waiting, and whether they feel waiting is just. Or the researcher documents that a people say that a certain celebration in a corporation is not important. Yet, everyone attends and spends two hours at the event. The collective allocation of two hours during a busy week for the celebration signals its latent or implicit importance in the culture of the corporation.
Flowchart and Time Sequence. In addition to the amount of time devoted to various activities, researchers analyze the order of events or decisions. Historical researchers have traditionally focused on documenting the sequence of events, but comparative and field researchers also look at flow or sequence. In addition to when events occur, researchers use the idea of a decision tree or flowchart to outline the order of decisions, to understand how one event or decision is related to others. For example, an activity as simple as making a cake can be outlined (see Figure 16.3). The idea of mapping out steps, decisions, or events and looking at their interrelationship has been applied to many setting. For example, Brown and Canter (1985) developed a detailed floechart for steps, with a time line and many actors (e.g., involved buyer, financial official, surveyor, buyer’s attorney, advertising firm/realtor, seller, seller’s attorney).