Setting the Scene — Analytics of Compassion

Before I describe the ethical and analytical framework for the study, I will begin by presenting my setting. I conducted my fieldwork in two creative knowledge work organizations. One was a publishing house; the other was a media company. Both companies are anonymous in this book, and I refer to them by the pseudonyms Booker and Media. While Media was willing to be named publicly, Booker preferred anonymiza-tion. I decided to maintain anonymity for both of them so as to ensure a primary focus on cross-organizational trends rather than workplace specific issues. Another reason for this decision was my concern with confidentiality. My material contains many delicate personal matters which I have gone to great lengths to keep anonymous. Becoming the recipient of so many intimate, often conflict-laden, accounts places a burden of trust on the researcher. I have taken this burden very seriously and applied a number of anonymization techniques on my material, which I describe in the next chapter. Below, one will see that the presentations of Booker and Media differ in detail and length. Originally, they were equally long, but Booker asked me to reduce my vignettes substantially because they believed that the information was too revealing. Since Media did not have similar concerns, I left that description in its original version.1