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This article first provides something of an informal narrative of my own academic career and suggests just what is idiosyncratic to that narrative and what seems to me to be rather general. This is followed by a swift look at ethnography as a social practice and some of its defining features highlighting the relatively recent burgeoning of ethnographic studies in organizational research. The following sections examine what I think are exemplary ethnographic career studies and just how these ethnographic studies have changed over time. The next section notes what seems to have not changed much over the years. I conclude by revisiting some of my introductory remarks on academic careers and the always provisional character of ethnographic studies. My normative argument is that while ethnographic work has contributed a great deal to our understanding of both occupational and organizational careers – then and now – such studies are too often overlooked by current variable and measurement-driven career researchers.

A small but significant portion of writing in the still expanding domain of organizational research and theory is devoted to debunking the essentialist and (allegedly) scientifically grounded ideas and programs of our peers. Some of my writing, including this effort, falls within this tradition. Debunking the would-be towers of power in our field bears a loose similarity to the work performed by voluntary firefighters. The fire of interest here is a call to draw in our topical and theoretical borders, and the intellectual incendiary is none other than Jeffrey Pfeffer whose 1992 Distinguished Scholar Address to the Organization Theory Division of the Academy of Management started a modest little blaze that was followed by my own 1993 Distinguished Scholar Address to the same group which was designed to put it out. A stroke of luck too, for what better theorist could a confessed anti-theorist wish to follow and what better foil for debunking could have been sent forward than an acknowledged desperado of the podium like Jeffrey, who courts controversy like a bear in search of honey. In what follows, I recreate in writing what I first committed to speech.

The aftermath of a police shooting is a messy matter. The consequences of a shooting are felt and acted upon at several levels within police organizations. Official, col legial, and individual versions of a particular shooting often contrast in both form—external/intemal/private—and con tent—representation/symbol/feeling. Based on one's commit ment to the police role and one's social position within a department, an officer will attempt to build an account for a shooting that will protect his sense of self as shaped by the relationships he has with his colleagues and organization. Be cause shootings are to a degree "routine matters" within many police agencies, especially large ones, individual accounts are worked out in line with mutually held background under standings of what constitutes proper police conduct before, during, and after a shooting. That such accounts are only partial indicators of "what really happened" is a point well understood by the police.