to researchers using other techniques to examine organizational and management phenomenon. Originality/value – Building on the formal and critical discussion about the shadowing method ignited by McDonald (2005), this paper identifies and discusses ethical issues associated with the shadowing method that have not been examined in either ethics or research methods literature.