Shadowing Practices - Ethnographic Accounts of Private Eyes As Ent PDF
Shadowing Practices - Ethnographic Accounts of Private Eyes As Ent PDF
Shadowing Practices - Ethnographic Accounts of Private Eyes As Ent PDF
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5-1-2010
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Engstrom, Craig L., "Shadowing practices: Ethnographic accounts of private eyes as entrepreneurs" (2010). Dissertations. Paper 136.
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SHADOWING PRACTICES: ETHNOGRAPHIC ACCOUNTS OF
PRIVATE EYES AS ENTREPRENEURS
by
A Dissertation
Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the
Doctor of Philosophy
By
Doctor of Philosophy
Approved by:
Graduate School
Southern Illinois University Carbondale
April 4, 2010
AN ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION OF
private investigations.
discourses about private investigating and entrepreneurship are included. Based on the
framework of this methodology, dominant narrative themes, and field notes, various
The findings of this research project suggest that private investigators use
i
and incorporating contemporary technology into their work routines. Drawing on actor-
descriptive accounts of the practices of subjects and objects suggest pragmatic solutions
example, I propose that private investigators should collectively engage in practices that
further professionalize their field. Such professionalizing activities would include, among
research activities and professional association public relations campaigns. Insights are
also provided regarding the role of rhetoric and technology in opportunity creation and
destruction.
highly institutionalized contexts. Similarly, these scholars may also find the descriptions
to validate recent arguments regarding organizing as “hybridized actions” (or action nets)
occurring in multiple spaces, places, and times. The examples herein demonstrate the
especially in fields where actors are always “on the move.” Readers interested in private
investigating will find many of the examples rich in techniques that will enhance
many novel potential research projects that are embedded in the various thick
ii
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This project could not have been completed without the support of Southern
Fellowship. Without this award, I would not have had the time to conduct in-depth field
academic pursuits, including paying for some expenses incurred during this project, was
This project could obviously not have been completed without the five private
investigators in Illinois, Texas, Missouri, and Georgia who granted me access to their
work lives for over a week at a time. Shadowing can be helpful to both the shadowee
and the shadower, but I know the latter often gets more from the experience. I hope,
however, that some of my ideas and insights during the shadowing process were helpful
for them. Additionally, my gratitude extends to the other professional investigators who
were willing to sit down and talk with me so that I could ask them many questions in
sometimes lengthy interviews. It was obvious by the numerous phone calls they received
Ross Singer, William McKinley, and John Warren—for offering me helpful feedback on
the near-final version of this document. Special thanks go to Dr. Nathan Stucky, my
dissertation advisor, and Professor Emeritus Lenore Langsdorf, my graduate advisor, for
Finally, I appreciate the transcription services that Carly Main, of Carly Main
MacDonald, Suzanna (Bunny) LeBaron, and Aubrey Huber provided. They translated
iii
the digital recordings into ethnographer-friendly data, and the time they spent on this
iv
TABLE OF CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
ABSTRACT ................................................................................................................... i
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS...............................................................................................iii
CHAPTERS
Conclusion.............................................................................................. 118
v
Environmental pressures and prosaic threats ........................................ 132
Conclusion.............................................................................................. 216
REFERENCES......................................................................................................... 242
APPENDICES
vi
LIST OF TABLES
TABLE PAGE
vii
LIST OF IMAGES
IMAGE PAGE
viii
1
political, geographic, discursive, and prosaic lenses (see Hjorth & Steyaert, 2004;
Steyaert & Hjorth, 2003, 2006). Within these movements scholars understand
practices of professional investigators 1 and the objects that make up the profession of
private investigating. The focus of this project is specifically on the prosaic and
surveillance activities, performances of identity, and written accounts and reports. From
the data that derived from observing and documenting these inter-related practices, I
how private investigators perform entrepreneurially in their everyday work. The results of
1
Professional investigator is now a term commonly preferred by private practitioners
(Sennewald & Tsukayama, 2006). I will interchange the adjective professional/private
with detective(s), investigator(s), and eye(s) so that the writing does not become
monotonous. For example, professional detective and private eye describe the same
type of individual—someone who engages in investigative activity for hire.
2
this study have been compiled into a praxeological report of private investigating as an
entrepreneurial endeavor. 2
scholars. Neoclassical economists’ assumptions about the world prevail, and private
investigators make sense of their practices and how they understand entrepreneurship.
In chapter 3, I will show that the dominant accounts about entrepreneurship in the United
States describe entrepreneurs as people who start their own business, take risks,
coordinate the factors of production, organize, innovate, compete scrupulously, and are
themselves as entrepreneurs in these terms. However, they also use words that
2
I use the term “praxeology” for two reasons. First it means the “study of practices,”
which captures the essence of the spirit of phenomenologically-inspired “practice theory”
and ethnomethodological approaches, which include the observation of discourse
(including communication, narrative, and objects) in action. Second, it is the term used to
describe the method of economics research preferred by Austrian School economists,
which provides the philosophical basis of my approach to entrepreneurship studies.
3
I am using the notion of “institutionalized myth as reality” as developed by John Meyer
and Brian Rowan (1977) who, borrowing from Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann
(1966), overturned the conventional Weberian theories of social structure as emerging
from rationalized action. These authors suggested that institutions are enacted
ceremoniously through an ongoing performance of sedimented, taken-for-granted
practices often based on non-rational beliefs (i.e., myths).
4
See William B. Gartner, Nancy M. Carter and Gerald E. Mills (2003). What I empirically
found is consistent with their theoretical suggestions.
3
narratives about private investigating and entrepreneurship. Likewise, they are also
constituted by these stories. I have tried to account, therefore, for the academic and
popular culture discourses that shape both private investigations and entrepreneurship.
Practices that are regulated by these discourses are highly institutionalized and taken for
granted. For example, people largely accept “gender” as a natural phenomenon (as
“objective realities” and beliefs. Just how they entrepreneurially use, enact, and
challenge these discourses in everyday praxis was a primary concern of this project.
rhetorical and literary conventions for understanding and representing the professional
personal account from the field that more concretely introduces readers to the project
and expresses some of the assumptions that guide my choice of topic, method, and
writing style.
A person in transition between Peace Corps and graduate school is likely to take
the fastest route to saving money. Living at home and getting a job through connections
was, for me, the fastest means of achieving this goal. This is how it came to pass that I
negotiated at random hours the streets of the Dallas/Fort Worth Metroplex as a licensed
private eye. In my dark grey Ford Escape, I sought to capture the seemingly shady
activities of clients’ targeted subjects on recorded video. In the office, I also helped the
4
agency owner with several business-related issues, such as maintaining the financial
both an ethnographer and investigator. My goal was to make quick money for a summer
trip and to complete research as part of an independent study. On a drizzly and cold
morning, I was assigned a skip trace case for a corporate client. “Skip tracing” is a
colloquial term used to describe the process of locating someone’s whereabouts, often,
though not always, for creditors. In other words, to trace the path that someone who
“skipped town” took. We had located the target’s last known address and wanted to
establish that she was still living there. We also wanted to identify her current place of
employment. The task was to locate the target’s vehicle by identifying the registered
license plate that we had already obtained from the Texas Department of Motor Vehicles
and follow the driver (presumably the vehicle’s owner and our target) throughout the day.
I was unable to locate the vehicle, and the client agreed that I should set up surveillance
on the apartment. I established a visual position on the target’s apartment door just after
books while sitting in my vehicle during stakeouts. On this particular day, it was Michel
Foucault who kept me company. I was reading, interestingly, Discipline and Punish
(1977/1991). One particular passage stood out due to its relevance to the context:
quintessence of the private investigations industry. 5 According to his own accounts (cf.
Memoirs of Vidocq, 2003), he was the first director of the Sûreté Nationale, a civil
security and detective force. He founded one of the first modern private investigation
agencies, “Le Bureau des Renseignements,” in the early part of the 19th century and
collaborated with other ex-convicts to run his operation. While he successfully worked as
a hired police informant and spy, he was simultaneously hired by citizens to conduct
investigations that the police were thought inept to handle. Vidocq also introduced many
techniques and practices to criminology that continue today, such as record keeping,
ballistics, shoe impression analysis, and using criminals as informants. He also filed the
patent on indelible ink and unalterable bond paper. Using what we may call his “prior
knowledge” and criminal social network (Shane, 2000), he was able to recognize profit
opportunities that were emerging due to the changing social, political, and discursive
mechanisms of policing became not only possible, but also fundamental to maintaining
social order around and since the 1800s (Foucault, 1977/1991, 1978/1994).
5
Based on the Schumpeterian conception of entrepreneurship, which sees “that the
function of entrepreneurs is to reform or revolutionize the pattern of production by
exploiting an invention, or, more generally, an untried technological possibility for
producing a new commodity or an old one in a new way…” (1942/1976, p. 132), Vidocq
certainly can be considered an entrepreneur. But unlike a significant amount of
contemporary entrepreneurship research that takes a more cognitive approach by
focusing on the entrepreneur as subject and their opportunity as object (Seymour, 2006),
my focus is on how Vidocq, within the sphere of everyday communicative praxis and
work, was able to enact and grasp such opportunities (this follows the processual and
“enactment” narratives to opportunity that are characteristic of a praxeological
approach). I am also interested in the social and historical conditions that made his
activities, techniques, and inventions profitable as socially sanctioned activities.
6
Doing surveillance had its moments of fun and was “easy money,” as one private
rooted history. Foucault’s chilling passage, however, haunts me. I was covertly
observing and surveying people’s actions as they came and went from their dwellings. I
was making money by providing a service using practices that Vidocq himself may have
engaged in, but I was also reproducing, in my own small way, entire moral orders and
institutions. I was, at the very least, assuring that in our society it is hard to “skip town.” I
was also participating in the reproduction of the mechanism by which control and safety
in the credit market is asserted. I was holding people accountable for their debts; thus, I
was reproducing a power dynamic between corporations and private citizens. Using
as a citizen, and some regulatory statutes that regulate non-licensed citizens from
business practice.
apartment under surveillance. I recorded to video the cleaning crew’s activities. It seems
that we had just missed locating the client. Because our “no guarantee” clause in our
contract assures that we get paid whether we get results or not, this was not good news
for our client. It was great news for our agency because our client agreed to continue the
investigation until we located the target, which we eventually did by contacting a relative
that the apartment complex had on file as an emergency contact. One of the
investigators called this relative and pretended to be a former classmate wanting to send
the target an invitation for a reunion, a practice known as “pretexting.” “We sent the
invitation to [the apartment of record] and we got a ‘return to sender,’” he told the target’s
6
This point regarding regulation is very important and will become a major point in
chapter 4.
7
relative in an alluring voice. The relative, without much pause, gave the investigator the
information. Such productive deception provides exciting stories for detectives to tell.
While using these tactics may be questionable, 7 they are recognized as necessary tricks
of the trade (Sennewald & Tsukuyama, 2006). My justification was that the deception of
than deceiving someone in order to hold another accountable to his or her tacit civil
The above introductory story, which I hope establishes my ethos to talk about
this topic, begins to shed light (so to speak) on what this project is about and some of
the assumptions that I bring to it. A story, and hopefully an entertaining one, is rich in
we are as a people; and, “if science is conversation, then scientific texts are voices in it”
7
So questionable, especially in light of the Hewlett-Packard scandal (see Wong, 2006),
that private citizens’ rights to pretext is now a contentious legal issue. In most
circumstances, private investigators are not provided any special privileges above the
everyday citizen (see Hankin, 2009); often legislation passed to restrict access to
personal information or pretexting is a challenge to private investigators’ ability to
practice. Creative practices that seemingly seek to disrupt, preempt, and maintain
certain privileges will be discussed in chapters 4 and 5.
8
Following Michel de Certeau (1984), I see power as being both productive and
destructive. Normative power describes routines and practices of everyday life that are
sanctioned as appropriate. In this text, my goal is to describe practices of private
investigators and not pass a judgment on them. This is why I am not claiming to be
engaged in a “critical” analysis. While my attitude toward critical sociology is not as
critical (pun intended) as Bruno Latour’s (2005), I have to admit that I largely agree with
his critique of contemporary critical research for its desire to explain others’ practices as
if they are being controlled by a puppeteer. My critique of critical scholarship does not
make me anti-democratic, quite the opposite. When I discuss historic and situated
discourses of entrepreneurship, my preference for an alternative to dominant narratives
will become apparent.
8
highlighting some of the assumptions, definitions, and concerns more explicitly now,
readers will better understand the rationale for some of my writing choices.
Assumption 1
(see Hjorth & Steyaert, 2004; Steyaert & Katz, 2004). Sitting in a vehicle or negotiating
with a client to do more surveillance may not seem exciting, but it is part of the process
of the business of private investigating and part of the process of rhetorically enacting
around shared practical understandings” (Schatzki, 2001, p. 3). Meaning and knowledge
as they emerge and are exploited in everyday human action (i.e., dialogue, performance,
Assumption 2
study I begin with a loose definition of entrepreneurship. Borrowing from Chris Steyaert, I
define entrepreneurship as a “process of creation that connects the everyday with the
venturing or the creation of organizations. To read and observe for my academic and
(arguably a scarce resource) in a creative, productive, and (some may say) efficient
From these situated events, products and services, business entities, organizations,
institutions, and even the concept “entrepreneurship” emerge and become recognizable.
In other words, these “fixed” entities are outcomes of the practices and technologies of
occurs in everyday practices is a project that closely adheres to ANT scholarship, which
9
While individuals, including entrepreneurs, are motivated by some kind of “itch” that
they hope to scratch (i.e., an intention), the praxeologist is only interested in
intentionality as a directedness toward concerted movement with others. As von Mises
(1949/2007) notes, “the field of our science [i.e., praxeology] is human action, not the
psychological events which result in action” (pp. 11-12). To express wishes and
rationalizations of planned or accomplished actions is a form of action, and can be
captured in an interview (another action event), but these enunciations must not be
confused with the actions to which they refer. The praxeologist is interested in action as
“a real thing” (von Mises, p. 12). This is why, in addition to interviews, shadowing
(explicated in chapter 2) is a good method for praxeologists.
10
constituted. Thus, Vidocq may have put in motion the activities that established several
organizations and practices that have become institutionalized, but he couldn’t have
perhaps even dangerous for the field because it brings yet another perspective into what
they argue is an incoherent field (Welsch & Liao, 2003). But it really is not that radical,
nor dangerous. People accept, for example, that public investigators are defined by
what they do, and we have a verb that captures the spirit of this—“to investigate.” It
would not seem odd for a detective to say that she or he is “investigating a case” and
know what techniques are involved in this. The absence of a body of research that
captures the processes and everydayness of entrepreneurship leaves the academic field
10
An alternative word that could be used in place of entrepreneuring is “intervening” or
“undertaking.” Entreprende (from which entrepreneur is derived) is the French verb
meaning “to undertake,” which is a combination of the Latin words “entre” (between) and
“prendre” (to take). I prefer entrepreneuring to both words because “undertaking” is too
often association with contractual, funeral, and difficult tasks. Intervening also seems
aggressive or is too easily associated with the entrepreneur as the interventionist that
stabilizes disequilibrated markets, a problematic neo-classical assumption (explained in
chapter 3).
11
Vidocq was no doubt pivotal in establishing institutions, even in the classic sense of
the term as taken-for-granted practices (Berger & Luckmann, 1966). However, I will not
claim that he (or any individual) was an “institutional entrepreneur” (a construct that is
now fashionable in contemporary management and organizational literatures). An
institution is formed through repetitive practices and consistent narratives that emerge
slowly over time. Thus, an “institutional entrepreneur” is an oxymoron (Czarniawska,
2008a, 2009).
11
organization studies (e.g., Welsch & Liao, 2003), my approach and definition casts me
immediately as (a) suspect. While I may be culpable of adding yet another perspective to
33), I am no criminal in the academic enterprise. I offer my voice and perspective with
the belief that “organizations [including academic disciplines] with access to more varied
images will engage in sensemaking that is more adaptive than will organizations with
more limited vocabularies” (Weick, 1995, p. 4). Privileging more paradigmatic discourses
and definitions of a phenomenon at once strengthens the reach of academic fields and
appreciates the complexity of human phenomena. The success of academic fields is due
claim that more cumulative and replicable research leads to a stronger field, with the
caveat that they are also not arguing that this research replace other approaches to the
studies of human practices. In other words, positivist research does have its place and
claiming that we should create jargon as a means of insulating and protecting our
disciplines. This seductive trap can often become a tool of exclusion, making our fields
awesome approach for understanding people’s everyday practices. This study, in many
powerful lens for seeing just how our social world is “endogenously produced, naturally
12
This claim may appear contradictory when I assert in chapter 2 that shadowing should
avoid taking a critical turn. My claim is not that critical perspectives should be avoided in
the study of prosaic entrepreneurship, but that shadowing methodology is limited. A
more general “critical ethnography” is certainly encouraged, but a “critical shadowing” is
not.
12
and entirely, … with no time outs, and with no possibility of evasion, hiding out,
passing…” (Garfinkel, 1991, p. 11). However, you will not see words like “artfully
figural contexture” in this document. Partly because I admittedly do not fully understand
what some of these obscure phrases mean, but mostly because I agree with John van
Maanen’s (1988) argument that if ethnomethodologists are not careful they will write
divides between research programs can be great; however, I remain optimistic that our
desire to understand the world in multiple ways is what defines our academic field of
practices. 13
I am also aware that the claim that everyone, including academics, engages in
today’s academic climate, where novelty and fashions are rewarded (see also
Czarniawska & Sevón, 2005). Being fashionable, however, is not a bad thing. Fashion,
as a collective of choices, tastes, and ideas, “introduce[es] order and uniformity into what
might seem like an overwhelming variety of possibilities” (Czarniawska & Sevón, 2005,
p. 9). However, what is fashionable is, by definition, imitation and less attractive.
Consequently, academics who are able to articulate the next trend position themselves
as key players in the marketplace of ideas and will be rewarded in terms of prestige and
“profits” (e.g., tenure and salary increases). The differences between business
entrepreneurs and intellectual entrepreneurs are slight. Both groups link the everyday
with the artistic and both tend to desire to build a brand around their names.
13
Defined thoroughly in chapter 2, section 2.
13
Assumption 3
entrepreneurs. Not all private investigators own their own business, of course, but all
investigators are engaged in the daily and mundane activities that are generative of a
“card carrying members,” but to those who are culturally competent. There is a
professional jargon (“skip tracing” and “pretexting”), standardized processes, and a legal
infrastructure that an investigator must know and follow. Just because an investigator is
able to meet the state licensing requirements, has the start-up capital to start a business
venture, and holds a paid-for membership with a professional association (e.g., Texas
competently, which includes knowing how to sell their services and “fit in” with potential
clients’ expectations, their professional and business tenure may be short-lived. Being
able to perform the dual roles of investigator and entrepreneur simultaneously becomes
crucial to business sustainability, and I propose that this is consistent with most, if not all,
professions.
Describing how private eyes perform these dual roles comprises a large part of
this text. In infidelity cases, for example, it was not uncommon for the investigators I
shadowed to play on the doubts and suspicions of clients to yield additional investigation
time: “Well, she [or he] hasn’t gone anywhere… yet”; “She [or he] is where she said
she’d be, for now.” In this project, I seek to account for these communicative,
14
entrepreneurial practices in descriptive ways. While I will describe the field of private
Assumption 4
enactment, and sensemaking in situated contexts (Berger & Luckmann 1966; Garfinkel,
1967, 2006; Schutz, 1967), and sensemaking and routines are grounded in identity
construction, are ongoing, and are socially bound (Weick, 1995), (professional) fields
and their organizations are always in a process of becoming. In other words, fields of
practices are always transforming and changing. The basic image for representing
aphorism, “You cannot step twice into the same river, for other waters are continually
flowing on” (as cited in Steyaert, 1998, p. 19). This does not mean, however, that the
institutionalization implies historicity and control. The river may flow, but practices
depositing. It also does not mean that the field cannot be shaped and controlled
systematically. Practitioners are often working to influence the direction of their field.
The changing social conditions in late 18th Century France provided the appropriate
institutional context to turn his criminal and entrepreneurial sensibilities into legitimate
business practices. Some of these practices (e.g., ballistics and print analysis)—whether
policing was largely a private enterprise until the late 1800s (Weiss, 1979). Taking field
notes is an example of a taken-for-granted practice that has both been sustained and
15
changed over time. First, the mere idea that it had to be invented would likely strike
work. Nevertheless, the form, content, style, and rhetoric in contemporary “field notes”
and “reports,” as well as how they are produced and per-form on investigators, have
changed over time. In particular, the introduction of video and audio recording equipment
has altered report writing. It is unlikely that an investigator, no matter how much of a
luddite she or he is, would avoid using video surveillance whenever possible. From what
I observed, field notes are fewer and reports are longer. In today’s mediated world,
“seeing [not just reading] is believing.” Yet, I will show that the report still remains a
mediate the field of practices as an actor-network. The report also influences the
constitution of other fields of practices (e.g., the legal field) long after the investigator is
increasingly governed by law. For example, some states and cities have laws regulating
who can become a licensed investigator, whereas other states—e.g., Alabama, Idaho,
and Wyoming—do not require any form of special training or licensing. The criteria and
rationale for regulating private investigators varies, but a Pennsylvania Supreme Court
ruling summarizes in clear terms why Vidocq, despite his supposedly superior
investigative skills as a former convict, would again find himself on the opposite side of
the law:
In the above ruling, the high court assumes (by way of institutionalized myths 14 ) that
hierarchal supervision inhibits corruption (i.e., public police are not able to be corrupt
because of a hierarchy, which private investigators do not have) and, given the legal
department, that only former police supervisors have the moral character capable of
owning a private detective business. Describing such points in this monograph will not
serve to argue correctives, but to demonstrate how field practices are institutionalized.
Assumption 5
interactions, and regulate much of what is accepted as legitimate or real. In Berger and
Luckmann’s (1966) framework, discourses are a source of the “recipe knowledge” that
earlier time cast him as a criminal, in another a legitimate business person. Like Vidocq,
14
According to Meyer and Rowan (1977) and DiMaggio and Powell (1983), laws emerge
as institutionalized typifications of taken-for-granted practices, are followed
ceremoniously as myths, and function as coercive pressures on organizational forms.
15
I explain this in greater detail later, but for now I should note that I understand life as
largely enacted through narrative. Situated discourses, for example, as they share and
participate with other discourses in the “texture of communicative praxis” (Schrag, 2003,
p. 23), over time produce a dominant social narrative that informs future practices, and
vice versa.
17
individuals are constantly being cast as “types” in the ongoing narrative of everyday life.
Discourses help people make sense of their own and others’ actions, but sometimes in
me. In this project, however, I am only concerned with how pervasive narratives
In keeping with the desire to situate this study in relevant discourses and to use
Accounting for and engaging with these narratives comprises the text in chapter 3. By
locating my work within the relevant popular and academic accounts, readers should
practices.
A Bit of History
roots in a turbulent 18th and early 19th century France. 16 The industry’s forbearer,
Eugène François Vidocq (1775-1857) was born, according to his own accounts, on a
night that “rain poured down in torrents [and] thunder rumbled” (Vidocq, 1935/2003, p.
1). As a result, a midwife concluded that his career “would be turbulent and stormy” (p.
1). His “turbulent career” sets the ongoing dance between deviance and (private)
16
I recognize that forms of citizen-investigating, especially as part of defense work in
public trials, probably dates to antiquity. Furthermore, this is the Western story of private
investigating and, therefore, it likely has a much older non-Western history.
18
1978/1994). Vidocq was a two-bit thief, army deserter, and convict who spent five years
brigandage. Despite his multiple incarcerations (and escapes), his fortune changed
Parisian entrepreneur and, eventually, private eye. He started, for example, a paper
factory and holds several patents. He is credited with the introduction of undercover
work (he was the early “master of disguise”), ballistics, anthropomorphics, record-
keeping systems, early forensic laboratory work, procedures of field investigations, and
using paid informants. Many of his informants were his criminal friends, and he had no
Robin Walz (2003) notes, “the fact that Vidocq retired after fifteen years of official service
with assets approaching half a million francs, substantially in excess of his annual salary
of 5,000 francs, added circumstantial weight to suspicions that the Sûreté chief
promoted extralegal activities” (pp. xii-xiii). Through his life and field stories—which are
recounted in his Memoirs de Vidocq (written around 1827;1935/2003) and inspired his
friend Honoré de Balzac’s literary works, as well as authors Alexandre Dumas, Victor
Hugo, and Eugène Sue—Vidocq emerged as the original “detective as anti-hero” and
“hero of the bourgeois.” These two hero types continue to be reproduced in modern pulp
fiction, the social imagination, and the ongoing melodramas of our socio-political lives
The heritage of private investigating in Europe soon made its way to the United
States of America where, until around the 1850s, policing largely fell upon private
citizens (Weiss, 1979). In this sense, private investigating and private policing
preempted the public form. While some major cities began establishing public police
19
departments and sheriffs were performing some law enforcement duties in the
countryside, both were insufficient at providing all the necessary services that came with
Western expansion and modernization of cities. Both were also (justifiably) seen by
citizens as inept and corrupt (Gaines, 1999). For example, early police forces were
under the control of mayors who frequently handpicked officers loyal to them. As a
consequence, police protection was often only available to the mayor’s political allies
and officers would, at times, intimidate and punish adversaries. For example, “being
framed” was literally the practice of chiefs of police (likely at the direction of politicians)
hanging framed pictures of individuals that were to be closely monitored or toward whom
It was in this climate of fear that private policing formalized into organized
corporations. The desire by the general public to receive higher quality services and to
counteract the corrupt practices of the public police created profit opportunities; thus,
business for private policing and investigating flourished. The companies were so
[I]t is a lamentable fact that whilst our citizens are heavily taxed to
support a large police force, a highly respectable private police is
doing a lucrative business. Our citizens have ceased to look to the
public police for protection, for the detection of culprits, or the recovery
of stolen property. (as cited in Gaines, 1999, p. 24)
While public agencies seem to be far more respectable today, there is a sense among
private investigators, some economists (e.g., Roger Koppl), and Civil Libertarians, that
citizens are again turning to private detectives to help resolve crimes and injustices that
the police are either unwilling to handle or perpetuate. While a private system may be
more favorable at times, it does not mean that they are infallible or necessarily better
than their public counterparts (see Churchill, 2004). During the early 1900s, for example,
private detectives working for the railroads supposedly sent a lot of innocent men to jail,
20
and hence the phrase “being railroaded” came into existence (Gaines, 1999).
Furthermore, serious issues and concerns arise with private military and private policing
(which are much different than investigative services) offered by private companies like
In the early days, neighborhoods would often pay for the services of a private
patrol officer. Some private companies provided general services to all citizens (e.g.,
Chicago Detecting and Collecting Police Agency, established 1857) while others
charged businesses a nominal fee for “beat patrollers” who walked the streets and alleys
looking for riffraff and checking business doors throughout the night (e.g., Merchant’s
Police Company, established 1858). The most successful and comprehensive agency of
all was the Pinkerton National Detective Agency (originally North-Western Police
Agency; shortened herein to Pinkertons), which provided services to both individuals and
businesses. The company was founded by Allan Pinkerton (the self-labeled “Vidocq of
the West”; Walz, 2003) and Chicago attorney Edward Rucker. The agency provided
protection services during the Civil War (i.e., it created the Secret Service for the Union),
and was the prototype of today’s Federal Bureau of Investigations and Interpol (Horan,
1967; Weiss, 1979). Pinkertons was, by all extents, the country’s only national police
until the early 20th century, employing at times more agents than the standing US Army
(Horan). However, it is worth noting that private companies competed more with one
17
This remains the case today depending on how competition is defined. There are
many ways in which the public and private sectors are described in languages of
competition. There are areas, for example, in which public and private detectives’
investigations may be at odds with each other. Furthermore, private investigators are not
allowed to attend the same training sessions offered to public officers though they are, in
some states, regulated by the same government agency. While not the primary focus of
21
Pinkertons’ main source of revenue was government contracts and other large
corporations. In 1855, for example, the company signed a contract to protect six
railroads for a yearly retainer of $10,000 (Gaines, 1999). Companies like Pinkertons
were especially useful to transportation and other interstate companies. With the
absence of national public agencies, private investigators could pursue fugitives into any
jurisdiction and, therefore, aided public police in this regard. 18 It was the protection of
large companies, however, that came to tarnish the reputation of the private industry for
a time. During the labor disputes of the late 19th century, private agencies were
employed by their clients (e.g., mining companies, railroads, and cattle companies) to
infiltrate unions, protect business assets during strikes (which often took the form of
agents beating protestors and working as scabs), and enforce homestead laws and
other contracts (Churchill, 2004). This often led to volatile and deadly encounters
between private agents and laborers. The public grew more resentful of the exploitation
of private agencies’ power and saw them as doing the dirty work of capitalists. Pinkerton
eventually prohibited his agents from involvement in lawful activities of labor unions;
Pinkertons’ image, however, was so tarnished that the US Congress passed the Anti-
Pinkerton Act in 1893, which continues to be a contentious issue for private security
contractors. 19 Despite the image of the private investigator having been tarnished, the
this study, some public investigators moonlight as security and personal protection
agents. Depending on city ordinances, these officers may be able to retain their power to
arrest and wear their uniform while working as private contractors. The public-private
police officers are able to charge more for their “added services” and are often preferred
by businesses over the private officer who has very little statutory authority. In this case,
competition between public and private entities is most obvious.
18
Bounty hunters continue this service today; however, private investigators frequently
note that there is a “huge ass difference between the two” (Interviewee 5).
19
5 U.S. Code 3108; Public Law 89-554, 80 Stat. 416 (1966); ch. 208 (5th par. under
"Public Buildings"), 27 Stat. 591 (1893). The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, in
U.S. ex rel. Weinberger v. Equifax, held that "The purpose of the Act and the legislative
history reveal that an organization was 'similar' to the Pinkerton Detective Agency only if
it offered for hire mercenary, quasi-military forces as strikebreakers and armed guards"
(see also "GAO Decision B-298370; B-298490, Brian X. Scott [Aug. 18, 2006]).
22
public image of the private eye as a trench-coat and Fedora-hat wearing sleuth who lives
a life of mystery continues. This is largely contributed to the image’s compatibility with
rugged individualism and “truth and justice” narratives (see chapter 3).
Modernization (and militarization) of police departments, the rise of the Federal Bureau
companies like Pinkertons to focus primarily on security service for private entities. In
the1960s, the company dropped the word “detective” from its logo and letterhead (Morn,
Sweden-based Securitas AB and is still one of the largest employers of private security
personnel in the United States. 20 Besides uniformed guard and security services,
study; however, most of the agency owner-investigators I interviewed did not mention
them as a potential competitor. This is not inconsistent with the research findings that
suggest that rivals are often described as those of similar size, technology, and
geographic location (Porac, Thomas, Wilson, Paton, & Kanfer, 1995). In chapter 4, I
suggest why small agency size may be fitting to the field of private investigating. I make
practices.
20
Pinkertons was acquired, along with longtime rival William J. Burns Detective Agency,
in 2001 by Securitas AB. It has over 250,000 employees in over 30 countries. Ironically,
Securitas is under union organization through the Services Employees International
Union.
23
sector still tend to focus primarily on process serving 21 and security services niches. This
is largely due to the fact that economies of scale and knowledge can be achieved in
these sectors. While I did interview two agency owners who operated in the process
investigative work. This means that most of the agencies were small. Many of the private
more overhead and employees. For them, process serving was a premium or courtesy
services they offered to their biggest clients. Three private investigators I interviewed
advertise that they specialize in “hard serves.” 22 For example, Interviewee 10 serves
papers to high profile figures living in Texas border towns overrun by drug cartels. He
charges thousands of dollars rather than the typical market price (currently $35-$65 per
paper). 23
After World War II, social and civil changes (e.g., the increase in stricter
sentencing rules and the emergence of worker’s compensation insurance) increased the
demand for paper process and domestic investigations. Defense attorneys and
insurance agencies needed a cadre of people to deliver court summons and do other
surveillance work. Small private investigator firms were perfect outlets for outsourcing
this remedial task, so attorneys and other companies reduced their use of Sheriffs and
Constables, who were seen as slow and over priced. (The credit crisis of 2008 has only
further pushed the demand for delivery of court summons and eviction notices.)
21
“Papers” is the common parlance for court documents and subpoenas.
22
In other words, people who are difficult to locate, are deliberately avoiding the service
of papers, or are high profile and potentially dangerous.
23
Investigators get paid for a paper even if it is not served, though the standard is three
(or more) good attempts.
24
Arguably, the emergence of dual-earner families further increased the opportunity for
both partners to use and pay for the services of investigators when they suspected
relationship infidelity. Thus, there has always remained a need for the type of data
gathering and surveillance services that an individual private eye can provide. Private
activity. With lower overhead and the various rules and regulations of each state, the
client-specific services at a much lower cost than larger agencies. One reason some
they classify field investigators as contractors. This practice may be illegal (see chapter
4), but for now it reduces a small company’s tax burden and small companies have not
Until the 1960s, there was little regulation of the private investigations industry.
To date, there is still no specific federal law regulating the profession and state laws
vary. 24 Some laws, of course, regulate private investigators indirectly (e.g., privacy laws
that apply to all citizens). Laws governing private investigators are regulatory in nature
and do not specifically authorize any special privileges or powers not afforded to the
average citizen. A major concern shared by investigators, and an opinion that I share
with them, is that citizens’ powers are decreasing at an alarming rate. In the US, for
example, the power to obtain and execute warrants and make arrests has been given
solely to public police. Until the 1980s, however, one investigator explained that he was
able to take out warrants during his investigations into employee theft. Another example
is that it is difficult to obtain “public data” about an individual without his or her written
24
Nine states still have no licensing requirements. These states are Alabama, Alaska,
Colorado, Idaho, Mississippi, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, South Dakota, and Wyoming.
In 2007, Missouri implemented statewide licensing requirements. In some states, e.g.
Pennsylvania and Rhode Island, a license may be issued by counties.
25
consent. While this may sound appropriate, it makes it difficult to skip trace, investigate
potential business partners, and hold government and business leaders accountable
through access to “public data.” As is often the case, there are exceptions to some of
these rules. For example, bounty hunters and some private police can arrest individuals
(see Gaines, 1999; Hankin, 2009). 25 Legislative rules shape fields of practices and
create and destroy (profit) opportunities for private investigators. The consensus among
The individual professional investigator, despite the various legislative and social
changes that influence the field, is not generally at risk of disappearing. While some
agency types may vanish, opportunities for profit and employment in private
investigations are projected to grow faster than the average for all occupations. The
Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), which offers the best (not optimal) data about the
industry, projects that there will be an 18% increase in employment during the next
decade. While job growth will be high, competition will remain keen (U.S. Department of
security concerns, litigation (despite tort reforms), and the need to protect confidential
intellectual and physical property of all kinds. The proliferation of criminal activities on
the internet, especially illegal downloading and identity theft, and the proliferation of
affordable electronic devices have increased the demand for private (particularly
assets) of employees, and to prevent industrial spying. The same tools, however, have
25
Though recently, following the execution of four police officers in Seattle, some
political commentators are suggesting that bail bonding be eradicated. This situation
could lead to a situation in which only wealthy people could await trial (to prove
innocence or guilt) outside of jail.
26
made it possible for many individuals and companies to do work that once was only
possible for private investigators and other specialists with large investments in
expensive equipment.
approximately 52,000 active private investigators in the US. About 30% of these were
self-employed. It is these types (i.e., agency owners and sole-proprietors) that were
shadowed and interviewed as part of this study. The financial data, calculated by the
Department of Labor, does not account for self-employed investigators and there is no
agency or association that seems to keep these records. This makes it difficult to know
whether the agency owners I interviewed make more or less money than the average
According to the BLS, Around 34% of the jobs were in investigation and security
services, 26 which would include private detective working for sole-proprietary agencies. 27
Around 9% of those included in the BLS data worked for department or general
merchandise stores (e.g., Home Depot). The remaining 27% worked in law firms,
Private investigators who work for a single organization on their payroll (not as a
contractor) do not need a license (e.g., for a law firm, insurance company, or other
corporation).
retired peace or military officers. Yet, despite their expertise, private investigators are not
26
This figure does not include security guards, who have separate occupational codes
OOH 33-9031.00 and 33-9032.00. Security means, for example, corporate espionage
and retail guards.
27
Problematically, many agency owners, despite it being against IRS rules and
potentially illegal according to private investigation statutes in some states, “hire”
investigators as 1099 contractors (herein referred to as 1099ers). This means that these
individuals would likely comprise the 30% of the self-employed calculated by the BLS
and, at the very least, skews all of the statistics for the industry.
28
For example, United Airlines (see Sennewald & Tsukayama, 2006, p. 12).
27
generally thought of as professionals. The first inclination in the general public is to think
about private investigators and their covert work following deadbeat parents and
cheating spouses. Thanks, in part, to the dominant popular culture and academic
narratives, the private investigator is not seen as a competent individual who aids in civil
and criminal defenses, investigates murders and workplace deaths, and recovers or
thwarts billions of dollars in financial loss for companies each year. Their technical
expertise remains poorly understood. For the most part, even private investigators are
about the work of other investigators or that there are too many unlicensed investigators
operating illegally. More prominent investigators have not been much help to their less-
famous colleagues. Lake Headley, for example, claimed to be the greatest private
investigator in the world by renowned prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi, wrote the following
This general sentiment, obviously articulated by Headley with a degree of sarcasm and a
desire for more professionalization, leads to a conclusion that private eyes would benefit
investigators. There may not be a causal relationship between the perception of prestige
and the wages of public and private investigators. There is, however, a discrepancy
between the two. The median wage of an employed private investigator in 2008 was $20
28
per hour or $41,760 per year (U.S. Department of Labor, 2008). 29 This figure is
consistent with the wages paid to the 1099ers who worked for the investigators I
$30 per hour or $60,910 per year for a “full-time” employee (U.S. Department of Labor,
2008). 31 Based on interview data, agency owners were consistent with the occupational
data provided by the BLS for the top 10 percentile wages (approximately $75,000 net
profit). However, some were much more financially successful. Eight of the investigators
who participated in this study were making more than $250,000 net profits. But about the
same number of those I interviewed suggested that they are lucky to make $30,000 a
year in profit. Nearly 33% of the individuals I interviewed were retired law enforcement or
Interestingly, almost all of the agency owners that I interviewed were thriving in
the midst of the recession which began in early 2008. It seems that the continued high
marital and relationship infidelity, home invasions, and fraud continue to drive the
demand for investigators’ services. The proliferation of internet social networking sites in
general, and cheaters and sex sites in particular, will likely continue to increase the need
addictions and mental disorders may continue to drive demand for the need of private
investigators in business and domestic sectors. With public law enforcement focused
upon illegal drug suppression and violent crime reduction, private investigators are likely
(potential) business partners, suppliers, and customers, and other property or intellectual
29
See §33-9021; http://www.bls.gov/oes/2008/may/oes339021.htm
30
Most contractors were paid $15-20 per hour for investigative work.
31
See §33-3021; http://www.bls.gov/oes/2008/may/oes333021.htm
29
This is not to say that public police are disinterested in the concerns of business
are to protect “the people” and not a single organization or person, which is the principal
goal of a private detective (Sennewald & Tsukayama, 2006). The goals of private and
public detectives also differ in regard to desired ends. The public investigator is seeking
prosecution for crimes committed against the public-as-victim and gains prestige based
on this goal; the private detectives’ goals are to protect the pecuniary interests of their
clients and seeks financial profit for doing so (though profit can increase with prestige).
Thus, if a valet parking agent is suspected of taking items from customers’ cars or an
receive the same priority for a public detective as the string of robberies in the
community. However, a company often wants to avoid any public knowledge of the
investigation or the crimes its employees commit. In the case of valet parking agents, the
goal of the company may be to catch the thief and avoid negative publicity. In short, the
private detective agency of today continues to play an important role in protecting private
Up until now, I have been using the term private investigator rather loosely. It is
obvious that I am talking about small agency owners and not investigators who work for
large corporations. I would like to specify exactly how private eye (agency owners) is to
be understood within this text. By definition, a private investigator is any individual who
physical or testimonial evidence with the objective of serving the (profit) interests of an
computer forensic specialist (just to name a few) for corporations like Wal-Mart,
investigators. In this study, however, these investigators are of little interest and are
private detective agency. I have not considered them as entrepreneurs, even though
The private investigators of interest in this study are those who operate their own
private investigations agency (with or without employees) and are small business
owners (i.e., less than $7 million in sales 32 ). I have studied private investigators that fit
the dictionary definition of an entrepreneur: “one who organizes, manages, and assumes
entrepreneur-private investigators frequently do work for large companies and may even
be kept on retainer. However, they may advertise and be engaged in several different
is a generalist, though several interviewees have been able to find lucrative niches as
specialists.
computer forensics expert (just to name a few), they were of interest to this study only if
they could be considered, literally, their own boss. This is an important point for me to
belabor because there are individuals who call themselves legal investigators and, by
definition, are private investigators even though they do not have a license (since they
work in-house for a civil or defense attorney). Needless to say, they do not likely worry
about the day-to-day operations of the business where they work (i.e., law office). In this
32
Based on US Small Business Administration Table of Small Business Size Standards,
2008.
31
other hand, there are private investigators who are entrepreneurs but only work for legal
defense attorneys (i.e., they are legal investigators). Furthermore, as the brief history
above demonstrates, complications further arise since laws frequently change. During
this study, for example, Texas passed a law requiring all computer analysts and
who operate their own computer business and do “investigative work” (a very vague
term) for multiple clients, must now be licensed as private eyes. This not only created
and destroyed opportunities for some, but it raised an issue about cross-pollination and
begrudged private investigators (legally), but would rather not classify themselves as
such. They consider themselves computer experts, not investigators. Yet, some of the
subjects who participated in this study had to identify as a private investigator, meet the
The purpose of this project is to provide accounts of the social and cultural
interactions, which includes the recognition of opportunities that emerge from within
everyday practices. From a pragmatic and methodological perspective, I chose this topic
seemingly high level of interest among scholars and non-scholars alike (i.e., greater
entrepreneurial and use the everyday lifeworld in opportunistic (not solely profitable)
conversations with one another, with their clients, and with “professional gatekeepers”
(e.g., TALI). In this text, I have tried to account for the economic, historical, social, and
discursive conditions, as well as popular narratives, that create and constrain the
possibility (i.e., opportunity) for doing private investigating (e.g., using one’s gender and
of language and discourse (see Schrag, 2003), informs institutional theory (in
is ceremoniously enacted (Meyer & Rowan, 1977), and informs all three disciplines by
demonstrating how shadowing actor-networks can provide new insight into how our
social world is constituted through private investigators’ work. I hope, however, that my
project will be of some utility to investigators, who generously granted me access to their
business lives. If nothing more, I hope that this research will provide a better
understanding of the complexity of their work and its importance to our society,
regardless of how ordinary much of it is. Few would argue that private investigators are
engaged in business enterprise, yet there is little discussion about the entrepreneurial
practices of private investigators. Finally, I hope that we may all benefit by an artifact
that, while not a direct challenge to popular and neoclassical beliefs about our economy,
33
The term “legitimate” is used to designate the institutionally recognized rather than the
culturally accepted. For example, a person may appear to cultural others as a private
eye and be hired to do investigative-related work, but may not be legally-authorized to
do this work. Additionally, a legally-authorized professional investigator may appear to
cultural others as not very “PI-like.”
33
prescriptive, project.
This document will answer many questions, but also create new ones. The value
logic-centric style is that it helps encourage new engagement with the social world. To
loosely paraphrase van Maanen (1995): through our style of textwork, theory becomes
and answers emerge. Through the descriptions of the accounts herein, we may find a
path to understanding that at first remains unobserved; or in the case of this study, a
metaphorical street lamppost that allows us to see our subject(s) more clearly. Just as
bits of data (a video, a photo, a conversational moment) inform our descriptions and
theories, so too do our descriptions and theories inform our data. What is data without
pre-understanding of what we should be looking at anyway? And just as I could not deal
with all the fascinating topics that emerged in the field, I understand that my written
Finally, and not an equivocal detail because I present it last, I must note that in
order to maintain an ethical relationship with private investigators I have used techniques
that may describe a practice but obscures, alters, or leaves out details. At times I have
been obliged to leave out entire field descriptions. While I describe the individuals I
shadowed and their practices in Appendix B, I have at times obscured from which
investigators certain practices were observed. For narrative fidelity, I have tried to
divulge as much information as I can; for ethical concerns, I tried to keep some practices
in the shadows.
I am also aware that there was some information that I was not privy to while in
the field. In order to maintain the integrity of their work or to project a particular image,
some investigators did not allow me access to certain meetings and many may have
34
indications of when this happened. However, this generates even more interesting
questions. If investigators tried to manage impressions then they had to use deception in
order to do so. They are, in some sense, “masters of deception.” Much of their work, as
mentioned above and described in greater details later in this document, requires that
behaviors (Shulman, 2007). If they are masters of deception, is it even possible that I
would have been able to tell when they were trying to impress something on me? And, if
I could, were they failing at their professional practice? Or does this show they are good
at entrepreneuring?
Given the unending possibilities of such questions, I suggest that this document
be read using the same advice I gave myself while in the field: much can be gained by
(Doyle, 1892/2009) gave us useful advice about paying attention to these pesky,
Inspector Gregory: "Is there any other point to which you would wish to draw
my attention?"
Holmes: "To the curious incident of the dog in the night-time."
Gregory: "The dog did nothing in the night-time."
Holmes: "That was the curious incident."
My desire to account for the small details that are seen every day but often go
unobserved guides this look into the everydayness of two entwined creative practices—
field. I am breaching this normative protocol for three pragmatic reasons. First, I want to
forefront that I am much more interested in working with and describing “social stuff”
(which includes non-tangible things like ideas) than “theorizing” about social
phenomena.
Second, I entered this project first as practitioner and then as researcher. I did
investigating. I was first a private investigator and then an ethnographer. When I decided
shadowing methodology.
1966; see, especially pp. 92-104). I conceptualized private eyes as individuals who must
engage in entrepreneurial praxis and went to the field to see just how they practice their
explanations before they more fully understand how methodological choices color my
I have always thought that beginning with a literature review is a peculiar way to
that the author is in touch with current research trends and the scholarly conversation.
But the questions we ask as researchers and the results that we find have as much to do
discussions, while an effective organizational pattern, is not the only way to begin. For
some research it is a poor way to begin. Human studies research that focuses on the
everyday speech and prosaic practices of actors in their own contexts is an example of
such research. It is best to focus foremost attention on the narratives and methods social
Focusing on methods first makes sense in that we are always already in need of
a way, more than anything else, to pursue actors and objects. As certain contemporary
rhetoricians and philosophers have noted (e.g., Walter Fisher, Ernesto Grassi, and
Martin Heidegger), in the beginning was the logos, which, in the early days, “meant
story, reason, rationale, conception, discourse and/or thought. Thus, all forms of human
statuary—came within its purview” (Fisher, 1985, p. 74). It was because of logos that a
God could say “Let there be light.” But for this statement to be actualized there had to be
a method or, more accurately, a methodus. And, like logos, methodus—derived from the
words “meta” (after) and “hodus” (a traveling, way)—used to be richer in meaning. In the
early days it meant “pursuit, following after” and not just “scientific inquiry.” It seems
in need of a methodus to pursue after the logos that it follows (literally, method allows us
to “shadow” praxis). The method we choose will affect what and how we observe.
37
My fascination with method began when I was a child. I never was much
interested in general explanations of why stuff happens; I was more fascinated with the
particular details of how stuff happens. It was for this reason that I was always interested
politicians and entrepreneurs. I used to love to watch them work. I diligently observed
how they interacted with others and how these interactions either succeeded or failed to
obtain a marginal gain for interactants. Sometimes I would have to wait patiently to see
whether a particular communicative event or persuasive claim had much effect. Often, I
would have to search for answers: “So whatever came of such-and-such?” I had already
basis, which is to say I watched work practices. I observed my mother “keeping books,”
“drafting contracts,” “moving push pins” from one jail and state to another jail and state
on a map (i.e., coordinating van movement), and “calculating profitability” based on the
most cost-effective route. 1 Of course, this was all contingent on which jails were able to
institutionalized rules). When a decision was reached regarding the “best route”—which
it never really was—my mom would have to wait to hear from the drivers who made
phone calls frequently from gas station pay phones (this was before cost-appropriate cell
phones). Plans were always contingent on whether the drivers had traveled beyond a
specific point. I observed arguments between my parents and their employees, between
my parents and their investors, and between my parents. In short, I was observing how
1
My parents owned a private prisoner extradition and transportation company for
several years.
38
their business practices shaped the business, but also how the business shaped their
by mowing lawns for neighbors and transporting and selling Little Debbie snacks and
15 years old. I provided music entertainment with a professional light show at high
school and university dances, weddings, and other special engagements throughout
Wyoming and Colorado. That I did these things is not that important. What is important,
as far as this project is concerned, is how I accomplished them. The practices required
(entrepreneurial) trade” while hanging around my mother like her shadow. I learned that
being in business required far more than a motivation for profit. I learned how to account
for and be accountable to institutions, objects, and other people, which are important to
business success. I needed to know how to build and maintain relationships, write a
business plan, sign contracts, pay bills, advertise my services, track money in and out of
vocational and technical education program. When I was in the ninth grade, I took
accounting and economic classes. I liked my other subjects, especially literature and
public speaking, but I treasured double-entry accounting. I enjoyed watching how data
moved from one account to another, producing information while remaining in balance
(barring human error). Crediting one account meant debiting another, for example.
39
Placing a transaction onto paper required a bookkeeper’s decision, which was already
based on rules and regulations and a projected report, but the numbers also seemed to
want to move on their own. They coaxed the bookkeeper into moving them. From the
various meticulous and traceable movements of these figures, balance sheets and
income statements could be generated. These “statements” (the numbers were given a
voice!) performed for, but also per-formed, stakeholders. 2 Most importantly, they made it
themselves being assemblages, into a single space and place. These assemblages of
numbers are based on various interactions between actants (e.g., a bookkeeper and a
number and a number and an equation). At the source of any number, nevertheless, is
transaction between a car salesperson and a car buyer or a commuter and an electronic
ticket kiosk); however, in our computerized world it is possible for computers to now
interact and produce transactions without human involvement (e.g., robotic pharmacists
filling computer-generated orders, electronic trading systems, and cars operating with a
sat-nav system). Transactions are, after all, interactions involving exchange. In terms of
financial accounting, they are merely translated into numbers—usually very quickly in a
story of a real-life transaction (as long as everyone was being honest) and they set into
motion (i.e., mobilize) other workplace practices. For example, once a receipt is
produced, the document needs to be entered into an accounting program (or books).
2
A stakeholder with a balance sheet is an actor-network (discussed later), each works
on the other in a transformative process (e.g., balance sheet-analyst or manager-cash
flow statement).
40
Often a computer does this, or more accurately an algorithm in the cash register that
communicates with accounting software, which makes this process appear seamless.
transaction into a computer program (e.g., QuickBooks) at the end of the business day.
The various numbers that move into the ledgers from receipts are later used to produce
various statements that not only legitimate the company, but also put into motion yet
more actors’ practices (e.g., the Internal Revenue Service) and procedures (e.g.,
calculating tax based on the “net profit” itemized on the income statement). These are all
fascinating practices worth inquiring and qualitatively writing about, and they are what
No matter how we convert all these different activities into bits of data—such as
field notes, receipts, or digital recordings—they are always traceable backwards (some
public relations personnel creating press releases, and so on. Each of these interactions
and transactions produce their own (multiple) accounts that are translated into various
data (some numerical and some linguistic) that become “objective” and, therefore, easily
moved around other fields of practices. The production of these objective data can also
are traceable backward, but they can also be projected forward as “five-year plans,”
activity is always already in some other place (see Strannegård & Friberg, 2002). This is
what fascinated me most about accounting: a never ending stream of interactions and
transactions, some of which were contingent upon the very accounting practices that
3
If the goal is to observe the practices that produce objective phenomena as they
happen, then shadowing or other participant-observation research is a good method.
41
were “keeping a record” of other transactional interactions, but all of them having an
methods people use to maintain social order. The word ethnomethodology was coined
by Harold Garfinkel and is developed on a very simple idea: “If one assumes…that the
meaningful, patterned, and orderly character of everyday life is something that people
must work constantly to achieve, then one must also assume that they have some
methods for doing so” (Rawls, 2002, p. 5). The beginnings of ethnomethodology,
according to Anne Warfield Rawls, partly began in a “theory of accounts” course that
Garfinkel took during his undergraduate years. He came to understand that putting items
into an accounting worksheet was already a social construction and “…that construction
was accountable to superiors and other agencies in a variety of complex ways” (Rawls,
p. 10). Written accounts of people’s mundane interactions can highlight the ways in
which our everyday practices are accountable (in all the various meanings of the word).
approaches to praxeology.
Since the modern social world is composed of a large number of interactions that
spent time together at the infamous Vienna Miseskreis 4 (e.g., Ludwig von Mises, Ludwig
Lachmann, Friedrich Hayek, Felix Kauffman, and Alfred Schutz)—had business- and
political-related experiences before and during their academic tenures. For example,
Alfred Schutz was the executive director of a bank and von Mises’s father was a
prominent railroad financier. Garfinkel helped his father in a furniture business and this
“had some unpredictably happy results” because it was germane to his theories
praxeology’s progenitors must have contributed to their belief that social phenomena
mathematical models. I like to speculate that the early praxeologists learned from their
(inter)actions that things like markets, economies, and societies are produced and
The reason I begin with methodology rather than with a traditional literature
review should now be clear. As a praxeologist, I begin with the assumption that the
4
The Miseskreis was a fortnightly gathering of a group of Viennese intellectuals from
1924 to 1934. The discussions were formally led between 7:30 pm and 10:30 pm by
Ludwig von Mises in his office at the Chamber of Commerce. Informally, these meetings
continued at Café Künstler until 3:00 am (Alfred Schutz was usually the last to retire).
Among the participants were some of the most preeminent thinkers in Europe. They
discussed many issues, but the most popular topics were social science methodology,
economics, and history. A favorite topic was Weber’s verstehen sociology and the ideas
of Edmund Husserl (Caldwell, 2004; see also www.mises.org).
43
objects and subjects of the social world are (re)constituted through ongoing mundane
interactions among various actants, which include both human and non-human subjects
generates products and services that are “valuable” both monetarily and non-monetarily.
In other words, I want to make an account of and account for profitable entrepreneurial
I use the terms “marketplace” and “account” throughout this study because both
are etymologically rich words that work well with a praxeological report of prosaic
distinction between the neo-classical definition of the market and a more heterodox
notion of marketplace. As Callon indicates, “while the market denotes the abstract
mechanism whereby supply and demand confront each other and adjust themselves in
search of a compromise, the marketplace is far closer to ordinary experience and refers
to the place in which exchange occurs” (p. 1). This definition of marketplace brings back
the Greek root of the word agora (place of assembly) as both a commercial and political
space where people went to shop (agorázō) and to speak in public (agoreýō). Agora is
the ethos in which the texture of entrepreneurial praxis is linguistically and practically
opened up. In short, the marketplace is the space of communitive praxis where a
farmer’s market), but is a set of conditions that open up the possibility for exchange
5
I use the plural form here because there is not just one central place (even
metaphorically) where private investigators and other constituents (e.g., clients and
targets) engage in economic exchange of goods and services.
44
object of concern is not economic abstractions (e.g., profit, price, supply, or demand) but
the ability to engage in (their) trade. Yet despite this obvious conclusion, many
economists and scholars of entrepreneurship studies have almost completely lost focus
on marketplaces and, instead, preoccupy themselves with playing around with economic
and market abstractions. 7 Ronald Coase (1988) notes that in economics “the discussion
of the marketplace itself had entirely disappeared” (p. 3). This would almost be
laughable if it did not carry with it such significant loss, which Rajani Kanth (1999)
captures in a curt yet eloquent manner: “The apparent rigour of mathematics was
recruited avidly by neoclassicism to justify and defend its truistic, axiomatic, and almost
infantile, theorems that deeply investigated but the surface gloss of economic life” (my
emphasis; p. 189). The goal of research should not be to gloss, but to provide deeper
produce economic data that can be abstracted (e.g., gross domestic product based on
sales) and may largely come to a similar price point without explicit collusion, but to
bookkeeping and narration. The benefit of using the word “account” when writing about
6
Describing these conditions is a central preoccupation of chapters 4 and 5.
7
This is a concern for many in these disciplines. D. North (1977), for example, notes that
“it is a peculiar fact that the literature on economics… contains so little discussion of the
central institution that underlies neo-classical economics—the market” (as cited in
Callon, 1998, p. 1).
45
Praxeologists are bookkeepers. They maintain detailed field notes when doing
ethnological work and they try to categorize these details into coherent themes. Clusters
of words and claims come to account for various themes that generate theoretical
reports. Just like an accountant of finances, the praxeologist must maintain his or her
books with meticulous care. If the praxeologist is poorly trained, is not careful with the
type of information gathered, is not cautious with how various notes are thematized, and
is not trained in how to read various “outputs” of potential theoretical contributions, then
scholarly field. As the popular technological saying goes, “garbage in, garbage out.”
Praxeologists are narrators. They must be able to make sense of a large amount
of data, summarize it, and assemble information in written reports. They also collect
accounts from practitioners (most often through in-depth interviews or participant diaries)
that can later be used to find common themes and insights into how practitioners
any sort, whether from ethnological field notes or in-depth interviews, strong rhetorical
and narrative skills are necessary if the praxeologist hopes to generate useful written
scholars, practitioners, and lay citizens. This point has become especially lucid since
that even the most mathematically rigorous arguments tend to rely on common rhetorical
findings while drawing on the epistemic and constitutive rhetorics literature (Brummett,
1990; Charland, 1987; Hyde & Smith, 1979; Hartelius & Browning, 2008; Scott, 1967,
1993), it is plausible to argue that the various artifacts, tools, and statements of social
46
scientists not only represent a field but actually perform fields of practices, marketplaces,
the performances of entrepreneurs and investigators, will continually shape and reshape
phenomenon. As Callon (1998) states, “not only do [business] tools contribute very
allowing the constant reconfiguring of these agencies, they also contribute directly to the
shaping of discourse through which these agencies account for their action” (p. 26).
Praxeologists must understand, consequently, that their accounts are shaping the field
as much as the field is shaping their descriptions. If accounts suggest that competition is
attitude then this will undoubtedly be a part of the account that generates the narrative
the praxeologist writes. But this is the ongoing process of evaluation in which all
participants in any marketplace must engage: they make individual judgments that are
always already collective. Over time, these judgments come to validate some accounts
and economic exchange “as it happens” (Brundin, 2007) and to provide an account of
how private investigators are accounting for the opportunities and threats that they
From my field notes and interview data, I have made sense of how investigators’
(communicative) practices are constitutive of, and constituted by, specific “social
bodies, as well as larger ones like markets, capitalistic forces, family, and so on are co-
constituted through their prosaic activities. The report of my findings in chapters 4 and 5
are presented as praxeological accounts. Having obtained detailed notes about how
investigators engage with their world and what observable (i.e., “objective”) artifacts they
leave in their wake, I have described how these various individuals’ practices and
well described in the literature (see, for example, Kvale & Brinkmann, 2009; Lindlof &
understand their world, but it is not typically useful for understanding practices as they
happen. Interviewees, in recalling events, may not be able to remember how something
happened and will likely omit details. For this reason, “interview material is always
material for studying the dominant discourse (and deviations from it)” (Czarniawska,
2008b, p. 9). Recently, qualitative interview practices have been criticized for being more
researcher and his or her subjects (Kvale & Brinkmann, 2009). I have tried to adhere to
In order to get detailed field notes of practices that I could use to understand
use a method described as shadowing. Shadowing has until very recently been void of
any serious methodological discussion. For this reason, the following in-depth discussion
of the method serves to be both a guide and an argument for this emerging method.
Shadowing Methodology
appeared in classic management studies (e.g., Mintzberg, 1970, 1973; Walker, Guest, &
Turner, 1956; Wolcott, 1973), the particulars of shadowing, as its own distinct
48
research methods literature and has been used to describe a whole range of techniques
and approaches (McDonald, 2005). While qualitative shadowing shares a kinship with
methodological differences that make it unique and valuable in its own right.
Dominique Meunier and Consuelo Vasquez (2008) have tried to enlighten shadowing
Borrowing from these articles, I will add my own voice to the debate by clarifying what I
think ought (not) to count as quality shadowing research. Because a style of research
engage in structured observation (e.g., Polite, McClure, & Rollie, 1997; Walker, et al.,
1956), I want to emphasize that the discussion that follows is limited to qualitative-
ways. This is not to suggest, however, that the method is to be avoided by researchers
in other paradigms. I have little concern with how positive-functionalists, for example,
use the term shadowing when describing acceptable research protocol. Given that
which it takes place, and requires ongoing communication between the shadower and
8
In Appendix A I provide a list of studies that use shadowing-like approaches to the field.
As the list shows, only a few use it by name.
9
Shadowers using an interpretivist epistemology may engage in quantification activities,
in particular they may gather descriptive statistics of activity frequency (of course no
inferences can be made). However, in keeping with an interpretivist approach, the
researcher does not enter the field with pre-determined categories but rather allows
them to emerge organically. Pragmatically, research using a priori categories does not
make sense. Mintzberg (1973) criticizes such research not on the basis of its
49
I am concerned only with developing an argument for how the method should be
will flesh out what ought (not) to be considered appropriate research protocol—i.e., what
is observable, where one can shadow, how data is to be accounted for in field notes,
and the telos of such research. In general, my overall perspective is very liberal.
this study well: a.) “to follow especially secretly: trail”; b.) “to accompany and observe
common social practice. Young medical students shadow doctors to learn how to make
rounds and interact with patients. Junior electricians shadow senior electricians to learn
how to follow rules and regulations. In some municipalities, citizens can shadow police
officers to learn how they work a beat. As part of their activities when working a case,
business partners, and workers suspected of stealing from their employers. Agency
owners—who, as I will later discuss, often do not implement formal training programs—
train most of their field investigators by having them shadow a senior investigator.
The above examples fit the general definition of shadowing used by organization
studies researchers: “following selected people in their everyday occupations for a time”
philosophical heritage but on the basis that researchers who make use of pre-
determined categories “are, at a higher cost, offering little more than a diary method” (p.
227).
50
(Czarniawska, 2007, p. 17) and “following a person… walking in his or her footsteps
while taking many field notes” (Meunier & Vasquez, 2008, p. 167). These definitions are
not limited to research of actors engaging in their occupations, but could entail
shadowing other “types” of subjects: consumers (Miller, 1998), pupils (Sclavi, 1994),
families (Lareau, 2003), and marginalized citizens (Capote, 1975). In the social science
behavior, and understanding roles and perspectives, the latter of which specifies an
McDonald’s argument, suggest that shadowing literature to date can be classified into
the managerial (e.g., Mintzberg, 1973), the human cognitive (e.g., Reder, 1993), and the
ethnographic (e.g., Bruni, Gerardhi, & Poggio, 2005). They develop their own
by Meunier and Vasquez is clearly interpretivist and, borrowing from Latour (2005) and
Michel Callon (1986), considers both human and nonhuman actants within the
organizational environment.
Gordon (1999), for example, shadows ants in the Arizona desert to understand how
“zillions of ant acts” add up to organized colonies despite their lack of any formal
leadership (p. x). From detailed observation and shadowing, she is able to postulate that
there is nothing queen-like about the queen, just her ovaries—“she has no special
authority or privileges” (p. 13). This insight was a result of careful observation of ant
practices from ant-level observations. Gordon does not just study the colony; she studies
individual ants as they work along the desert floor. As she notes, “Zoom in, you see the
ants—zoom out, you see the colony” (p. viii). Likewise, it is just a matter of personal
51
desire, focus, and access for qualitative social researchers who study human actors.
Zoom in, see the actors—zoom out, see the organization, culture, society, and
many cultural others and their performances in a given setting) or the ethnologist can
shadow specific individuals accounting for their practices and interactions with(in) the
and participant-observation field research. The use of so many field methods is common
with their ethnological studies in organizational settings (e.g., Adolfsson, 2005; Bruni,
2005; Latour, 1999). Studies of objects-as-actants are usually associated with actor-
technology studies” (Czarniawska, 2007, p. 91). 10 In order to account for how social
and maintained, ANTs engage in a research program that is the tracing of associations
between heterogeneous material and semiotic elements. The general maxim of ANT is
’to follow the actors themselves,’ that is try to catch up with their often
wild innovations in order to learn from them what the collective
existence has become in their hands, which methods they have
elaborated to make it fit together, which accounts could best define
the new association they have been forced to establish. (Latour, 2005,
p. 12)
Researchers must become intimate with actors, artifacts, or activities to make notes of
the finest details. As Meunier and Vasquez (2008) note, “this means [researchers] must
10
ANT is faithful to ethnomethodology but adds the element of tracing how actor-
networks (which include objects and objectivated social action) bring together, hold
together, or pull apart social reality.
52
document the flow of … actions over the course of which a set of objects (texts, stories,
are mobilized” (p. 185). Given the heterogeneous nature of praxis and the possibility that
familiar with the field of practices they study, have high stamina, and be entrepreneurial
The “field” for most traditional researchers is where people live and work. As
such, the field is an identifiable, rhetorically claimed, already performed, and legitimated
and reporting them in ethnographies (e.g. Sclavi, 2007; Wolcott, 1973), taxonomies
(e.g., Walker, et al., 1956), or a mixture of both formats (e.g., Mintzberg, 1970; 1973)
To follow objects in general and discursive objects in particular (as well as some
more ANT-like praxeological approach, the field is used in the sense of a field of
practices, which “is the total nexus of interconnected human practices” (Schatzki, 2001,
p. 2). This definition is consistent with the praxeological approach I have adopted for this
study. Studies using the “practice approach,” regardless of method (but shadowing is a
good one), are demarcated as “all analyses that (1) develop an account of practices,
either the field of practices or some domain thereof (e.g., science), or (2) treat the field of
practices as the place to study the nature and transformation of their subject matter”
(Schatzki, p. 2). Ontologically, theorists taking a “practice turn” approach believe that the
around shared practical understandings” (Schatzki, 2001, p. 3). With its focus on how
the social is produced and objects manufactured (including social facts), researchers
53
practices, are not limited to physical settings, but can take place in cyber, textual, and
rhetorical spaces.
research, may be used by interpretivists and positivists, and can be used to follow
subjects and objects (especially discourses) as they move through fields of practices.
The techniques used to shadow people and objects as qualitative interpretivist will be
explained thoroughly in the next section. What I will address now are the philosophical
research as an interpretivist.
Given that the so-called qualitative turn has overtaken social science in the last
not exploding” (van Maanen, 2006, p. 13), I do not plan to justify or argue for more
not plan to justify interpretivism, which is a less dominant, though no doubt an emerging
force in social science research. What I would specifically like to argue for is a reflexive
ontological assumptions they adopt when they choose to study the lifeworld through
order to gain the greatest use-potential of the method. I would also like to highlight the
unique possibilities, burdens, and challenges that researchers face when they adopt this
approach to fieldwork.
notes that entrepreneurship researchers often “avoid the mire of the philosophy of
science and ‘skip’ straight to discussions of methodology or method” (p. 137). Per
54
Davidsson (2004) exemplifies this when he claims in the opening to his book,
Researching Entrepreneurship, that “You will not find a lot of philosophy of science
arguments or references in this book. Let me tell you a secret: philosophers of science
often do not know much about conducting empirical research—they simply don’t have
the experience and expertise” (p. xi). Davidsson’s “secret” may be an accurate
observation. What Davidsson fails to mention, but Seymour draws attention to, is that
the opposite is equally true: researchers often use methods without understanding the
philosophical premises that guide their research practices. This partly arises from
expediency.
among researchers that those who use quantitative measures are positivists and those
who use qualitative approaches are interpretivists. Qualitative research, in the simplest
data collection and analysis. There are many different types of familiar qualitative
presentation (Prasad & Prasad, 2002). In other words, researchers can do qualitative
(2002) use to describe the use of qualitative methods under the guise of positivism.
separate from the researcher, and cognizable through the use of so-called objective
organization studies published under the shadowing label largely embodies a spirit of
qualitative positivism; it “is used as a proxy for a diary study in a situation where the
target individuals would not, or could not, take on the recording task themselves” (p.
tool that is seen as a neutral means of observing behavior and recoding what is
as if they are invisible or, more humorously, “as the family dog” (Lareau, 2003, p. 9). My
experience using shadowing made me conclude that positivism and shadowing are
largely incompatible.
invisible or neutral may be a worthwhile ambition, but the possibility and desirability of
doing so remains questionable. The shadowee and others with whom she or he interacts
will be very aware of the researcher’s presence and it is likely that the shadowee, at
least for some time, will be fully engaged in the art of impression management. What is
more, if the researcher tries to remain distant she or he cannot work to build rapport with
the subjects he or she observes. This increases the possibility that the shadowee will
restrict access to certain activities or, worse, come to resent the presence of the
researcher. The latter is especially likely in situations where the researcher is “studying
up.” 11 I didn’t experience much resistance while shadowing during regular work days;
11
“Studying up” or “studying sideways” refers to ethnological studies of individual or
groups who are in a higher or equal power positions to the researcher. Executives are of
equal or higher power than a university professor. The stress of “studying up” is greater
due to subjects’ willingness to be more assertive and controlling. I experienced this while
trying to do qualitative depth interviews at a regional entrepreneurship center. The
director of the facility was very excited about the research; however, the more I showed
up to conduct fieldwork the more annoyed she seemed to become. Eventually, the
tension was so great I decided that the study was not worth the emotional toll. My
example is consistent with Mitchel Abolafia’s (1998) documentation of the stress he
experienced studying traders of a stock exchange, Czarniawska’s (2007) tearful
experience with a city manager, who informed Czarniawska that she hoped to never see
56
annoyed about the process. In one case, an agency owner asked, “are you going to
write everything down?” I replied with a laugh to cut the tension, “Of course!” Despite
When the researcher remains distant it is easier to play off the assumptions of the
shadowee and keep the activities and conversations directed toward the practices of
interest. Although it was stated in the informed consent that investigators signed (but
often never read) that I had worked as a private investigator, many of them treated me
as if I knew nothing about the field. By not correcting the investigators, they talked about
other agency owners, shadowees may not have divulged as much information regarding
business strategy.
problematic or unethical. I would not be the only qualitative researcher to be called into
question for this use of covert research or deception (see Allen, 1997). But secrecy and
deception are intrinsic to (qualitative) field research for researchers and research
subjects (Mitchell, 1993). Admitting to this fact at the outset, which interpretivists do,
gives agency to research subjects and treats data as subjective. Interpretivists recognize
friend, disinterested bystander, or novice, but subjects can and usually do reinterpret,
her again, and Richard Mitchell’s (1993) argument that researchers choose to study
people with lower power status because they don’t often resist.
57
All qualitative researchers, even those using positivism, must build and maintain
maintain a balance between honesty and secrecy (both in the field and in writing). These
issues may be less problematic when doing general observation work of an entire
culture or organization: if access is denied in one space then the researcher can go
somewhere else, if someone does not want the researcher to “hang around” then she or
he can find someone else to “hang with,” if the information obtained is questionable then
very unique problems, such as what to do when a shadowee indicates that she or he
The goal of the shadower is to lower, through communicative effort, the chance
that a participant would deny him or her access to a particular space or situation;
however, the research subject must feel comfortable that she or he can deny the
conversation turns to a sensitive topic), repair work will be necessary. Obviously, one
cannot remain distant from the shadowee and have this type of rapport. In writing, it is
very difficult to build a composite character when one uses shadowing. Therefore, a
great deal of subjectivity and care must go into crafting field reports. Interpretivism is an
approach that, through the philosophical tenets it adopts, deals with these issues
explicitly.
(empathetic) insight into the intentionality and meanings ascribed by others (Schutz,
experiences with research subjects while in the field, and by developing arguments
about the field in relation to others’ accounts, the researcher avoids giving eccentric and
experiences and “prior knowledge.” As a result, coherent and deviant viewpoints are
exposed. Communication between the shadower and shadowee while in the field is not
productive tension, if not reconcile, the bifurcation between the subject and the object
(Mumby, 1997). The shadower and shadowee are both objects and subjects and they
both simultaneously influence the field of practices. This was very evident during my field
suggested to a potential client that I was a doctoral student who was his intern to
demonstrate “…how serious we [the company] are at hiring highly qualified people in our
with group members” (Lindlof & Taylor, 2002, p. 11), I later asked the private eye if my
assumption about his intention was accurate: “Of course, but it also helped ease the
client. Didn’t you see that? You have to understand that people who are hiring a p-eye
are already squeamish. Tell them I brought along a person writing a book and you can
kiss that contract goodbye [laugh].” Shadowing thoroughly disrupts the divide between
the subject-object by throwing the researcher into the middle of everyday experiences.
Rather than trying to detach him or herself from the everyday, an interpretivist shadower
becomes an important part of each scene. To deal with issues that arise from the fact
that researchers may experience reality differently than their participants, that they
59
influence the environment when present, and that they alter participants practices,
concerned not only with bias, but also with the ethical and political dimensions of the
research activities.
So when the natives hide their modern-day electronics when the anthropologists
approaches, as a famous “The Far Side” cartoon by Gary Larson hints, the interpretivist
is not alarmed. First, she or he knows that after some time these non-routine activities
will grow tiresome and research subjects will eventually revert to old habits and
inconsistencies will emerge that suggest something is awry. When shadowing is used by
need to get back to business precludes research participants from acting. When they do,
they will often be called out. In one instance, for example, an agency owner instructed
employees to “order in lunch, I’m paying” and the employees—whose work space was
today?” It was possible that the shadowee was trying to show himself as generous, but
performances. The positivists’ anxiety that subjects will present a picture of their
Czarniawska (2005) notes, “a favorite pastime of all natives, be they Cuña Indians,
Polish managers, or Swedish scholars” (p. 18) to manage others’ perceptions of their
very unlikely that a person will allow him or herself to be shadowed for more than a week
or two, especially in a for-profit organization. That is, of course, unless you have the
magical skills of Harry Wolcott, who admits that it was with a great deal of “good fortune”
that he was able to commit a principal to shadowing for nearly two years (1973, p. 1). It
is important, therefore, that a shadower begin the shadowing project with significant
knowledge about the field so that understanding is more expedient. Meunier and
Vasquez (2008) argue that “performing real time coding in a reliable way requires highly
trained observers familiar with the group member’s goals and activities” (p. 175). There
may be instances, of course, in which a shadower may want to enter the field as
research on the internet or conduct interviews with key informants before, after, or during
the shadowing process. In-depth analyses of these same field data can be conducted in
order to obtain a better picture of the “realities” of the field. I would argue that the more
the shadower understands the field and the organizational environment in which the
shadowee works, the more fruitful his or her time with a particular subject will be. One of
the benefits of having been a private investigator before I was a researcher was that I
knew the language of the profession. Thus, discussions with agency owners could go in
Given the above overview of shadowing, it should now be clear what kind of
method the qualitative-interpretivist shadower is working with. There are still three issues
disagreement and reaction among fellow interpretivists and shadowers. First, although
both Czarniawska (2007) and McDonald (2005) have provided thorough discussions of
claiming that data, for example, “can… be analysed in the same ways as any other
Here McDonald (2005) admits that research data are different, yet maintains that data
Data can be thematized or categorized like any other qualitative research, but
how does one know if data is “mundane,” “difficult to articulate,” or both? Should data be
treated as isolated events or as if the various shadowees are in dialogue with one
should qualitative data analysis software be used to organize data when shadowing
individual(s)? These types of questions deal with issues of analysis and should be
engaged as such. I would argue, for reasons I provide below, that no shadowing data
(given that it is so detailed) should be “analyzed” (at least not in the traditional sense);
Interview and other qualitative data that are collected in conjunction with shadowing, on
the other hand, can and should be analyzed with the full tool box of qualitative analysis
phenomena and seeks to provide the potential meanings and relations among events,
people, and things, field data derived from shadowing should primarily be descriptive.
The distinction between description and explanation is slight, but the latter’s use of
troubling in shadowing research. Description sticks to the narrative advice of “show don’t
tell.” Good descriptions are not in need of explanations anyway. As Latour (2005) notes,
“God is in the details and so is everything else—including the Devil” (p. 137). Reporting
in descriptions reduces the possibility that a shadowee will feel that she or he was
(Thomas, 1993) is likely to result in dishonest research agendas. If, however, critique
means offering “a more reflective style of thinking about the relationship between [sic]
knowledge, society, and freedom…” (Thomas, 2003, p. 45), then “critical” thinking is
encouraged. In fact, this should be a modus operandi for living. However, when I hear
scholars say that they are going to add a “critical lens” to their project, or that something
is not “critical enough,” I start to get a bit nervous. It seems to me that these folks are
decidedly uncritical by having already made up their minds about what (evil) forces
assume that power is asymmetrical and that they, the “critical” and “reflexive” theorists,
have insight that the “naïve,” “uncritical,” and “un-reflexive” lay person does not (Latour,
2005, p. 57). Critical inquirers have a decidedly negative opinion about most everything,
and consequently their research often “stops being empirical and becomes ‘vampirical’”
(p. 50).
While business executives and organizational administrations may be the likely targets
of negative social critique, the reports that shadowing researchers produce reflect upon
all shadowers, and may determine the ability of others to obtain access. If a researcher
63
obtains access to a shadowee under the pretext that due diligence will be practiced and
they will be fairly reported, then such a commitment should be honored. Of course, this
does not mean that the researcher should restrict himself or herself to positive accounts
or avoid noting problematic practices; it means that the researcher should put forth his or
her best rhetorical efforts to present such information carefully. In most circumstances,
the researcher should write collaboratively with the research subjects, seeking their
Alternatively, the researcher can be forthcoming about the possibility that his or
her practices may be criticized. Some critique can be useful. I have found that many
entrepreneurs welcome a bit of critique. Ways to improve their businesses are, in fact,
what most of them are seeking by committing to this strange research. Shadowers’
feedback can be useful, but one must consider the risks shadowees take in opening
but this research should remain descriptive. The shadowee’s activism and purpose (i.e.,
addressed some of the typical concerns that are raised regarding interpretivist
methodology, such as researcher bias, “going native,” validity, reliability, and other
and I hinted that some of these “issues” can be both burdens and possibilities. I tried to
project an attitude that most of the so-called “burdens” can be turned into possibilities. In
this section, I will discuss these issues, among others, from a much more pragmatic
perspective.
64
researcher may have to pass through several levels of gate-keepers just to gain initial
access to the subject of interest and may be rebuked at any level. Shadowees may be
more than willing to sit for an interview, but would find the idea of a being shadowed
may have to obtain permission from superiors. These issues partly indicate why
observational researchers rarely targets elites and such research is typically “done
among the poor, the powerless, the deviant, and in the less developed societies”
For the most part, access in shadow research is an ongoing affair. The
researcher must continue to (re)negotiate access to each and every event, meeting, and
conversation that the shadowee engages in. The researcher should never assume that
expect the unexpected and to pay attention to my intuition about whether I was welcome
in a conversation, excusing myself when I felt it was appropriate (e.g., “I need to use the
restroom, you guys go ahead”). Some shadowees, who were initially reluctant to be
shadowed, interestingly gave me unfettered access to their lives (both at the office and
at home). Two even gave me access to their financial ledgers. On the other hand, two
shadowees who accepted the commitment to be shadowed with ease seemed hesitant
Access can be denied, but it may also be more easily obtained once shadowing
commences. If, for example, one is shadowing an executive and there is a high level of
trust, the shadower will be able to walk into a closed meeting with the shadowee. This
may not be something an ethnographer, who has not dedicated himself or herself to one
65
association. Finding a way in, building trust, and ultimately getting the approval from the
process, sometimes longer than the research itself. It took several years and some luck
before Marianella Sclavi (2007)—who shadowed members of the Banana Kelly Republic
housing cooperative as part of her shadow research in the Bronx—was finally able to
Time. Once a researcher has gained access to the field, she or he will need a lot
saturation point (where themes are emergent), shadowers will need to either shadow
extended period of time (two years seems to be ideal). If developing access takes just as
much time, the shadowing project can take about four years of a researcher’s personal
and professional life before writing manuscripts. This is not particularly problematic for a
graduate student or single person, but a researcher with tenure concerns or a family is
need to be able to follow a particular individual consistently, often, and during his or her
work day. This means spending three to four days (or more) per week with a particular
individual, shadowing him or her for eight or more hours per day, and doing so over
several weeks. Of course, this all depends on the occupation of the shadowee, the goal
of the study, and how intimate the researcher is to his or her subject—shadowing can
take place only within the walls of a particular building or extend into “home life.” This is
distressing for both shadowee and shadower. From my previous experience working
12
Unlike some researchers who engage in shadowing without calling it so, Sclavi (2007)
describes her method as shadowing and adds her own thoughts regarding the benefits
of the method.
66
with a private investigator, I knew that agency owners’ work never stops. So I set out to
follow the shadowee wherever and whenever I could. In one instance, I shadowed an
investigator for 16 hours, had a 3 hour nap and a shower, and was back out with him for
(Czarniawska, 2007, p. 15—poses a problem for researchers who are trying to provide a
relevant contribution. I want to make sure that the field of professional investigating is
able to get something from my future writing; however, by the time anything goes to
press it is very likely that the field will already have changed in ways that makes much of
the data or suggestions irrelevant. For this reason, I recommend that shadowers do
consulting work and, to compensate for the high cost of doing this type of field research,
charge a sufficient fee for insights. Given that a field may be in constant flux, data that is
collected during the first part of the study may not be consistent with data collected in the
second part. As Czarniawska (2007) notes, it is quite likely that while studying
organizations, leadership or industries can and will change. This is the advantage of
studying an action net of practices that comprise a field of practices. Individual actors
may come and go, but practices will be relatively stable (or else there could be no
collective entity).
Volume. Given that so much time in the field is required and that the shadower
must document as much as possible, it is hard to overstate the amount of data that can
be generated from shadow research, especially now that technology allows researchers
to gather more information at once. Like with most field techniques, it is difficult to
provide a steadfast rule to how much data ought to be collected. McDonald (2005)
suggests that “a typical transcript of a day’s shadowing might be between 8,000 and
10,000 words” (p. 458). Add, on top of that, two- to four-hour interviews, and field
67
research obtained from media and other documents, it is easy to see that maintaining
on which I could jot notes. I also had accessible a large legal pad, a digital recorder, and
a 6” x 8.5” Dell netbook. I worked between these items as the situations dictated,
preferring to get most things into digital form as quickly as possible. After each day of
shadowing, I would return to wherever I was staying (usually a hotel or a friend’s house)
and then begin typing field notes, or orate ideas into the digital recorder (which I would
in different places that then needed to be consolidated or managed. I was also trying to
coordinate 13 future field research as well. For example, I was sending initial letters of
events to coincide with each other, and so on. Maintaining this information, along with a
high volume of data, was not easy. I used Atlas.ti, a qualitative data management
software, to manage and code research data. I used Endnote, a bibliography software
turned field note manager, to handle my field notes and internet-based field research.
Recording this volume of data on a daily basis, running around with someone
trying to be as attentive and alert as possible, giving both mentally and emotionally to the
shadowee and the project, typing up field notes and other important things at the
conclusion of every day (“to maintain its quality and contemporaneous nature”
[McDonald, 2005, p. 458]), and doing all this while still attending to other personal
Finally, it is important to note that despite the challenges of being in the field, in
today’s mediated world, going “to the field,” while time consuming, may actually assist
researchers who use the internet as a source of material. As Czarniawska (2007) notes
13
Coordination is a burden, but it doesn’t warrant its own category in this discussion.
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regarding the seemingly infinite amount of data on the web, “going to the field can also
practitioners to select material that they find relevant for their practice” (p. 10).
Cost. The issue of cost makes me regret this project and reluctant to recommend
shadow research to others. Of all of the methods books I have read, not one discusses
that makes economic sense, stay away from ethnographic methods in general, and
approximately $6,200 to complete, not including lost financial opportunities. When I add
opportunity cost for the lost revenue from the work I turned away for my own business,
the cost is well above $10,000. The cost of shadowing, unlike ethnographic fieldwork,
may be slightly higher because the researcher cannot control who will volunteer, where
(in)convenience sample was based on whoever was willing to participate. These agency
owners, unfortunately, did not reside in the same place and were not able to participate
in the research at the most convenient time for me, personally or financially.
professionally inspiring, a lot of fun, induce important connections between research and
praxis, and get academics engaged in a dialogue with interesting and influential people.
philosophical concern. Proximity deals with the distance that the observer has from the
subject and object of interest. Physically, shadowers will literally be just a footstep or two
69
behind their subject of interest. (Or in the case of people in mobile professions like
private investigating, a car seat over.) The physical closeness helps reduce the
emotional distance between the observer and the observed. This distance can, however,
In regard to insidedness (observer effect), the obvious issues arise. Because the
shadower is following just one person, this effect can be addressed directly by asking
questions along the way: “Is your day going as normal?”; “How would you have handled
that if I were not here?”; “Am I making you uncomfortable or do you feel like you are able
to be yourself?” Additionally, the researcher can discuss issues with employees and
observe their reactions: “Does today feel pretty normal for you or is your boss different?”
The researcher can also note when the shadowee points to the observer effect: “What
Extended contact with the shadowee can also create issues in which the
researcher can “go native” or “rogue” by becoming sympathetic or annoyed with the
issues and problems of the shadowee. This is not as problematic as it at first seems.
Being sympathetic or annoyed can help the researcher gain insight from an affective
level. Sympathy can keep the writing ethical and favorable, but be cautious of
Finally, in regard to professions in general and professions that deal with legal
issues in particular, spending a lot of time with a shadowee can give the impression to
the shadowee that you are “on their side.” They may, given the shadower is a third-party
witness who is taking meticulous notes, call upon him or her for various (legal) matters.
While I had not considered this issue before I went to the field, it did arise. One of the
agency owners was having an issue with a field investigator who had not performed well
on multiple jobs. This led to interesting interpersonal interactions between the two
parties and some insidious claims about each other. At the end of the week, the agency
70
owner fired the field investigator. A week later the contractor was claiming that he was
going to file a lawsuit against the agency owner, who contacted me to collect “any and
all records, especially audio recordings.” A week after that, she or he was planning to
Outsideness deals with the issue of difference and power asymmetry between
the researcher and the researched. While the much romanticized notion of building
empathy can help alleviate some discomfort in doing shadow research, building a strong
rapport can create further discomfort, hijack the project, or itself lead to exclusion. As the
shadowee and shadower engage in the general get-to-know-you banter that is typical to
the first few hours of shadow research, too much can be disclosed. The fact that I am a
Democrat-leaning civil libertarian emerged within the first few hours of one of my shadow
events. While this shadow event was fruitful, the shadowee, who often expressed
often turned discussions toward politics, interrogating me about how a “Democrat would
view it.” I had to constantly deflect these types of questions and redirect attention to her
However, outsideness and power differentials, while taxing issues to deal with
while in the field, can be used as the preeminent lens for data collection and analysis. An
elites, there is much at stake. Given that shadowing by its nature just focuses on a few
people (or one), they are easily identifiable as the main characters in written report.
When the shadower begins to write for publication, therefore, serious consideration of
the effects of any one statement on the shadowee needs to be taken seriously. The
reach of a report goes beyond the shadower and shadowee and reflects on other
employees and researchers. A critique of management practices, for examples, can lead
to problems for a company, which will undoubtedly have implications for workers.
the popular myth suggests, are not wealthy. Writing about what entrepreneurs are doing
may give competitors insight into their unique business practices, exposing them to
additional risk. In this report, therefore, I have chosen only to report on practices that will
Czarniawska (2007), Sclavi (2007), and McDonald (2005) have all provided
various tips that are useful guides to shadow fieldwork. Their suggestions include, but
are not limited to, “never go in cold [be informed]…, write down as much as you can…,
[and] find an academic mentor who is away from the organization whom you can discuss
(Czarniawska, p. 23), and be honest, reflexive, and philosophically engaged with regard
a hurry to reach conclusions. Conclusions are the most ephemeral part of your
research”; 2) “What you are seeing depends on your point of view”; 3) “In order to
understand what another person is saying, you must assume that he/she is right and ask
him/her to help you understand what makes them [sic] right; 4) “The emotions are a
72
central instrument of cognition if you learn to read their language, which is relational and
listener is happy to accept the self-contradictions that come to the fore in persona
must follow a humor-based methodology. But once you have learned how to listen,
humor arises on its own.” Sclavi notes that “the seventh rule sums up all others.”
throughout their day should be clear. Shadowing involves meticulously documenting the
activities of subjects and involves the ongoing reflexive practice of thinking about the
way in which the researcher and researched influence each other. The researcher
simply needs to find a willing participant and move wherever she or he does. The more
difficult tasks regarding data collection procedure, analysis, and writing will be tailored to
qualitative-interpretivist approach.
centered sociality” (Knorr-Cetina, 1997, p. 12), the researcher will undoubtedly catalog
various objects that are used, produced, or avoided by the shadowee. Interpretivist
researchers, however, need not only document human actors’ use of objects as tools,
but can, or perhaps must, trace the associations and relationships between objects as
effect of stable arrays or networks of relations” (italics in original; Law, 2002, p. 91). The
importance of taking into account the relationship of humans to objects and objects to
humans is demonstrated well in Latour’s (1994) example of the human actor (citizen) in
73
gun-citizen. This hybrid configuration allows us to understand how each acts on the
other:
You are different with a gun in hand; the gun is different with you
holding it. You are another subject because you hold the gun; the gun
is another object because it had entered into a relationship with you.
The gun is no longer the gun-in-the-armoury or the gun-in-the-drawer
or the gun-in-the-pocket, but the gun-in-your-hand, aimed at someone
who is screaming. What is true of the subject, of the gunman, is as
true of the object, of the gun that is held. A good citizen becomes a
criminal, a bad guy becomes a worse guy; a silent gun becomes a
fired gun, a new gun becomes a used gun, a sporting gun becomes a
weapon. (p. 33)
What Latour’s example demonstrates, according to Meunier and Vasquez (2008), is that
actors” (italics in original; p. 184). Human actors do, of course, possess and retain
certain attributes that objects (for now) do not, such as emotions, power, and cognition.
However, what Latour’s example suggests is that these human attributes emerge in
interactions with various other actants and that “objects interpellate us” (Law, 1999).
Latour is also suggesting that objects, as they congeal into actor-networks, are the
Shadowers can also benefit from a focus on objects, which include such things
as texts, instruments, and discursive accounts, because they allow researchers “to call
on what is outside the interaction… [to] ‘dislocate’ interaction” (italics in original; Law,
2000, p. 176). For example, assume that a private investigator is being shadowed and
he is currently trying to locate the most recent address of a “skip.” The investigator first
enters a social security number, which was assigned to the skip more than 40 years ago
and was supplied by the client just moments ago via email; the investigator, via the
internet, connects to a database created ten years ago by a company that merged with
another (and, therefore, no longer literally exists) and which is located hundreds of miles
74
away from where the investigator now sits; the database returns several addresses,
which were keyed in by someone sitting at a desk in Bangalore, India over a year ago;
the investigator verifies the skip’s address by calling her on his newly purchased iPhone.
The process goes on ad infinitum until something else redirects the investigator’s
attention or there is no more “skip tracing” to be done, in which case the investigator
may slip back into entrepreneuring activities like “billing the client,” wherein new
What the “skip tracing” example illustrates is that the various objects and
practices that are assembled or completed in another place and time (e.g., social
security numbers, addresses, databases, and data entry) “are indicators of the ‘network”
that largely surpasses the ‘present’ situation” (Law, p. 176) and are what produce the
investigator and a private investigator exists because of a “verified address,” and both
each other. The address is no longer just “out there” as a piece of data but is now a
profitable object. Only from their relationship is a transaction between a client (subject)
and private investigator (subject) possible. Not until the client-investigator becomes an
actor-network does “finding an address” make any sense. What this means is that social
clearer in chapters 4 and 5, but what the example above demonstrates is that if one
networks. While social practices and actor-networks are often taken-for-granted and can
75
constantly work to convince other clients that they are important mediators in the
process of “skip tracing” (chapter 4). They must also work to convince politicians to halt
certain legislation out of fear that certain mediators will be lost—mediators necessary to
the production of profit. Of course, they don’t articulate this in such abstractness, but a
shadower’s use of ANT helps provide the appropriate lens for seeing taken-for-granted
approaches to studying non-human actors are not well developed” (Bruni, 2005, p. 358).
Beyond the mantras of “[take] responsibility for ‘the social life of things’” and “follow the
actors themselves,” ANT has not, by Latour’s own admission, “said how to follow them”
(Latour, 1996, p. 238). Given that some objects are material and others symbolic, there
is not, of course, one best route by which to shadow objects. What is more, some
objects, with the assistance of other actants, transform rather quickly from something
concrete into something ideational. With ultrasound, an embryo can transform into a
“suggestion.” Some things can be followed in the present, some have to be traced
through textual accounts from the past, and others must be “projections” into the future.
But given that the process of shadowing subjects borrows from interpretivism,
ethnography, and other participant observation methods, it seems reasonable that the
process of shadowing objects can also borrow broadly as well. In order to not get lost in
14
Mediators are things that transform and translate; their input is not the same as their
output. Intermediators are taken-for-granted black boxes in a situation. There inputs and
outputs are the same, they don’t affect anything in a situation. A banal conversation,
therefore, can be a complex mediator and a working computer can be an intermediator.
A down computer, however, can quickly become a mediator (Latour, 2005).
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objects, and which are consistent with the approach I took in this project.
an overview and in-depth description of various studies that demonstrate the process
and outcome of following objects (Adolfsson, 2005; Bruni, 2005; Frandsen, 2009; Latour,
1999). What all of these studies have in common is that they are ethnographic in nature,
which is to say that human actors are being shadowed as part of the research process.
The actions of human actors, however, are treated symmetrically with nonhuman actors
as the researcher follows the “hybrid character of action” (Meunier and Vasquez, 2008),
“[which] means…document[ing] the flow of…actions over the course of which a set of
transformations of objects through different spaces and times as they shape a particular
scene. An observable interaction need not require the physical (i.e., visible) presence of
these as studies of action nets is important: they are accounting for actions that go
beyond the immediate by following objects not necessarily as physical entities but as
things that continue to transform in the presence of other actants (in particularly
processes that have already unfolded, and uses these as his guide to where to go next
15
For a great listing of actor-network-theory literature, which includes great examples of
studies to emulate, as well as some of the critiques and rebuttals, see the following
website maintained by John Law: http://www.lancs.ac.uk/fass/centres/css/ant/antres.htm
16
Meunier & Vasquez’s study is also ethnographic—they “followed a project of science
and technology diffusion in a Chilean governmental organization” (p. 185).
77
as an ethnographer. When he observes, for example, that “the printout of the day’s
appointments is one of the first objects consulted [by nurses] in order to verify the
presence of other objects [patients, appointments], and it is the software that manages
the timetable of patient examinations” (p. 369), he is highlighting how the software is an
actor in this particular scene because it “manages” timetables (without a computer, the
needed). A human actor has to put information into the software and it takes a human
actor “to tell” the software to print a particular table. As an ethnographer, therefore, Bruni
can retrace the sequence upstream to see who inputs the tables and what the process
This is precisely what Ann-Christine Frandsen (2009) did when she retraced the
accounting process in order to understand how a “rent” was charged to a Psorasis unit.
The process required moving from organization to organization trying to account for all
the contracts associated with the final figure billed to the unit. The complexity of the
These studies emulate Latour’s (1999) pivotal study of soil samples. In this
changed the soil samples taken in the Amazon forest into a scientific paper, a voice in
the debate over if the forest advances or retreats, whether or not it was being eaten by a
savanna” (Czarniawska, 2007, p. 92). In 1991, Latour followed a group of scientists into
the jungle and as they studied the environment, he studied the researchers. Using the
soil as the object of focus, Latour followed the samples as they were collected,
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Latour, all of these transformations were necessary because in the “academic debate”
the forest cannot be included. Things must be changed into words and images in order
A thing [soil in this case] can remain durable and transported farther
and more quickly if it continues to undergo transformations at each
stage of this long cascade. / It seems that reference is not simply the
act of pointing or a way of keeping, on the outside, some material
guarantee for the truth of a statement; rather it is our way of keeping
something constant through a series of transformations. Knowledge
does not reflect a real external world that it resembles via mimesis, but
rather a real internal world, the coherence and continuity of which it
helps to ensure. (p. 58)
Following human and nonhuman actants in this style of research allows researcher to
not lose focus on all the important constituents acting (even the most humble of them) to
form a particular assemblage. And they may help the researcher potentially avoid some
of the ethical concerns which comes with writing as if the human subjects are
responsible for all the successes and failures of the organizing activities in which they
the environment for material (i.e., objective) evidence of people’s practices and
intentions. They collect witness and expert testimony of those they shadow and
encounter in the field. They do all of this in order to build forensically-viable cases
participate in socio-cultural activities (e.g., narrative, historical, and rhetorical). But any
(2004): 1) “Watch how the stories are being made”; 2) “Collect the stories”; 3) “Provoke
story telling”; 4) “Interpret the stories (what do they say?)”; 5) “Analyze the stories (how
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do they say it?)”; 5) “Deconstruct the stories (unmake them)”; 6) “Put together your own
(2002) analysis of the various stories in a brochure about the British tactical strike and
reconnaissance warplane called the TSR2. In this study, Law traces the TSR2, a socio-
cultural and technical object (that did not materially exist) as a discursive form in a text.
The TSR2 was commissioned by the British government in the 1950s and was being
designed and promoted by the British Aircraft Corporation; however, the plane was
never built because the project was disbanded by the Labour government in 1965. By
focusing on the various pictures, tables, maps, and other exhibits in the brochure about
the TSR2, Law reveals how the TSR2 did exist in culturally meaningful ways. He also
suggests that it did not exist as just one singular thing, an aircraft, but also, among other
things, a weapons system, a fuel system, and a heroic, masculine pilot’s aircraft.
By identifying the various potential readings of the various stories that the aircraft
tells in each of its representative forms (and if they “tell” they act), Law demonstrates
that objects that appear singular and centered may actually be plural and decentered.
When shadowing objects in text, the researcher’s task is to follow the routes by which
this instance, the multiplicity that the single aircraft assumed moved actors in different
political directions and, ultimately, may have led to its non-material existence. In chapter
complex, and painstaking as dissecting fruit flies or sending a telescope into space”
(Latour, 2005, p. 136). Yet, this is a necessary step and one that can be approached
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from a myriad of different methods. The ways of writing up shadowing research are
many. The end result of field work could result, according to Czarniawska (2007), in an
narrative account can be designed in many ways, such as realist, impressionist, and
confessional (van Maanen, 1988), and can express many attitudes, such as
and objects that constitute the field of practices of private investigating. I am guided by
writings about ethnography (e.g., Clifford, 1988; Geertz, 1973; Goodall, 1994, 2000) and
2005; Johnstone, 2007; Montoya, 2004). The accounts presented in this study are
private eye work activities that can be read as entrepreneurial—i.e., activities wherein
opportunities are discursively and praxeologically constituted and discovered. The value
that are often “deadened in the language of ‘scientific rigor’” (Berglund, 2007, p.75)
intersubjective collection of data, so in most regards the data obtained has already been
“explained” and interpreted both in interviews and during shadow events with private
& Pollner, 2001, p. 120). This does not mean, however, that once articulated (i.e., written
up) that the implications cannot be appraised. Similar to ANT accounts, praxeological
accounting is not “mere description” (Latour, 2005); but it is also not “the ‘unveiling’,
‘behind’ the actors’ backs, the ‘social forces at work’” (Latour, p. 137). A praxeological
account seeks to show how various social practices (re)produce social orders. Applying
a “theoretical attitude” should be done with caution: “Much like ‘safe sex’, sticking to
life among the people studied” (van Maanen, 1988, p. 48). Praxeologists provide
accounts of routine life provided by their fieldwork associates. But unlike realist
ethnographies (which tend to follow a more positivist sentiment), shadowers treat field
researchers should reflect on and account for the contingencies of their [and the
participants’] claims” (Lindlof & Taylor, 2002, p. 11). Shadowing, from a praxeological
perspective, should reflect a tone that information and insights were generated in a
dialogic fashion.
The telos of any narrative that a praxeologist writes should pursue a writing
strategy that presents details in a playful and eloquent style. As Latour (2005) notes, “A
good text should trigger in its reader this reaction: ‘Please, more details, I want more
details’” (p. 137). Pragmatically, this should not be a very difficult task because, as Bruyn
(2002) notes, it is from within the mundane that we find the sublime. To illustrate this
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point, Bruyn cites Mitch Albom’s interview with Morrie Schwartz, a sociologist who died
of ALS (Lou Gehrig's Disease). When Albom asked what Morrie would do with a day of
conversation can evoke emotion more powerfully than an explanation. We don’t need
Albom to explain what this means in regard to issues of mortality, cultural values,
suffering, sickness, dying, living, disease, and death—the reader gets it. Of course,
gathering and presenting detail after detail in a manner that captures the spirit of an
ANT is easy.) 17
Alasdair MacIntyre (1981/2007) notes that “human beings can be held to account
for that of which they are the authors; other beings cannot” (p. 209). Writing in a
praxeological format, therefore, must come with its own set of criteria for holding a
researcher accountable for the quality of his or her writing. I propose readers evaluate
Fisher (1987): narrative probability (a story’s coherence and integrity) and narrative
fidelity (a story’s claims are based on believable assertions about social reality).
17
Latour (2005) notes that “the acronym A.N.T. [is] perfectly fit for a blind, myopic,
workaholic, trail-sniffing, and collective traveler” (p.9).
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read praxeological accounts, and how to shadow subjects and objects, attention can
now be given to the particulars of this study. Shadowing method was appropriate for
following professional detectives through their everyday work life, which is rarely located
in a single setting (e.g., office building). By focusing on specific private detectives rather
than on a single organization, I was able to get a better sense of private investigators’
cares, and concerns. I realized very early that investigators obsessed about some non-
human objects that are important to producing and maintaining their profession (e.g.,
reports and laws). I could trace their practices to the object (a report), but I had to look at
the report itself as an object that then has an effect on other fields of practices (e.g.,
families, courts, and laws). While in the field, I listened to how investigators talked about
laws, but I had to focus on the “laws themselves” and trace what practices were largely
being shaped by these laws. In what follows, I describe the procedures and specifics of
Subjects
Over the course of one and a half years, I interviewed 30 private investigators in
person (26) and by telephone (4). All of these interviews were recorded with the
exception of two (I did not have my recorder handy). Details about each interviewee are
provided in Appendix B. About half of the agency owners I interviewed had been in
business for more than ten years. This is significant because, on average across all
industries, according to data produced by the U.S. Small Business Administration, only
45% of new firms last five years, and only 30% last ten years. There is no data
executive officer of the Texas Association of Licensed Investigators (TALI) and the
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sentiments of many interviewees, there seems to be a high number of failed firms in the
profession. With luck, I interviewed individuals who were among the more successful.
I shadowed five agency owners for a total of 267 hours. Typically, shadowing
occurred over a four day period, but two shadowees were followed twice for a total of 1.5
weeks each and one was shadowed for two days. 18 On the high end, a day of
shadowing was 21 hours long and on the low end, just 7 hours. I shadowed a white
female in Atlanta, Georgia; a Latino male in Houston, Texas; a white male in Glen
Carbon, Illinois; a white male located near St. Louis, Missouri; and a white male located
investigator to assist in the sensemaking process. For such a small sample, I was
fortunate to have spent time in the field with individuals whose strategy focused in very
different aspects of the business: process serving, domestic cases, criminal and civil
went through a recruiting process that I thought would allow me to capture the more
entrepreneurial would see my work as a potential opportunity for them (e.g., free
marketing). I first selected geographical regions that I knew I could easily get to and
where I had friends or family (to save money on lodging). These areas were St. Louis,
Chicago, and Texas (I knew I would attend some of the TALI conferences, so I did not
focus on one city). I then did a Google search using a combination of key words (e.g.,
“Texas private investigator,” “Dallas PI,” and “St. Louis private detective”). I searched
through the first 30 links, believing this would indicate that they had many relevant links
to and from their websites (they were institutionalized), likely had metatags embedded in
18
This shadow event was the last and I had already reached a saturation point;
however, this event was very rich. The investigator gave me full access to his financial
books and had several appointments I was able to observe.
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their webpage (they were attentive to internet marketing strategies), or had hired the
marketing). I also visited the websites who had advertised through Google AdWords
though the results were very similar. I also obtained agency names, addresses, and
address, email, phone number, and URL) in a format that could be easily filtered. I
excluded a small number of agencies at this phase because I could not find any contact
information on their website (in general, most private investigators’ websites are terrible).
Using a form letter, but tailoring it to appeal to each agency owner, I printed letters on
cotton-fiber paper with a replication of university letterhead. I sent these letters to over
200 agencies. 12 letters were returned to me by the post office due to “an insufficient
address.” Within two days of sending the letters, I was contacted by about 10 agency
owners. Interestingly, the ones who called first were also the ones that I shadowed. In
two instances, the agency owner in Atlanta, Georgia (who was a referral) and the one in
Glen Carbon, Illinois, called me the day after I sent the letter, and by 10 am. This
suggests to me that they immediately contacted me upon receipt. This attests, perhaps,
and given the data mining that took place while I was in the field, it was clear I was their
sometimes several phone calls would be required to secure an interview. All shadowees
interviewee, I would pitch the idea of shadowing. Three investigators proposed that I
86
shadow them before I could extend the offer. The letter writing process recruited 15 of
the interviewees, all others were recruited by snowballing and post-conference follow-up.
Objects
Shadowing events and interviews revealed that two objects were particularly
how private investigators translated everyday social practices into a report, a document
that can move beyond the field of practices of investigating into other fields (e.g.,
insurance). The moving between fields is what produced the potentiality for profit (see
chapter 5). To shadow these objects, I tried to get interviewees in later interviews to
describe the process of writing reports to me. I also asked to see redacted reports, which
some investigators were willing to share. Regarding laws, I had to investigate which
field. For this research, I turned to books regarding legal issues in the profession (e.g.,
Hankin, 2009) and some of the generic books that hinted at important legislation (e.g.,
Brown, 2007). I also obtained lists of upcoming legislation from professional association
websites. Focus on ways of speaking about and performances of agency owners with
From the insights I have gained, I hope investigators will be able to improve
Shadowing and interviewing are not, of course, the only methods that I could
have used to study the profession of private investigations. However, they were useful
methods for studying prosaic practices and discourses within the field. These methods
87
focus on practices and participants’ interpretations of discourse. For this reason, I now
The goal of this chapter is to account for some of the pervasive popular culture
practices (Pollner, 1987). They affect, therefore, the prosaic descriptions presented in
chapters 4 and 5.
In this chapter, I treat academic articles and popular texts (which include new
media) as “story-telling” artifacts that can be “plotted” into relevant themes. These
artifacts’ themes often supply the taken-for-granted assumptions that are inherent in our
knowledge of social phenomena. For example, I will suggest that most stories of
magazine.com). This figure is not inconsistent with the rate of female business
ownership in the United States, which is a stunningly low 27% (Shane, 2008).
voices in a limitless supply of artifacts. I accomplished this task by first limiting my focus
to artifacts that are likely to influence social understanding. I used television shows and
news articles for popular accounts and peer-reviewed articles for scholarly accounts. I
use articles that have already described pervasive themes (e.g., Bruni, Gherardi, &
Poggio, 2004).
In this chapter, I first define what is meant by “narrative account” and describe
what can be gained by thematizing the literature regarding private investigating and
consistent with the sociology of knowledge (Berger & Luckmann, 1966) and process-
philosophy orientations (Czarniawska, 2004; Hjorth & Steyaert, 2004; Schrag, 2003). I
then, in turn, provide the prosaic and academic themes of private investigating and
chapters 4 and 5.
While Polkinghorne uses the term story and narrative synonymously, I distinguish
a story from a narrative in that the former remains without a plot or temporal-cultural
story, in my use of the term, is an account of incidents and events; whereas narrative is
the addition of a storyline by plotting, thematizing, and culturally relating a story’s content
as Schrag (2003) refers to it—that is, for lack of a better term, “messy.” Social actors
bring order to this mess by doing that which is primordial to homo narrans (Fisher,
1985)—they narrate. Which means that they tell stories as a process of sensemaking;
90
however, whatever they tell must also make sense. In sensemaking, actors translate
their practices and localized accounts into a narrative form. This prosaic and taken-for-
granted process adds coherence to everyday life. However, while the “language of
expression [which includes story] is the language of showing, of setting forth, of making
manifest” (Schrag, 2003, p. 33), unreflexive actors take for granted the organizing and
The role of the analyst is to reveal some of the features of the “seen-but-
narratives comprise what I call herein a narrative account. A story may itself take into
account several themes, but themes largely determine what kind of stories and practices
will count. Among stories, therefore, dominant perspectives emerge. These stories’
themes are informed by, but also inform, everyday communicative praxis. People adopt
and perform particular characteristics of the dominant roles within these narratives—
often to appear legitimate (see Berger & Luckmann, 1966; Meyer & Rowan, 1977).
function) within the space of communicative praxis (see Schrag, 2003); they carry a
“surplus of meaning” beyond any one particular account. 1 As Steyaert (2004) notes,
“stories are thus interweaving personages that ‘speak’ with each other from their own
developing languages” (p. 15). Stories “speak back” to praxis and further regulate who
1
The implications of the narrative’s surplus of meaning to prosaic entrepreneurship can
be found in Steyaert (2004, pp. 13-16).
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Another way of putting this is that narratives, which emerge from meaningful-
accountable to one another by directing our actions, but can also “develop
(inter)action or written text, narratives can take on different meanings and generate
unintended effects.
In the following sections, I report on the academic and popular narrative accounts
discursive artifact (or story) that participates with others in constructing a particular
synthesized a body of works into a story of stories by following a basic approach offered
by Polkinghorne (1995), who suggests that “analysis of narratives moves from stories to
common elements, and narrative analysis moves from elements to stories” (p. 12). In
short, I have searched for the surplus of meanings that overflow the intentions of
Collecting stories and finding the dominant narrative themes in them is important
to a praxeological project because the process elucidates what storylines put isomorphic
who describe what counts. In other words, praxeologists need to describe what narrative
themes likely regulate actors’ practices, interpellate identities, and reproduce social
orders (see Czarniawska, 1997, 2004; Stark, 1998). Narrative accounting is a scheme
2
This follows the logic of DiMaggio & Powell (1983), but suggests that discursive
pressures are as equally important as coercive, mimetic, and normative pressures (see
Lawrence & Suddaby, 2006).
92
that, among other things, elucidates what myths and ceremonies are culturally important
claims about a phenomenon. From these accounts, a praxeologist can then compare
and contrast how actors’ practices keep up with, add to, disrupt, maintain, play with, go
along with, perpetuate, and so on, the mythos embedded in narratives. The telos of a
praxeologist is description, but much can be gained from contrasting narrative accounts
with observed practices. The goal is not to explain a cause or effect between the two,
but rather to seek understanding as to how narrative accounts and practices remain
(mis)aligned. In chapter 4, it will become clear that some dominant narrative themes
about private investigating have created and may likely destroy opportunities for some
agency owners.
The notion that narrative accounts about a field can bolster or inhibit
opportunities within a field of practice is consistent with prosaic, narrative, and discursive
essays in their second book of the new movements series—Narrative and Discursive
(2004), demonstrate that much can be gained from understanding narratives’ role in the
and then translating interpretations (i.e., new ideas and processes) back into the social
93
rather than actions of elitist groups of entrepreneurs” (Steyaert & Katz, 2004, p. 180).
This is not to suggest that all individuals seek monetary profit (though the themes of the
capitalistic narrative are certainly seductive), but that entrepreneuring and the success
and failures of entrepreneurs (and what they do every day) have a lot to do with
storytelling. For this reason, it is important for praxeologists to identify the dominant
The popular culture artifacts that I collected and thematized come from a wide
range of sources, including web-based media, television programs, news articles, and
(non-)fiction books. The scholarly artifacts come from a collection of academic sources,
including edited books and peer-reviewed articles that I was able to access through
works that discussed the profession and to artifacts wherein the authors appealed to
private investigating (often to invoke mystery). For the most part, scholarly texts about
professional investigating are difficult to find. Articles evoking the mystery of private
Search Premier using key words such as “private investigat*,” “private detect*,” and
“professional investigat*”. There were far too many popular texts to read, so I used my
best culturally-situated hunches to guide the collection of artifacts. The outcome of the
3
Sometimes entrepreneurs’ ideas are too ahead of the narrative and, lacking rhetorical
skills, suggest ideas that scare others. Many of Nikola Tesla’s inventions, e.g., wireless
electricity, scared the public and led some investors to withdraw capital.
4
I completed separate searches with other Google engines—e.g., Google News, Google
Books, and Google Scholar.
94
peer-reviewed journal and scholarly books yielded a much more manageable size: there
were only 156 unique journal articles between the search terms (most regarding fiction
literature) and just a dozen or so contemporary books specifically geared toward the
profession.
part of the study while shadowing and interviewing. This allowed me to see if agency
owners were aware of the themes in narrative accounts, which they often brought up
without my prompting. For example, they often criticized the popular television show
Cheaters, noting that these shows perpetuate “a myth that private investigators are
nothing more than ‘sleazy sleuths spying on people’s sexual affairs’” (Interviewee 04).
When they made such critiques, I used it as an opportunity to verify other themes I was
uncovering. This demonstrates the importance of going to the field to filter large data
The examples and references from artifacts that I use to support claims are
representative of the larger collection of artifacts. The purpose of this chapter is not to
provide a textual exegesis, but to provide a general account of the narratives that
underlie assumptions and myths regarding the fields of practices of private investigating.
As a general rule, actors do not do in-depth analysis when they read and interpret texts;
they simply consume and share ideas as they construct reality (Berger & Luckmann,
1966).
perceptive, witty, and endearing (male) figure in a Homburg hat and trench coat. The
image of J.J. Gittes (Jack Nicholson) and his partner Lawrence Walsh (Joe Mantell) in
95
Roman Polanski’s Chinatown comes to mind. Other film and television series that project
similar, but varied, representations of the private detective are Magnum PI, The
Rockford Files, and Dick Tracy. For older generations and fans of old-time radio
programs, it may be the smoky voice of Richard Diamond that gives the impression that
The image of the private detective portrayed in film and books has its origins in
the embellished stories of Vidocq (Walz, 2003). It was his pals Honoré de Balzac, Victor
Hugo, and Alexandre Dumas who used Vidocq’s exploits as inspiration for many of their
fictional works. This coupling of investigative work and fiction immediately elevated the
conception of the private investigator’s work into the mythic realm: “it became the force
of order and rationality battling the chaotic and scary forces of darkness…, and living on
and endlessly transmogrified…in countless crime novels, movies and TV shows, has
proven to have fantastic resonance. And it has thoroughly infected our notions of crime
Bounty Hunters (Gaines, 1999), The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Private Investigating
(Brown, 2007), and Private Investigation, Security Science, and Public Service
legitimate narrative of the private investigator in pursuit of truth and justice. For example,
Lest people think that private investigating has become a humdrum professional career,
writers of “how to” books are keen to remind readers that it is not “just a job”: “A career
96
exciting. It’s much better than working for a living” (Brown, 2007, p. 17). Regardless of
correct about one thing—the field has changed dramatically. Dramas and narratives play
out in everyday interaction and become cognitive schemes through which people make
are not often identified as entrepreneurs or professionals, while police officers and rich
Silicon Valley tycoons are. Two themes that were prominent in private eye narratives are
reality television shows and news sources, it is hard to see private investigators as
who suspect that their spouse or long-term significant other is engaged in infidelity.
Spliced with interviews and some narration, Cheaters documents the activities of a
cheater (“the suspect”) with his or her paramour (“the companion”). While there is
nothing abnormal about the surveillance footage, the show adds an element of drama by
allowing the client to confront his or her partner after evidence of infidelity has been
obtained. This confrontation often turns quickly into an example of domestic violence
and has placed fear in some potential clients about hiring private eyes. While shadowing
in Dallas and Atlanta, I documented two phone calls during which a potential client
specifically asked if they will need to confront their partner or if the surveillance video will
(Mate Check PI, LLC), her boyfriend and business partner Tom Scharrer, and her
97
daughters Jasmine, Xanadu, and Kashmir, document their lives as well as their private
“fidelity checking” and “baiting,” which involves tempting the client’s partner with the
prospect of hooking up with the decoy. The client hires Mate Check so that their
temptresses (two of the investigators are former strippers) can check the client’s
partner’s fidelity. Once the wayward lover’s devious intentions are sufficiently enticed, a
meeting (usually private) is set up in a location that can be rigged with hidden cameras
or publicly videotaped. The client and Sandra’s team sit in a nearby van and watch the
situation unfold live. Seeing his or her significant other take the bait, the client typically
goes into an emotional tantrum and storms in on the surprised partner. Usually many
epithets are tossed about, and in several episodes physical violence ensues. In the
episode “The Rock and Roll Romeo” (Season 1, Episode 2) the client storms into a bar’s
dressing room (for the band), tosses water on her partner, and slaps him. When there is
not much drama, Sandra and the decoys will verbally lambaste the cheater or try to
stoke the client’s frustrations. For example, in the same episode, the client is reconciling
with her partner when Sandra says, “You’re going back to the same thing [name]; he just
got done putting his tongue down another woman’s throat.” In the pre-surveillance
interviews the clients are often encouraged to be confrontational. Sandra hints that the
best time to confront them is when everyone is around (which obviously means when the
camera crews are too). But when one is emotionally charged, this is the worst time to
Family Affair,” (Season 1, Episode 1) the police arrive on the scene of the confrontation.
years prior to making her own reality television show. She was a guest on MSNBC’s
“Scarborough Country” on December 19, 2005, and was asked to give her opinion
regarding the indictments brought against Cheaters staff for provoking a confrontation
98
between Rafael and Maria Gutierrez. At the time, Maria had a protective order against
Rafael for alleged assault. After uncovering evidence of her infidelity, Cheaters staff
arranged for Rafael to confront his wife at her workplace, which led to charges being
I think that wanting to see if someone is being faithful is one thing, but
provoking it and making people aggravated and into a violent situation
is another…. When I have watched the show, I see a lot of provoking,
making the other party angry, upset into a violent situation. I‘ve been
doing private investigations and finding cheating spouses for 11
years, and you just don‘t run into this. (“Scarborough Country,” 2005)
It would seem that the entertainment and financial gain for Hope is now more important
The reality of these “reality shows” is that they showcase practices that most
private investigators try to avoid, particularly because confrontation can lead to legal
investigators prefer to avoid doing them because of the high emotionality of clients
(interviewee 26). What is more, most investigators understand the risk of violence that
comes with domestic cases, some of which have ended in murder and murder-suicide,
as was the case with interviewees 26 and 29. Popular press books encourage
to tell the exact location of their cheating spouse until the following day” (Brown, 2007, p.
14). Nearly all of the investigators I interviewed said that they also adhere to such a
policy, frequently citing the Clara Harris incident as a premier example of why one
should not give certain details from the field about target activities. In 2002, Clara Harris
5
Interestingly, during the same discussion, the producer of Cheaters, Bobby Goldstein
argues that there is a moral value to these shows: “I think there’s more than just
entertainment value, Catherine [the show’s host]. You know, we are protectors of the
seventh commandment: Thou shalt not commit adultery. And some people find that has
a lot of merit as well” (“Scarborough Country,” 2005).
99
hit her husband with a car and ran him over two additional times. This all happened in a
Hilton Hotel parking lot (Nassau Bay, Texas) after the investigation company she had
hired, Blue Moon Investigations, told her that they had documented her husband with
receiving a lap dance from Kashmir. Expecting to continue his fling, he enters the
apartment with an unconcealed fire arm attached to his belt. He is greeted by the
production crew, other investigators from Mate Check, and his girlfriend, who begins to
yell at him. The situation, according to Tom, “was escalating fast.” Tom, therefore, un-
holsters the gun and refuses to give it back to the target, who eventually leaves his
apartment apparently without it. Tom’s actions could constitute theft. Moreover, the
documentation of these incidences, especially those that get physical, is not good for the
client. Not only does confrontation make the evidence largely useless in court, but it
could be evidence of domestic violence. In other words, these shows often demonstrate
poor private investigating, illegal activity, and works against clients’ interests.
critiqued by other private investigators (at least until they have their own reality show).
For example, Florida private eye Bill Warner (2009) claims on his blog that Hope is
“trailer trash with a badge.” While I agree with most of the points raised in Warner’s blog
rants, his writing is poor, he presents his case on a cluttered and amateurish blog page,
and his tone toward another professional is, frankly, unprofessional. So in this sense, he
capitalized on the show by inviting Hope to serve as a pundit and commentator about
6
Season 1, episode 4.
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various social issues, especially infidelity. Her exposure on news media, in turn,
increases her popularity and the chance that television viewers will be exposed to her
brand of investigating. Yet, despite the few appearances of private investigators to give
commentary regarding issues of infidelity, the news media largely does not seek the
advice of private investigators for other social matters or report on positive practices. It is
much more likely, as my analysis of artifacts suggests, that the news will report on
headlines. The Hewlett-Packard (HP) case, in which outside private investigators were
hired in 2005 to obtain the source of a media leak from the board (Kaplan, 2006), and
the Anthony Pellicano case, in which he was sentenced to 15 years for illegal wiretaps
and racketeering on behalf of high-profile Hollywood clients (Barnes, 2008), are two
obtain phone records. They also sent emails with embedded software that could trace
computer activities without user knowledge. These practices led to the resignation of
several board members; investigations by the State of California, the FBI, and Congress;
and criminal charges (Donovan, 2007). The passage of the “Telephone Records and
Privacy Protection Act” 7 is a consequence of the HP scandal. But the damage to the
field extends beyond this one provision, as the following outtake from a USA Today
article demonstrates: “Phone records aren't the only traces of your life that can be had
for a buck. / Individuals' medical records, places of employment and class schedules are
just some of the nuggets data brokers obtain by impersonating others, a practice known
as pretexting” (my emphasis, Davidson, 2006, ¶1-2). The rhetorical condemnation both
reduces the legitimacy of the field and supports the numerous proposed state and
7
H.R. 4709, codified at18 U.S.C. §1039 (2007)
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federal bills that, if passed, will severely limit the practices of private investigators (see
toward the “hired gun” images that are prevalent in the fictional ones. Investigators must
(and are willing to) lie, steal, and cheat to satiate their need to make money: “too many
PIs' main concern is getting paid” (¶12). In short, private eyes are known to work “for
sizeable fees” (Tergesen, 2005) and will do just about anything for anyone, which
Given the number of times private investigators find themselves in the media for
violations of the law, it doesn’t help that in many of the “how to” books regarding the
profession, especially the best among them (e.g., MacHovec, 2006), there is little
discussion of legal principles. MacHovec, for example, who holds a doctorate degree in
clinical psychology, correctly asserts that “ignorance of the law can lead to serious
company, lost business, and even the miscarriage of justice when a guilty person goes
free” (or, I would add, when an innocent person goes to prison). However, he only gives
a scant two pages (pp. 152-154) to the discussion of law. He also does not offer much
advice about where to get the training or what laws to know. 9 Worse, he indicates that a
great learning tool is Hollywood movies. At the end of each chapter he lists movies worth
watching (e.g., Witness for the Prosecution [criminal court proceedings] and The Usual
Suspects [interrogations]), but he does not indicate whether these are good examples,
investigations is a field that requires a great deal of courage…” (Travers, 2005, p. 4). Not
8
Some agency owners refer, sadly, to criminal investigations as “dirty work.”
9
Ron Hankin’s (2009) and Charles Nemeth’s (2004) books are good places to start.
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surprisingly, most of the artifacts I analyzed from news sources almost always cited a
male investigator. Where women are described as valuable to the profession, they are
seen as good tools for covert work (“most people don’t expect women to be PIs”
[Interviewee 05]). Allan Pinkerton supposedly hired the first female private detective for
this reason. Kate Warne approached Pinkerton and expressed her wish to become a
detective: “Though Pinkerton had never heard of a female detective, he leaned back in
his chair and asked why she thought she could be of value. Mrs. Warne carefully
detailed how she could ‘worm out secrets in many places to which it was impossible for
male detectives to gain access’” (Horan, 1967, p. 29). According to investigators, women
can be good covert operators due to a lack of public expectation. The Detective Training
Institute advertises:
In the narratives of female success, the sorts of assignments that women seem to excel
at are “baiting surveillances” (they use their sexuality), speaking with other women and
children (they are softer), and playing on people’s false assumptions in pretexts (the
The expectation that mostly men are private investigators seeps into popular
texts in the most superficial of comments. Of course, certain biases in popular accounts
of private investigating do give women some advantages in the field. Similarly, age and
race can be a field advantage, though these are often not mentioned as factors in the
“how-to” books. From my own experiences as a field investigator in Dallas, I can attest
that advantages come to those who are young. Most people simply did not suspect I was
(Interviewee 08), indicated that she “often obtains things that others [e.g., white
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investigators] would not be able to, especially in more urban areas.” Making money as a
besides the autonomous (white) man. While non-fiction accounts often do not portray
private investigators as playboys, they are praised or critiqued for their ingenuity and
ability to get things from people. Given this sort of image, there are some financial risks
to private investigators; especially those who do not fit the typified image of the private
eye. While I certainly fit most of the criteria, I often sensed that my age was a factor in
how clients interpreted my field activities, especially when I did not perform well.
Additionally, I could sense that my age was a factor when negotiating contracts with
potential clients. For example, they would ask in a suspicious tone, “how long have you
been doing this?” or more directly, “are you sure you are qualified?”
The equipment of the investigative world also has been biased by popular
accounts. I once video recorded from up the street in my Ford Escape a client’s
husband, who knew he was being followed. He walked down the street and knocked on
a van window before going to his mistress’s house (located across the street from his
and his wife’s house). He later claimed he wanted to know if I wanted something to eat
or drink. He obviously thought that private eyes use vans. This is why no private eye I
perpetuate narrative accounts that are constitutive of and constituted by the popular
culture stories. From an academic standpoint, there are few texts about private
profession tends to favor public or corporate detectives’ work (Sennewald & Tsukayama,
2006). This is despite the fact that in the United States the private profession largely
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precedes public policing (see Weiss, 1979, 1981) and is one of the fastest growing
Public police departments have been experiencing severe financial shortages for
decades, and are now taking on extra counter-terrorism duties in the post-9.11 era. With
skinnier budgets and more duties, departments must make strategic choices about
which cases to investigate. Most of their resources are now aimed at revenue-generating
activities (issuing citations), domestic disturbances, and investigating major crimes such
as murder, rape, armed robbery, and drug-related activities. Fraud, larceny, missing
persons, and “white-collar” crime are often left under-investigated. It is no surprise that
the fastest growing sectors on the private side are finance and mortgage fraud
investigations, followed by identity-theft cases (Motia, 2008). Other common cases that
private investigators take on are wrongful death, work-related injury, employee theft,
Despite these trends, the few academic texts that I have located about private
detective services tend to focus on the seedy side of the profession—such as the use of
deceptive practices (e.g., Gill & Hart, 1997; Shulman, 1994, 2007) or its historic coupling
with private interests or corrupt public policy (e.g., Churchill, 2004; Weiss, 1979, 1986)—
and its (problematic) representation in media or fiction (e.g., Broe, 2005; Broes, 1992;
comparison between ethnographic fieldwork and private investigating, evoking the (sexy)
image of the private investigator “casing” a culture in order to uncover “dirty data” (e.g.,
Atkinson, et al., 2007; Goodall, 1994, 2000; Mitchell, 1993; Shulman, 1994).
investigations or private policing. These articles are written by faculty in law, criminal
justice, accounting, and economics (e.g., Geddes, 1989; Gill & Hart, 2007; Hankin, 2009;
Montgomery & Majeski, 2005; Nemeth, 2004). What this means is that there is an
and their techniques or needs. This reduces social legitimacy and makes practitioners
have to rely upon anecdotal evidence to support their practices. To make this point, I will
It may or may not be true that females have an advantage over men as investigators.
Sennewald and Tsukayama are relying on “common sense” (i.e., narrative accounts
based on doxa). They could rely on gender communication research to train male
investigators to adopt practice typical to women, but research testing these pedagogical
practices would be necessary. Sennewald and Tsukayama never cite a single study to
researchers do not have an incentive to take this field seriously. In Sennewald and
Tsukayama’s (2006) 300-page textbook, they only have a total of 45 citations, and most
refer to legal cases or popular press articles. That textbook and how-to books are written
knowledge to help give the field legitimacy or to draw upon. Until an identifiable research
literature in other fields, which largely serves public and corporate investigators’
practices. While private investigators may engage in practices that are similar to public
Until serious academic writing and research occurs, the popular male and
This section was completed in much the same way as the previous. There are
academic studies that have already accounted for themes in popular stories about
entrepreneurship. For this reason, I do not offer as many examples directly from popular
Mention the word “entrepreneur” to a person and it will likely conjure up images
slightly similar to the private investigator: a heroic and triumphant, creative, and hard-
with just pennies of net worth. Allan Pinkerton, Andrew Carnegie, Bill Gates, Steven
Jobs, Sam Walton, and “those guys that started Google” are a few of the likely
characters who fit the ideal-type image of homo economicus. 10 In US-American culture,
stories about successful and rich business people are pervasive, and we admire those
who have seemingly defied the odds. For example, the “great entrepreneurial success
story” of how FedEx started with just a few planes and grew into a $36 billion global
delivery juggernaut has become a part of corporate Americana. The story of its birth tells
of Fred Smith’s legendary college term paper in which he first advanced his idea of an
10
For an excellent account of masculinity and entrepreneurship see James Catano’s
(2001) Ragged Dicks: Masculinity, Steel, and the Rhetoric of the Self-Made Man.
107
overnight-delivery service and was supposedly given a C by his Yale professor (which
Smith says is an inaccurate portrayal) to the infamous trip to the Las Vegas casinos—
where he won enough hands of blackjack to meet a payroll and avoid bankruptcy (“Fred
Smith on the Birth of FedEx,” 2004). Such stories, and there are several amazing stories
business endeavor and often in individualistic terms, whereby one or two individuals
In the United States, especially, it is the lure of riches that are the hook of most of
these stories. There is a reason I am writing about Fred Smith, the CEO of FedEx, and
not Fred Smith, my high school English and literature teacher. Smith, the teacher, is
likely just as intelligent and hardworking as the average CEO. Yet, entrepreneurs are
treated as the saviors of capitalistic economies: “Entrepreneurs that start and run small
businesses will be the propellant in this economy” (Jardin, 2008). English and literature
teachers, however, are just as important to capitalism. The Harvard Business Review,
for example, suggests that quality writing and the ability “to read fiction to the bottom
line” are important factors in managing creative and productive enterprises (see
environment in turmoil, it was “Joe the Plumbers” 11 that would save our economy.
economies and business people largely reinforce the image of an entrepreneur working
independently while thinking only about profits (and low taxes). In other words, the social
and mundane dimensions of entrepreneurship are often left out of the stories in favor of
11
A phrase made popular during the 2008 United States Presidential campaign season.
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narrative in popular texts and practices (e.g., Bruni, Gherardi, & Poggio, 2004; Down,
2006; Johansson, 2004; Nicholson & Anderson, 2005; Sørensen, 2008; Stewart, 1990).
These studies highlight that the public narratives of entrepreneurship (or “false clichés”
as Simon Down calls them) are infused with storylines of “manliness”; “risk and bravery”
procedure) (Down, 2006, pp. 89-102). Louis Nicholson and Alistair Anderson’s (2005)
longitudinal study of metaphors in news stories printed between 1989 and 2000 is a
thorough analysis of popular themes about entrepreneurship. What they found in their
analysis was some shift, albeit slight, and mainly in the level of hostility, in the myth that
emerges from the metaphors used in stories over the decade: “The entrepreneur in 1989
is portrayed as battle protagonist, fighting a class war or broad range of opponents using
battle, ‘nuking’ and ‘culling’ rival businesses or governments” (p. 161). They further
highlight that, regardless of what sort of individual she or he is (savior or fiend), the
While such articles are critical of some of the dominant themes, the authors’
arguments are aimed not so much at “main street” entrepreneurship, but at large
left out (this is also true in the academic narratives; see Baumol, 1990; Rehn & Taalas,
2004a). Drug dealing and telemarketing enterprises may have much more in common
than our stories permit. If Vidocq’s story reminds us of anything, there is often a very thin
line between criminal and legitimate business practices. Our favored stories about
entrepreneurship also don’t deal with failure, so we have poor understanding of why
businesses fail and why so many people rush dangerously into business. For every story
of success, there are more stories of failure (Shane, 2008). There is, unfortunately, little
business or firm created by venture capitalists just for the purpose of selling the
company for profit. When someone can claim “We’re mass-producing the start-up,” as
Paul Graham, founder of Y Combinator, has, citizens should be concerned about the
of entrepreneurship. It is unlikely, therefore, that the founders of the Red Cross, Boys
and Girls Clubs, and the neighborhood church are going to be considered
entrepreneurs, but rarely, if ever, just entrepreneurs. All of these stories, according to
Scott Shane (2008), perpetuate myths about entrepreneurship. The myth that
entrepreneurship is always good for the economy 12 or that people start businesses in
“start-up” industries are particularly dangerous ones. A significant amount of capital and
other vital resources are lost in business venturing, particularly because entrepreneurs
tend to start businesses in saturated markets with high firm failure rates (Shane, 2008).
The myth of the savior entrepreneur is also pervasive in academic narratives about
12
On this point, see also Baumol, 1990 and Baumol, Litan, & Schramm, 2007.
110
academic discipline. There are professional academic associations (e.g., United States
Association for Small Business and Entrepreneurship) and several other disciplines have
Economic Association). There are disciplinary journals (e.g., Entrepreneurship Theory &
Practice and Entrepreneurial Economy) and other journals frequently publish articles on
entrepreneurship (e.g., Organization Studies). There are also numerous (text)books and
Most importantly, courses are taught and degrees are conferred at several universities
Not unlike most human studies disciplines, entrepreneurship studies has its
various “turns” and “posts” have emerged and disrupted scientism’s stronghold on the
human studies disciplines. Prying entrepreneurship studies from the positivist grip has
not been easy. With its bizarre quantitative measurements, game theory, and abstract
mathematical language, neoclassical economics has become the “queen” of the social
entrepreneur that has dominated the field for some time (Seymour, 2006). That the
that has the ability to coordinate, control, and equilibrate disorderly markets while
rewarding society with new products, services, and an accumulation of wealth, is not
surprising. It parallels the narrative of positivist science. It is also not surprising that
understand the psychological attributes and traits of entrepreneurs (see Gartner, 1988;
Shane & Venkataraman, 2000) or that such research has found that entrepreneurs
possess the following attributes: “a propensity for risk,” “strong leadership skills,” “self-
motivation,” “a strong ego,” and “a desire to make money” (see Ray, 1993). These are
largely the same characteristics that are pervasive in account of other sciences. As
Berger and Luckmann (1966) and Weick (1995) note, we have simply enacted the reality
we projected. These attributes are simply reified typifications. If the narrative suggests
that mostly these people are entrepreneurs, it is likely that mostly these “types of people”
primary object of focus (see Holcombe, 2003; Kirzner, 1973, 1997; Shane, 2000; Shane
& Venkataraman, 2000; Plummer, Haynie, & Godesiabois, 2007). Even though Austrian
opportunity.
goods, services, raw materials, markets and organizing methods can be introduced
through the formation of new means, ends, or means-ends relationships” (Eckhardt &
Shane, 2003, p. 336). Where attempts have been made to explain the origins of
opportunistic situations (e.g., Holcombe, 2003; Kirzner, 1973; Plummer, Haynie, &
Godesiabois, 2007; Shane, 2000), the discussions have been primarily theoretical and
at least three coherent explanations: active search, prior knowledge, and creation.
Active search. The first common account of opportunities is that they are
in modes of perfect competition where supply and demand are balanced at a particular
price. Because markets are balanced and efficient at equilibrium, there are no additional
input price, environmental problem, or change in tastes. (Focusing on how the disruption
arbitrage (i.e., high profits). Because all actors are assumed to possess perfect
knowledge about markets, any opportunity presents itself as an equal opportunity for all.
Entrepreneurs in this model, therefore, are individuals who actively step in and take first
“on the lookout” and aggressively act whenever or wherever an opportunity arises. The
image of the entrepreneur in this orientation is that of the self-motivated risk-taker who
wants to make large profits; i.e., the popular cultural myth of the competitive, money-
driven individual. The advantage of this approach for researchers is that opportunities
assumed, for example, that everyone had an equal chance of discovering the internet
search engine and its revenue generating potential. Another limitation is that it is a-
possible, a market disruption must have occurred in Vidocq’s France. Such an approach,
Prior knowledge. This theme suggests that prior knowledge explains why some
individuals discover opportunities while others do not (Shane, 2000, 2003). This
inventions and opportunity exploitation. Austrian economists are still largely interested in
the role of the price mechanism in generating profit and loss, but “[they] believe that
equilibrium approaches [of the neoclassical school] fail to offer a satisfying theoretical
person’s knowledge, experience, and timing. The fact that Sergey Brin and Larry Page,
the founders of Google, were Ph.D. students at Stanford University likely explains why
they recognized an opportunity to improve internet search engines. That Vidocq had
spent a great deal of time as a crook gave him access to informants and an intimate
knowledge of how criminals operate, which was important to the emerging notion of
and place that is not available to others (Hayek, 1975/2007). The explanation given by
scholars adhering to this approach for unexploited opportunity is that there has yet to be
a timely union between the opportunity and the person possessing the appropriate “prior
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knowledge” to recognize it. As Kirzner (1973) notes: “Entrepreneurship does not consist
of grasping a free ten-dollar bill which one has already discovered to be resting in one’s
hand [as neoclassical economists assume]; it consists in realizing that it is in one’s hand
and that it is available for the grasping” (p. 47). An implication of this approach is
before they are discovered (Seymour, 2006). It is difficult to account for unseen or
who acts on information distortions. Though they may demonstrate an “alertness” that
possesses the necessary knowledge to discover and exploit it (Hayek, 1945; Shane,
2000). Individuals can certainly scan the market horizon looking for previously
unrecognized opportunities, but unless they have the appropriate information they are
likely to fail in their search. In this model, it is again assumed that opportunities originate
in the market and are external to entrepreneurs’ actions. It is recognized, however, that
and experience that will help them to identify opportunities. This is why it has become a
favored perspective among many business educators (DeTienne & Chandler, 2004).
phenomenon and treats prior knowledge as cerebral, its focus on the subjective nature
use, therefore, aspects of this tradition in making sense of how everyday social practices
described as radically new and novel rather than incremental or improved. Sources of
originating from technological changes, political and regulatory changes, and social and
demographic changes (Shane, 2003, p. 23). The function of the entrepreneur, based on
this view,
who, through the introduction of “new combinations,” destroy and replace entire markets
(Chiles, Bluedorn, Gupta, 2007). This process, what he termed “creative destruction,”
creates profit opportunities. Once a market is created and destroys another, Schumpeter
(1976) argues, opportunities in the new industry quickly diminish as imitators enter the
market. The implication of this approach is that entrepreneurs are creators of opportunity
but often as the unintended consequence of their willful tinkering on the processes and
Brin and Page, according to this perspective, created the opportunity for a new
search engine by doing research (i.e., “tinkering”) that led to the destruction of the then-
current search platforms. Many search engines now imitate Google by using Google-like
platforms and advertising schemas. Schumpeter, like the neo-classical scholars, would
say that the search engine market now operates in state of equilibrium. The Austrians
would argue that the search engine market is working toward equilibrium but there are
investigation, which have now been imitated to the point that they are largely taken-for-
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entrepreneurs intrude into efficient markets (Witt, 1992), 13 but the concept of creative
destruction does offer at least one (simplistic) explanation for the origins of opportunities.
discussions largely take a perspective based on the so-called law of supply and
demand. It is assumed that markets will exist in or tend toward a state of equilibrium due
to the competitive nature of markets. This does not necessarily have to mean that
behavior need only rest on the assumption that human action is purposeful and that we
adopted goals” (Kirzner, 2005, p. 467; see, especially von Mises, 1949/2007). Many
approaches are the same: 1) they treat markets as mechanical operations; and, 2) offer
exploited.
In this project, I borrow some useful concepts from each of these schools. For
example, from the Austrian perspective the useful concepts of “prior knowledge” and
13
My assumption is that Schumpeter never explains why people meddle in markets
because it seems self-evident that they may be motivated by factors other than profit.
Brin and Page, for example, were motivated by the desire to practice science as part of
their ongoing activities as Ph.D. students. Through this process they recognized a
limitation in current search engine platforms and set out to develop a new one. When
Brin and Page saw that web users were using their platform, they realized advertising
could generate profits.
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subjectivism and from the creation perspective I borrow the idea that opportunities
become objectivated over time. But I focus instead on everyday practices wherein
any context (Johnstone & Lionais, 2004; Rehn & Taalas, 2004b; Steyaert & Katz, 2004).
These approaches tend to suggest that opportunities are enacted from within everyday
things, but the practices through which entrepreneurial opportunities arise (Seymour,
2006). It is a praxeologist’s task to describe and explain just how and in what ways these
this reason that Steyaert (1998, 2004) suggests that entrepreneurship studies are in
assumption is that enacting an opportunity occurs slowly over time and through an active
understand the process and the objectified opportunity. My approach seeks to take into
account how an entrepreneur encounters an opportunity within the world and work of
like-thing’ because of their work and the practical involvement in the world” (p. 149). The
limitations of the three approaches described in this section is that they abandon
entrepreneur—in favor of theoretical and economic models. By not describing the social
taking for granted a significant part of the phenomenon under examination (Steyaert &
Katz, 2004). A praxeological examination from the standpoint of practice theory, which
borrows greatly from extant scholarship on opportunities but rejects its positivist-
practices and objectified opportunities can provide insights into both opportunity
Conclusion
entrepreneuring from both prosaic and academic texts, highlighting in particular some of
the themes that are embedded in discursive artifacts about these fields of practices. I did
this in order to elucidate the particular themes within “narrative accounts,” which are
serious issue regarding the field’s legitimacy. In many ways, the current storyline creates
a metaphoric “wild west” that is ripe with opportunity for any agency owner willing to
strike out on his (or her) own. This image of the private investigator is consistent with the
Another popular claim is that successful entrepreneurs are not college graduates. While
disproves such myths (see Shane, 2008). While it is true that Michael Dell, Bill Gates,
and Steven Jobs all dropped out of college, and that Richard Branson, Walt Disney, and
Henry Ford did not finish high school, data show that “the average start-up founded by a
college graduate has 25 percent greater sales than the average start-up founded by a
high school drop out, and the average start-up founded by a person with a graduate
degree has 40 percent greater sales than the average start-up founded by a college
to educate the next generation of private investigators may mean greater sales for all
firms. I will not claim that academia is the Holy Grail of professions; however, as some of
the descriptions in the following chapters will suggest, more work is needed to rid the
profession of the icon of the Fedora, trench-coat man. Serious public relations work to
Developing research within academic institutions is one way of building legitimacy while
sustain the economy by searching out new and unique opportunities, the descriptions I
provide in chapter 4 will suggest the opposite. By making private investigating more
mundane and taken-for-granted, i.e., legitimate, the profession will likely become more
legitimated practices (e.g., laws) that opportunities may come to exist. Opportunities are
not waiting to be discovered, but are reproduced every day through simple interactions
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objectified (in discourse) and, therefore, gain salability as products and services. Once
practices to understand whether they are yielding, for actants, the greatest use-value
and profits. But to see just how these opportunities are enacted and used, we must work
against popular and academic (positivist) assumptions. It is my hope that what I provide
in chapters 4 and 5 will demonstrate that praxeological accounting methods are not only
In the first three chapters, I provided an introduction to this study with a focus on
the assumptions that I bring to the project, discussed the opportunities and challenges of
accounts that socially frame entrepreneurship and the field of private investigating. In
away from the enactment of opportunities—that agency owners face. I will also describe
how they enact opportunities. I have not abstracted subjects’ practices and comments in
order to add to disciplinary theory; though I do draw upon theoretical frameworks about
rhetoric and social order to offer some insight into how private investigators are
This chapter is organized into three parts. In part 1, I provide details about a
particularly interesting field experience that I had with a shadowee 2 (S-2). This
experience not only encapsulates many of the themes presented herein, but also
became the catalyst for many discussions with other participants. In part 2, I list and
opportunities are being rhetorically enacted within the field of private investigating.
S-2 (also Interviewee 15; I-15), 1 a recently retired police officer, had been
moonlighting as a contractor for a little more than a year with an agency near St. Louis,
1
The numbers associated with interviewees are ordered by when they were sent for
transcription, not conducted. This means that interviews conducted during the same time
period may have inconsistent numbering (see Appendix B).
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Missouri. Upon his retirement, which was just weeks before I met him, he had made a
unique arrangement that would allow the agency owner (Interviewee 26; I-26) to focus
less on surveillance and more on other types of investigations. An agreement was made
that S-2 would build the surveillance unit, which focused primarily on insurance and
domestic cases. Each year I-26 would take a smaller percentage of the profits until the
business was fully under new ownership. This would have reduced S-2's risk of entry
and would have facilitated a profitable exit for the agency owner.
The arrangement between S-2 and I-26 was atypical. Most agency owners, it
became clear from interviews, do not have an exit strategy. Shadowee 1 (S-1) and
Interviewees 13 (I-13) and 26, were the only three who had concrete business plans. S-
1, who encouraged me to ask other agency owners if they had an exit plan, was certain
that they would not. He was correct. Interviewees were often perplexed by the question.
According to interviewees’ accounts, they would likely “just stop accepting business and
retire when ready”; or, alternatively, they would simply pass it off to one of their senior
it is not clear what value an agency has beyond its owner’s expertise and personality. As
You could just sell your clients. But even then, if [to] one of your
steadier clients, before you leave, you say ‘I’m selling the business to
Craig. Craig’s now gonna take over,’ and this kind of stuff. They may
call you one time and not get that warm fuzzy feeling with you, or
something, or for whatever reason they never call you again, so
what’s it worth? I don’t know. It’s not like selling a liquor store or a
restaurant. I can’t put a number on that.
The interesting arrangement between S-2 and I-26 was also marked by a great
deal of trust and loyalty between agency owners and their employees/contractors which,
for reasons that will become clear in this chapter, are lacking in the profession. Six
months after our initial conversation, I revisited both I-26 and S-2 for follow-up
explore other options.” According to his former business partner, “he [S-2] has too much
of a ‘cop mentality.’” 2 When I noted that they had made a buy-sell arrangement, I-26’s
response surprised me: “no way would I ever consider selling my business.” This
as they happen. Strategies may be pursued for some time and then abandoned. Had I
met S-2 and I-26 at another time, I would not have known about this strategy.
S-2’s business interests and concerns for profitability were revealed during our
growing his clientele. As we drove by a golf course, for example, he mentioned that on
his way back from Springfield, Illinois, he stopped for lunch at a golf course restaurant:
This guy sits down next to me at the bar and, you know, I have a
proclivity for talking, so I just strike up a conversation with him. Turns
out [that] he’s an insurance adjuster for [insurance agency] over there
in St. Louis. So we exchange business cards and arrange to play golf.
The other day, when I call him up to schedule a game, he asked if I
would submit my paper work so that he could get me on the approved
vendor list. So they ain’t lyin’ when they say it’s important to play golf
when you’re in business.
not arise in an interview. Three out of the four days that I shadowed him, S-2’s
while in the office he worked on writing and editing reports, made a compilation DVD of
surveillance videos for a domestic case, and billed clients using accounting software.
While in his vehicle, he assisted his field investigators with surveillances and engaged in
2
This theme was pervasive in interviews, even among those formerly associated
with law enforcement. Interviewees noted things like, “to work with police officers,
you have to first get past their egos in order to train them” (Interviewee 30, I-30).
It is also expressed in books: “Cop wannabes don’t make good private
investigators” (Brown, 2007, p. 11).
3
On the other day, he served a few court summons and then he used me to help him
move some heavy personal items from one house to another (he was in the process of
moving).
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his own surveillance-related activities. At the time, he was just beginning a new case. He
Regardless of whether he was in his vehicle or in the office, S-2 fielded phone
calls from potential clients (9 in total). All of them, except one, wanted to know how much
it would cost to find out if his or her spouse was engaged in relationship infidelity. (The
non-infidelity case was an issue of child custody. A parent of a child wanted to conduct
surveillance on the other parent to see if she was adhering to court orders.) Based on
the conversations he had with these individuals, the hourly rate and the estimated price
of the investigation varied. The retainers quoted were between $700 and $1500. These
prices were all offered rather quickly and without any formal process (i.e., he simply
quoted the price based on the conversation). When I asked about the disparity in price
among cases, S-2 noted that he “based [his] quote on the specific details of the case.”
Major determinants of price variation were the estimated length of surveillances and “a
feeling” about how much money the client had to spend: “It all depends on how much
money the client has and the estimated length of the case. … The more estimated
hours, the lower I may go on the price.” 4 The hourly rates provided were $85 to $125 an
hour. The per-mile rate for vehicle expenses remained consistent at $0.75 cents per
mile. Field investigators, he noted, would be paid $20 an hour and $0.28 cents per mile.
(This was consistent with all agency owners’ pay to contactors and employees.)
behavior,’” such as scheduling investigators for future surveillances and calling his field
investigators to obtain “field updates” or to “just chat to alleviate the monotony.” At the
time of shadowing, the company was working a case that involved trailing a client's
former employee. The target had an adjudicated cease-and-desist order against him.
4
Some investigators rarely asked clients how much they had to spend on an
investigation. They would base this on impressions obtained during conversations.
125
The target had supposedly stolen trade secrets and clients when he left the client’s
investigation was to see if the individual was adhering to the order. During phone
conversations, S-2 and his field investigators speculated that the target was not violating
the court order, but “may be selling drugs.” As S-2 noted, “there is a lot of suspicious
activities going on around the place.” I only met one field investigator assigned to the
case, who was also a former police officer. It is not surprising, therefore, that they
From what I observed while “sitting on the house” with S-2, his speculations
seemed somewhat farfetched. For example, a person was standing on the porch talking
on a cell phone and smoking a cigarette and he was “convinced that he [was] ‘the look
out.’” What would be interesting to know, but would require a lengthy experimental study,
is whether their prejudices were hindering the investigation. What I could document is
the way S-2’s suspicions of the individual came across rhetorically in telephone
conversations with the client. One phone conversation went as follows (my notes are in
brackets):
5
The repetition of the words “you want” and “investigation” rather than “we” and
“surveillance” invoke different impressions of what the investigator is doing. Investigators
almost always used the word investigation. They also always gave clients the final
decision regarding field activities. While they may suggest ideas, private eyes rarely
engaged in unauthorized activity. “That way, when they [clients] are angry about their
bill, I can just say, ‘Well you wanted us to continue doing that and so we did.’ This
126
that he’ll give more money.] I think that’s a good idea. I mean, even if
we don’t get something on him regarding a violation of the court order,
maybe we’ll get something that can be helpful to you. I mean, they’re
definitely up to something.
The tone of S-2’s voice and the hint that something suspicious was going on are
rhetorically creating a need, albeit subtly, for the company’s specialized surveillance
services. S-2’s language choices are part of the prosaic practices that rhetorically define
a problem and convince the client that his or her investment is worthwhile. Without this
everyday rhetorical practice, shared by investigators across the field, the actor-network
interpretations of social practices. Private eyes must successfully present a case that
their services are worth the price. Being in the business of private investigating means,
among other things, knowing how to understand client needs, interpret targets’ activities,
and sell an investigator’s expertise and services in such a way that convinces clients and
and rhetorical work. This type of “rhetorical work” appears to be largely institutionalized
and taken-for-granted. Most investigators did not account in interviews for the
Using client-supplied intelligence, S-2 “spot checked” and mapped the potential
routes that the target of an upcoming surveillance could take. This is an activity that he
“[was] not charging the client for, but would allow him to do a better job.” This practice
highlights the sometimes incompatible tensions between good business and good
investigating. The cost of doing pre-surveillance can be high, and is often not approved
reduces the chances that our billing will be challenged by clients who don’t think we got
them good results. There are no guarantees in this business” (I-30).
127
by pre-surveillance activities, than such “free work” may lead to more satisfied clients
and more referrals. Pre-surveillance, in other words, is not only good for investigations
but is an investment into customer service. The value of such potential advertising
offsets, in the long term, the immediate financial losses. S-2’s objective for the pre-
surveillance was to identify at each location the best places to “set-up” during the
surveillance, describing his practices as follows: “what we are up to right now, I have
different locations where I know the guy is going and I am just going to do quick spot
checks, drive bys, and see where we are going to set up.”
As he approached one of the first locations, S-2 indicated that when we arrived at
the location he was going to ask me where I'd set up if I was the investigator, adding
assuredly, “of course, I'll already know before you do where the best place to set up is.”
Regardless of what conditions or factors a private eye faces, “typically the goal is to
establish a position where there is a good line of sight, where one can ‘blend in’ or not
be too exposed, and where there are multiple exit routes” (Interviewee 3; I-03). Certain
objectives may, however, lead to a prioritization of some decisions over others. For
example, if the case will be closed by “getting burned” (caught by the target), one may
forgo opportunities for multiple exits in order to increase the ability to “blend in.”
Supposedly, the target of the surveillance frequented Jack’s Place after work.
Jack’s Place is a pub located in a strip mall on Illinois Route 157 and North Main Street,
Caseyville, Illinois (see Image 4.1). It was believed that the target would rendezvous
there with his alleged mistress and then travel with her to another unknown location. The
objective was to find out where the two went and to document their activities after
leaving Jack’s Place. Of course, there was no guaranty that the target would go to Jack’s
Place; but he worked at a large factory, so it was impossible to know where he would be
parked when his shift ended. Showing interviewees Image 4.1 and an interactive Google
suppose that the target will be at this location. How would you set up if you had to follow
Jack’s
place
As these maps show, this is not a surveillance-friendly area. The parking lot is
not large, so it is possible that the target would see an investigator, other patrons would
inquire about the investigator’s activities, or vehicles would obstruct the investigator’s
line of sight. If an investigator chose to park in the lot (Image 4.3, C or D), they said that
it would be necessary to park closer to the pub (location D). This would exacerbate the
problem regarding the investigator's cover being blown. Given the lack of development in
the area, there were not many places to park off site. An investigator could park across
the street in the Happy Cow restaurant parking lot (Image 4.1 and 4.3, area A), where S-
2 suggested he would park, but the problem with this, according to several interviewees,
is the high volume of traffic on route 157 and the strange medians and dividers in the
road (Image 4.2 or Image 4.3, B). If the target exited the parking lot and traveled north,
Jack’s place
Median
Since this was a standard infidelity case, some concern about getting burned
seemed warranted. However, I thought priority ought to be given to not losing the target
(domestic clients often don’t have much money), so I chose area C (Image 4.3). My
intuitive opinion, therefore, was contra S-2. But we were both consistent with other
investigators. Of the 23 interviewees that were asked about this scenario, 10 chose area
A, 9 chose area C, and 4 chose area D (Image 4.3). All interviewees struggled, however,
to give a concrete answer. Interviewee 23 (I-23), for example, suggested that “it would
all depend on the circumstances, so it is difficult for me to say right now. I mean, this
place looks good [pointing to area A, Image 4.3], but this thing here [pointing to point B,
Image 4.3] would almost make me want to set-up here [pointing to area C, Image 4.3]
and I'd have to take my chances.” Some even questioned the intelligence, “the
investigator [referring to S-2] took the client’s word that he [the target] would show up at
6
This is an example screenshot of interactive map shown to investigators during
interviews. To experience map and walk around, click on image or follow link:
http://tinyurl.com/y8agm2h.
130
this place [pointing to Jack’s Place, Image 4.1]; it sure would be nice to have a tracker
on the vehicle. I would question the intelligence more” (Interviewee 29; I-29).
D
B
With the assistance of Google Maps, this field experience became a profitable
one. My use of these new media technologies to obtain insights from interviewees, adds
Foremost, the disparate explanations that I received suggest that it is not clear to
investigators whether there are more or less effective field practices, especially when
taking into account financial constraints. Consistent with the claim that investigating is
both an art and science (Sarre, 2009), investigators seemed to rely on intuition or
understand these artful practices and to develop methods that will help private eyes
investigations, this field exercise, and the subsequent field interviews regarding this
scenario, provided insight into business-related decisions. It was clear that surveillance
strategies were prejudiced by agency owners’ financial concerns. First, many agency
Oh, that make sense now that you mention he’s a former cop and new
agency owner. He’s [referring to S-2] obviously used to using that
endless pot of money that public agencies have for investigations.
When you’re in this on your own, you can’t waste money on ‘pre-
surveillance activities.’ I’d like to, but I can’t afford it. But I never
thought of using Google Maps to do it. This is an interesting idea.
(Interviewee 18; I-18)
Second, when I asked if they would change their decision regarding where they’d park if
they knew the client had very little money, those who initially chose point C (Image 4.3)
would solidify their decision and say something to the effect “oh, then I would definitely
park here [pointing to area C]” and those who chose to initially park somewhere near
area A, said they would switch to area C. When asked why, most said something similar
to interviewee 10 (I-10), “it makes sense to be more risky, and I wouldn’t want to lose
him in this crazy intersection [pointing to area B, Image 4.3]. I want to get the best
possible results, and in this case if I don’t get him on the first try then I’ll have wasted my
client’s thousand dollars.” Only three interviewees (I-20, I-22, and I-24) said they would
try to convince the client to pay for a second investigator in another vehicle. I-24 added
that “[he] would still have two investigators and ‘eat the costs’ if the client couldn’t afford
The field experience described above and the insights from interviews based on
this example encapsulate many of the themes about agency owners as investigator-
entrepreneurs that I will present this chapter. Among other things, the example shows
the importance that agency owners place on making decisions that simultaneously work
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2’s everyday practices support my general thesis that private eyes are always already
business and the goals of investigating are compatible, but they are also at times
prosaic threats into opportunities. The descriptions from shadowing and interviews
pressures, including increased new entrants, increased competition from both private
and public agencies, and legislative changes. Combined with the lack of alternatives to
the popular culture accounts outlined in chapter 3, which tend to portray a more shady
storyline of private investigating, the future of some private investigating niches are
uncertain (e.g., process serving and skip tracing). In this part, I will highlight prosaic
threats to the field. While private investigators discussed several issues that are
common with all business owners in the United States, such as health care, I have not
included these as separate themes despite a strong inclination to do so. 7 I have chosen
Barring highly specialized expertise in certain niches, the barriers to entry into the
field of private investigations are relatively low. Although it is regulated by many state
legislatures, the requirements and process of meeting agency ownership are not
particularly stringent. In states with the most stringent rules, such as California, Illinois,
7
Appendix D provides an outtake from an interview that describes this issue.
133
New York, and Texas, the basic requirements for owning, managing, or being employed
by a licensed company are still low. 8 In Texas, for example, the licensee must
regulated by the Department of Public Safety (DPS), which oversees primarily public
Regulations that oversees a variety of industries from hair stylists to private investigators
(e.g., Illinois). In Pennsylvania, licenses are issued by county judges and there is no
accountable for wrongdoing. Even in states that have boards, investigators complained
about poor oversight. For example, I-21 noted that the board did not help her resolve an
8
See California Business and Professional Code §7512-73; Illinois Private Detective Act
225 ILCS 447,8 Article 15 §10; New York General Business Law, Article 7
§172.1; Texas Occupational Code §1702.113
9
In Texas, these are Texas State Troopers.
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Interestingly, in Texas the professional investigations industry lobbied to raise its own
rates to pay for more DPS investigators. According to interviewee 9 (I-09), the former
licensing fees helped raise millions of dollars in funds, which were used to hire an
additional 27 regulators. The issue could be, however, that regulators prioritize
Interviewee 5 (I-05) was so frustrated with her state regulatory board that she
was convinced the answer to the problem was deregulation of the profession:
I don’t believe in licensing in our state. And the only reason I do not
believe in it is because I have no clue what they’ve [the board] done in
the past, and I just – they don’t do anything for us if you ask me. They
don’t do anything but go against us, and I just don’t know why they
exist. … If you research what exactly the boards do I don’t think you’re
gonna find a board that supports the private investigator. They just
give the private investigator a hard time. Now don’t get me wrong,
there are people out there practicing private investigation that don’t
have a license, but it’s almost like they don’t go after them.
Regardless of one’s opinion on how to address the problem, these complaints highlight
the issue of poor oversight and regulation in the profession. Some boards publish online
the results of complaints. Of those that do (e.g., California, Georgia, and Texas), the
pattern seems to be that each month there are a dozen or so censures and license
The simplicity of entry into the profession and the lack of ongoing regulation
undergraduate degree can lower the requirement to just one year for license
qualification. One interviewee said she or he would “never hire someone with a four-year
degree. Even though they may be better employees in many ways, they’re also much
more likely to be the kind to use me to get a license, steal some of my contacts, and
then become my competition.” 10 Interviewee 8 (I-08) stated she “was currently looking
up various websites and planning to call a few investigators she trusts to see if they can
While I was shadowing S-5, he noted that he was “concerned because business had
been slow.” During a phone call with his field investigators, he asked them to “look at the
DPS website and find expired licenses and then pretext these agencies to see if they’re
The general concern for many agency owners was that “registrants” and
“PERCs” 11 would use their company to obtain important contacts, gain experience and
knowledge, develop a social and professional network, and ultimately meet the
qualification for agency ownership. They also were concerned that some would
“moonlight on the side.” 12 These concerns seem legitimate. The licensing process and
low start-up costs makes hiring additional support risky to agency owners.
Consequently, this affects how agency owners prosaically interact with their field
investigations, which is not very well. Shadowees S-3 and S-5 spent, on average, two
hours per day micromanaging their investigators in person and over the phone. They
10
This interviewee asked that I do not provide any identifiers in regard to this statement.
11
Field investigators in Texas and New York are called “registrants.” In Illinois, they are
called PERCs for “Permanent Employee Registration Card” holder.
12
In colloquial US English, “moonlighting” typically means taking a second job in addition
to one’s primary occupation. Agency owners used it a bit differently, referring to
contractors and employees taking jobs as if they had their own agency. In many
regulated states, this would be a misdemeanor violation.
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also often communicated in a manner that could be interpreted as belittling and hostile—
e.g., yelling at them over a minor error: “Dude, I can’t teach you common sense!” (S-5).
Another challenge, in the same vein as the issue above, is that the skills required
to be an investigator are neither highly regulated nor technical. In other words, education
does not present itself as major barrier to starting one’s career as a private investigator.
This leaves the field wide open for new entrants. In most states, there are no special
education. With the exception of two larger companies (those with more than 10
employees), agency owners indicated that they did not have formal manuals, such as
handbooks. To get started with a company, one must simply pass through an informal
application process with the company owner, 13 go through a background screening (if
states, this training is required by law, though not always adhered to by agency owners.
13
At a TALI conference session on business management, a session leader noted that
“for many of you, I know you often hire people during your first phone conversation.”
14
This was the term used by I-22 during our interview. As with seven other interviewees,
he criticized online PI training programs that “have you read some stuff and then take a
quick quiz and they send you a little certificate that says, ‘Now you know how to be a
PI.’”
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constitutes “qualified instructor.” This appeared to be the same in Georgia, where S-3
was engaged for 30 minutes in a heated phone conversation with a state bureaucrat
about what qualified as continuing education credit. Interviewees in Illinois did not seem
too concerned about adhering to this rule, likely because there are no filing
provided by the Department, that the employee has successfully completed the training.
The form shall be a permanent record of training completed by the employee and shall
be placed in the employee's file with the employer for the period the employee remains
with the employer” (IPDA 225 ILCS 447, Article 15 §25c). As interviewee 20 (I-20) noted,
assumption they won’t ever be audited. And this is risky business behavior that
“level-1” quiz administered by the Texas DPS. I-24 thinks “the quiz [was] created for
idiots and would be laughable, if only armed security guards weren’t taking it too.” The
pre-employment exam, which I took as part of my own employment in the industry, asks
test takers 40 true-false and multiple-choice questions, much like the following two
15
I took the 20-hour program offered at a local community college and I can’t say it
qualified anybody for work in the profession. The instructor mainly told silly “war stories”
from the field, cracked sexist jokes, and, among other things, noted that “I have to talk to
you about terrorism, let’s talk about how worthless TSA [Transportation Safety
Administration] is.”
16
http://www.txdps.state.tx.us/psb/testing/index.htm
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Example 2: Using simple, short words and sentences makes your report more
accurate.
a) True
b) False
On first brush, the two questions seem somewhat silly, if not offensive. But in
fairness to DPS, one must admit that the test writers have a sense of humor and are
interviewee 13 (I-13), who owns the largest firm out of all interviewees (39 investigators),
indicated that he promoted a senior investigator to quality control manager: “His job is to
read all reports for grammar, consistency, and objectivity.” I mentioned this earlier
interview to shadowee 1 (S-1), who had obviously become frustrated while working on a
tedious project of compiling one PERC’s field reports into a single document. It was
around two o’clock in the afternoon on the second day of shadowing and S-1 wanted “to
have an early day.” So he was working fast. At the time of his expressed frustration, he
had been working on the task for about 45 minutes. Suddenly, he let out a deep gasp,
leaned back in his chair, and thrust the keyboard drawer back under the desk. As he lit a
cigarette, I fired up my digital recorder. It had been idle for some time as I sat patiently
documenting his copy-and-paste activities and writing fieldnotes detailing the features of
his smoky office. “You know,” I said, “this guy down in Texas has hired someone to do
just that [indexically referring to what he was doing], because it is his experience, and I
would have to concur, that people can’t write worth a damn in this profession.” S-1
replied,
Now, that’s true. I’m the one that does this usually. It’s horrible. The
way these people write is horrible. They’ll write in all caps. …Here’s
the thing that bugs me, they don’t use complete sentences. They’ll
say ‘Showed up at scene.’ ‘Car was in parking lot.’ ‘License plate
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What S-1 inadvertently points out in his statement is that for a growing agency,
practice that he finds frustrating. What is more, when I asked him about formal training
programs, he indicated that new hires “ride along with older investigators for a couple of
days.” Consequently, it is likely that bad habits are transferred from one investigator to
another. During a recent visit to his firm, however, he highlighted changes he is making
to curtail these issues. His employees are all engaged in the process of documenting
practices for the purpose of an employee manual. But what his admission and the Texas
DPS quiz demonstrate is that sometimes what seems like “common sense” (e.g., looking
up the spelling of a word in a dictionary) is curtailed for various reasons, not limited to
insurance requirements, the capital investment required to start an agency is very small,
roughly $3,000 (see Table 4.1). This figure assumes that the owner-operator would
operate the company as a home-based enterprise and would be using his or her own
and business-related work. It is likely that the investigator will have accumulated the
necessary equipment while working for another firm, so this is not included in the initial
start-up costs. Consequently, it is assumed that the figure will be substantially higher for
individuals who do not have much equipment to begin with (e.g., retiring public
detectives who meet licensing requirements but have never had to supply their own
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Table 4.1 demonstrates it is very easy to “hang out a shingle” in the profession,
as the idiomatic expression goes. This is why it is risky for agency owners to hire field
establish their own operation. Several agency owners even admitted that they had
begun their own agency in a similar way. But this situation is not only risky to the
profession because it means an increase in firm failure rates. 17 Initial investment aside, it
is expensive to stay in business and get beyond the start-up phase in any industry
17
In Illinois, for example, the number of active licensees fell 125 in a single year (2000-
2001), when adjusted for new entrants in edition to those who did not renew from one
year to the next (www.ifdpr.com).
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work (e.g., defense, domestics, and fraud), their average monthly expenses, excluding
payroll, are approximately $6,000 each. Their fixed and variable expenses include things
such as database access (e.g., PersonLocate), Internet advertising (e.g., Google and PI-
utilities, and so on. In other words, just to have a take home a salary equivalent to
$4,000 a month, they had to be doing more than $10,000 in business, and some of them
were not. According to shadowee 4 (S-4), some months he grosses $20,000, in others
he may gross $2,000. 18 S-5 suggested that for new company founders, they should have
at least $30,000 in escrow to cover business and personal bills. For established firms, he
suggested that it is smart to have at least $60,000 to cover any unexpected bills during
slow periods. If the field of private investing is similar to other fields, many new entrants
will begin with very little financial cushion, exacerbating the rate at which they fail
(Shane, 2008).
High failure rates are problematic for the profession according to several
interviewees. First, agency owners may begin an investigation and then abandon it. This
is particularly likely when investigations are engaged in lengthy and ongoing cases for
insurance companies and attorneys. While some investigations can be reassigned and
steps can be taken to exit the industry on good terms, some private eyes do not take this
18
All interviewees referred to this as the “feast or famine” phenomenon, indicating that
the slowest months were near holidays, especially December: “Yep. We ride that ‘feast-
or-famine’ roller coaster of ‘it’s quiet then it’s real busy,’ ‘it’s quiet then it’s real busy.’
During the winter, I go snow skiing. It slows down close to Christmas and it stays slow
until the middle of January. The courts are closed, so the criminal defense work falls off,
‘let’s just stay together for the children’ and ’joy to the world and peace to all men’ and all
that lasts through Christmas, so everybody’s kind of tranquil. But then for Christmas, the
wife gets a set of pots and pans or a vacuum cleaner for her Christmas present and then
a couple weeks later, she’s cleaning the house and finds a receipt from the jewelry store
for diamond earrings and she knows she didn’t get them. So then our phone starts
ringing again.” (I-22)
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route. Consequently, there are some negative attitudes among attorneys and insurance
adjusters about the poor quality of work they get from private investigators. As I-22
noted,
conference sessions. TALI board executives and presenters stressed the importance of
TALI members following through with quality work products for attorneys and insurance
companies. An attorney who spoke at the TALI Midwinter Conference stressed this
point, noting that he simply does not rehire an investigator who doesn’t follow through “in
low-quality work has serious implications: “in my cases, the stakes are always the same
Second, low start-up costs mean that one can start a company as a hobby rather
than a business, which has consequences on how people deal with clients. This point is
made well during a friendly, though intense, exchange between Interviewee 10 (I-10),
who has been in business for 13 years and Interviewee 11 (I-11), who has been in
Though I-11 is making the point that he enjoys his work, what I-10 is suggesting is worth
Ashcraft, 2007). This appears to be something that TALI takes seriously. During an
interview with I-09, a former TALI President, he corrected himself: “In our industry, I
mean profession.”
consistent with entrepreneurship literature. According to Shane (2008), “the data [about
industries] show that entrepreneurs are more likely to start businesses in industries that
demand less capital, where the average size of firms—in terms of both number of
employees and the amount of assets—is lower, and where products are not
differentiated from each other” (p. 38). At year end 2009, there were approximately
1,800 active private detective licenses in Illinois, 2,330 in Georgia, and 5,248 in Texas. 19
investigators suggest otherwise. While agency owners may claim that “I always think
they’re [other agencies] partners and I always think I can give them some advice
because I don’t think any of them do the things that I do at all… they’re never a
19
See http://www.idfpr.com/dpr/, http://sos.georgia.gov/plb/detective/, and
http://www.txdps.state.tx.us/psb/quarterlytotals.htm. Texas data includes private
security, which is not represented in the Illinois and Georgia data. If Texas is consistent
with both of these states, it is highly probable that there are approximately 2,500
investigative agencies.
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encourage you to call another investigator to see what his prices are, but be careful!
Many guys and gals out there aren’t licensed and are operating illegally. You can link
from my website directly to the Department of Public Safety and see I’m legit and have
adds to the negative discourse about “seedy” private investigators. But the biggest
detriment to the field due to keen competition is that investigators do not often
order to counter negative perceptions of the field, proactively influence legislation, and
build influential associations. This is the “lone wolf” mentality, which is part ego and part
rugged-individualism:
It’s been my theory for years that if you put ten [private investigators]
in a room together, you’ve got 12.5 egos in the room. We are all high
ego people, most of us are type-A personalities, and we’re just driven
that way. … TALI is a diversified group, and our corporate attorney,
who’s also a member—he’s a lawyer and a PI—coined a phrase back
when I was president and we were having all this turmoil. He said,
‘We are an organization of mavericks. We all go our own way. We all
march to our own drummer.’ I agree.
Given the maturity of the profession and the lack of possibilities for product
innovation, one would suspect that a process of consolidation would have reduced the
understand this phenomenon. It is not entirely clear how large the market is (by number
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interpretation of the limited data available, it appears that the market is growing and
tracing.
Consolidation has occurred rapidly, according to I-04 and I-05, in the sister
industry of process serving because economies of scale (i.e., court paper volume) and
technological innovations have lowered the time and skill-levels required to serve court
notices and subpoenas. Only in extreme cases, where a court summons needs to be
delivered to a high profile target or in a dangerous area, such as Texas border towns
overrun by cartels, can an investigator charge a premium fee (I-11 charges more than
more regulatory scrutiny. For example, in the process service industry, where firms have
consolidated, workloads per firm have increased and wages have deflated. Low quality
employees and poor monitoring have spelled disaster for some firms. For example,
Major Legal, a process company in Minnesota, employed a process server who falsified
over 200 affidavits. While the forger faces perjury charges that could land him a life
sentence in prison, Major Legal is in the process of dissolving. Law firms and credit
agency have also had to spend expensive labor hours reviewing and re-serving
defendants (Lore, 2009). This has not been an isolated incident in the post-mortgage
bubble economy. The United States Congress, consequently, is considering bringing the
process service industry under the Fair Credit Reporting Act. These rapid changes will
likely force many companies out of the industry and increase consolidation. S-1 sent me
conference, which summarizes the concern of agency owners regarding this threat:
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“They [NAPPS members] are so lost as to what to do about technology… and the wave
of criticism foisted on the entire process service industry…. There was a big argument
about where to begin their efforts or how much it will cost and the benefit derived from it.
Illicit Activities
As with registrants and PERCs, some agency owners are also not engaging in
ethical practices. This has had, of course, repercussions for the industry. It has come
namely in the form of negative publicity (e.g., the Hewlett-Packard case) 20 and increased
regulation that inhibits what a private investigator can do. For example, until the Hewlett-
Packard case led to the crack-down and prosecution of several agency owners, it was a
common practice for private investigators to produce cell phone records either through
industry contacts or through pretexting. I-20 notes that for years he preached against
You know it’s, we’ve had some terrific fights [on the TALI listserv]. I
can remember 4 or 5 years ago when we had a half a dozen
investigators who managed to get people inside of these cell phone
companies. They were selling cell phone records, and I was
screaming and yelling over the listserv saying, ‘We can’t do that,’
‘That’s blatantly illegal,’ and ‘Somebody’s gonna get arrested for it!’
And everyone was telling me to shut up and mind my own business,
and that there wasn’t anything wrong with it. And then after the FBI
busted private investigators all over the US for doing that, and they
passed all these laws about pretexting, everyone stopped doing it.
Until the enactment of the “Telephone Records and Privacy Protection Act of
2006,” it was not explicitly illegal to obtain others’ cell phone records in the United
States. 21 However, the practice is ethically questionable. For agency owners who were
20
As noted in chapter 3, chairwoman of HP, Patricia Dunn, contracted a private security
firm to look into a media leak. The agency used pretexting techniques to obtain the cell
phone records of board members and journalists.
21
Before the law was passed, it was illegal in California. This is why the private
investigators working the HP case were eventually sent to prison. It was only a federal
crime in the United States to use pretexting to obtain financial records as defined by the
147
not among the first to be pursued or prosecuted in California, they escaped unscathed.
However, one never knows when they are going to become the unfortunate test case for
any questionable behavior. For example, investigators regularly noted that they felt they
were being monitored by government agencies, noting things like “I get calls all the time,
SpectorSoft’s Spector Pro, are frequently advertised on private agency websites. The
software is designed to allow interested parties (e.g., managers) to log and record
messages, emails, website visits, and so on. Intercepting electronic information is okay
crime (18 U.S.C.A. § 2511). While such software may be a legal and useful tool to
monitor activities where people do not have a high reasonable expectation of privacy
(i.e., work computer), court rulings have since interpreted shared home computers as
using password protected services. Even in the workplace these practices raise ethical
and productivity concerns (see Smith & Tabak, 2009). A suspicious spouse, therefore,
“Financial Services Modernization Act of 1999” (Pub.L. 106-102, 113 Stat. 1338). Case
law, however, set precedent for legal and civil action.
148
could be held criminally and civilly liable for using such software against his or her
spouse.
Some agency owners, however, still pitch this software for home use. While
shadowing an agency owner, she or he 22 informed a potential client about the criminal
and civil laws regarding the use of such software, but then proceeded to coach the
person about its potential benefits: “…and, look, if you do decide to use this software to
you and can save you some money in the long run—never tell anyone, your spouse,
your lawyer, me, if you happen to hire me, that you obtained information in this way.” 23
Because many state laws mirror the wording of the federal act, one can be punished
under state laws too. Of course, not every criminal case will be pursued, but there are
civil remedies that can be just as damaging. In Texas, for example, a person whose
action against the interceptor or discloser. The claimant is entitled to recover $10,000 for
and attorney fees and costs (Texas Civil Practices & Remedies Code §123.002-
123.004).
Similar programs and software, which can be sent as malware via text message,
can extract and intercept cellular phone information and conversations. For example,
there are several programs, or “Bloovers,” that allow users to hijack and intercept cellular
phone messages using Blue Tooth technology. Some software can give users the ability
to track a cell phone’s geographical location with an accuracy of a few hundred feet. Due
to the large hard drives and flash drives in today’s cell phones (especially iPhones and
Blackberries), it is unlikely that data will be written over. Using technology like Cellebrite,
22
Concealed for identity protection.
23
Nine investigators admitted in interviews that they sell the software and have coached
clients in similar ways.
149
which allows the recovery of “deleted data” from cell phones, forensic specialists and
private investigators have been able to retrieve data from employees’ and romantic
partners’ cell phones (the legality of this typically centers on issues of phone ownership
The major business-related issue facing investigators deals with how to classify
and pay registrants and PERCs. Most agency owners treat their “employees” as
independent contractors. By doing this, agency owners run the risk of finding themselves
in violation of private investigator acts and Internal Revenue Service (IRS) tax codes. In
regard to tax codes, the IRS stresses three key common law factors for determining
type of relationship. According to the IRS, “The general rule is that an individual is an
independent contractor if you, the person for whom the services are performed, have
the right to control or direct only the result of the work and not the means and methods
in interviews that they typically offer some training. I observed them directing the field
investigator in regard to when and where to be, dictating what kinds of behaviors are
complete jobs, and so on. Their workers appear to be, by IRS definition, “employees.”
The risk to agency owners is that a 1099 contractor may sue for unemployment benefits
or they may be required to pay back taxes and penalties. But even if agency owners are
investigator (i.e., registrant) must be a bonafide employee. I-20 again stressed his
24
A “1099” is synonymous with contractor. It is the number of the IRS form used to file
contract labor. In business settings, these terms are verbed. Employees are “W-2ed”
and “we 1099 them.”
150
This sticky situation clearly poses a risk for private investigator agencies not only in
terms of their own potential illicit activities, but in how they must cautiously deal with
Enacting Opportunities
In spite of the many direct and indirect pressures that agency owners face on a
everyday exigencies and institutionalized practices. In this part, I will account for how
opportunities, which may also emerge from others’ everyday deceptive practices. To
cheat, for example, one must engage in practices that leave a trail of suspicious
behavior for the investigator to follow and put together. The couple, by engaging in
infidelity, creates an opportunity. Without these various socially and culturally constituted
opportunities, there would be no need for private investigators. In short, without the sum
of all the daily performances of self and others, an objectivated and profitable 25 field of
25
Although I personally do not define profits solely in financial terms, most of the
investigators did. I am also defining “success” as “still in operation.” Though this adds to
the discourse of entrepreneurship as the study of profit making, it makes it easier to
describe everyday practices in terms of a phenomenological intentionality (i.e.,
151
practices could not emerge. Investigators who are successful appropriate everyday,
others). Such opportunity making, because of its taken-for-granted nature and lack of
the level of everyday interaction, however, leaves very little possibility for understanding
part, therefore, I will describe the ways in which opportunities arise and are enacted,
both strategically and prosaically, by private investigators. I will first describe how private
accomplish their investigative and business-related tasks. Second, I will describe the
business. As the examples will show, enacting opportunities does not require that an
entrepreneur create a new means-end framework (Shane, 2003), but may use the
reasons. First, they and their social contemporaries continue doing and believing in the
same things day after day. Second, social and legal institutions restrain individuals’
directedness toward a telos). The ends of a private investigator may be many, but
agency owners must break even to stay in operation.
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practices. Most of this section is dedicated to the first reason, so I will briefly mention
something about the second. Whenever a set of practices is restricted criminally, civilly,
practices, the possibility of doing surveillance and investigative work exists. (This is why
lobbying has become such a favored entrepreneurial practice.) For example, while I was
shadowing S-3, she received a call from a potential client who wanted to know if her ex-
husband, a recovering gambling addict, was violating his court order to halt such
activities. She was in the midst of a “nasty custody battle” and, as a condition of seeing
his children, the father could not gamble. The potential client had, therefore, a vested
interest in knowing whether he was gambling at a casino or, as she thought, on the
opportunity. S-3 had, of course, an immediate solution—“we can take his trash, put a
What is important to keep in mind, however, is that without the various conditions
and actor-networks, such as an institution that gives the authority to issue “court orders,”
investigation. Until there is a court order with an addict and an addict with a court order,
there is little justification for a costly investigation. S-3 did nothing to create this
opportunity, except participate in a shared cultural belief system that does not typically
world at a particular time. Her own entrepreneurial practices (e.g., marketing) were likely
important to inciting this call, but S-3 benefits from the institutionalized social practices
that motivated the call. The potential client’s knowledge concerning her available
options, which appear limited, is a product of the discourses of her time. Even the “seedy
26
A father with an addiction is not the same as a father without an addiction (see Latour,
1994).
153
stories,” in this instance, may have brought the potential client to the conclusion that
private investigators are best suited for what she likely sees as dirty work. There are, of
course, other ways that the client could resolve this issue without an investigator. She
could, for example, simply do the investigation herself. Anybody can take another’s curb-
side trash. 27 She could also simply ask her ex-spouse or, through her attorney and court
statements). Regardless of the numerous conditions that incited the call, S-3 must
rhetorically demonstrate that she has the means to transform the court order-addict into
a “target” of an investigation.
One would expect that during such calls, the private eye would use rhetorical
strategies that demonstrate sympathy. But showing care for the customer does not seem
to be the preferred strategy among investigators. Very pragmatically and bluntly, S-3
said that she would need a $5,000 retainer from the potential client. When the woman
was being indecisive because of the cost, S-3 hinted that she knew judges in the
potential client’s county. She also curtly added, “Look, we can give you a peace of mind
or, possibly, 100% control of your kids. Either way, you win. This is an investment in your
future. What is it worth to you? It’s a very easy decision. You can’t do it yourself; you
don’t want to look like a stalker. Call me back when you’re ready.” At first, I was
surprised by her tone, but I later realized that all the investigators I shadowed spoke to
clients in this way. As I tried to make sense of this with investigators during interviews,
they explained that “being curt airs a sense of confidence” (I-29). In short, they must
rhetorically create the perception that they are confident in what they do. They also often
try to sound busy, perhaps because “a busy investigator must be a good investigator”
27
To dissuade the potential client from doing any investigation on her own, S-3 said that
“she shouldn’t do any part of the investigation or else she [the potential client] would
appear to be a stalker.” While this is a legitimate concern, S-3 is slightly overstating the
case and is committing at least two rhetorical fallacies: an appeal to belief and an appeal
to fear.
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(Interviewee 28, I-28). The woman called back the following day and signed a contract.
In the business of private investigations, how and what one communicates with others
matters. I-09, who has been in business for more than 30 years, provided a nice
You just have to be frank with people. You know, I’ve landed some
great contracts just because people liked the way I act myself. So you
just tell people you’re gonna do a job. You make them believe it. You
make them understand that you have experience and expertise.
What’s the old adage? ‘When a man with money meets a man with
experience, the man with the experience gets the money, and the
man with the money gets the experience.’ So you just give them the
impression that you’re special and you’re going to be able to solve
their problem.
As with all human actors, private investigators and entrepreneurs rely on their
own “prior knowledge” and historicity, and count on others to interpret the context of
experience of an interaction as they do. The context of experience can be defined “…as
(a) the content of the totality of meaning-configurations brought together within one
moment or (b) as a meaning-context of higher order” (Schutz, 1967, p. 76). In order for a
context to be “productive”—and I mean this in all the varying meanings of the word—
actors must draw upon the “stock of knowledge at hand,” which is understood as “the
store of already constituted objectivities of experience in the actual Here and Now, in
other words, to the passive ‘possession’ of experience” (Schutz, p. 78). I will provide
three scenarios below that demonstrate entrepreneurial creativity and the enactment of
(e.g., playing as a shopper while doing surveillance), she or he counts on cultural others
to see the world similarly. In the scenarios below, so long as no questions are asked and
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other inter-actants go along with the entrepreneur’s game, then the private eye remains
in control of the context and can manipulate others. Each act within the scenario need
not be performed consciously. The institutional orders and beliefs of all actors, including
expected. The goals of actors in these situations may be multiple, but we can assume
that agency owners are partly doing these activities to improve their business reputation.
Scenario 1: Getting beyond gate keepers. As S-4 and I drove to meet with a
that “there are a lot of law offices in this building, and just about a week ago I went to this
building to drop off marketing materials to these attorneys.” “So how’d that turn out for
you?” I asked. S-4: “Not well. I went into the building, but the security guard kicked me
out.”
As we approached the security reception area near the elevators, S-4 whispered
to me, “It’s the same guy.” It did not appear that the guard recognized S-4. The security
guard called to the attorney’s office to verify that S-4 had an appointment. The meeting
with the attorney was set up to deliver a report, “which could have been faxed, but I told
the attorney it would be easier to drop off.” After we delivered the file to the attorney’s
office, which was located on the fourth floor, we then took the elevator to the tenth floor
Our arrival at each law office, except for one, went unquestioned. We would
enter an office, a receptionist would ask what we wanted, and S-4 would say, “I need to
deliver this to [name-of-attorney].” Most of the time, this worked, and the person would
take the manila envelope. As we walked out the door, I would catch the receptionist put
the envelope into an “in-box” or walk toward an office. In the office where our activities
were questioned, it turned into an opportunity for S-4. In this instance, the attorney was
present. Taking the manila envelope, the attorney asked “What is this?” Quick on his
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feet, S-4 quickly stuck out his hand and initiated a greeting. “Look,” S-4 stated, “I am a
local private investigator and I am just dropping off these brochures.” “Oh, okay,” the
attorney playfully replied, “but didn’t you read the sign on the door that said ‘no
information off; I don’t want anything from you. I just want you to know that I have a
Master’s degree and am a Spanish-speaking investigator.” It turned out that this attorney
outside the door, S-4 turns to me in excitement, “This is why you don’t pass up any
personally, two other firms from the building had called him. What is fascinating about
this example is how S-4 was able to accomplish this marketing activity. S-4 simply
played off of everyone’s prejudices and expectations. He used the expected in-order-to
motives of the situations and some deception. The interlocutors with whom he interacted
deceived themselves by going along with the protocol of a regular mail delivery. S-4
simply set-up the context and the actors did the rest. As Rawls (2006) notes,
The receptionists assumed that S-4 and I had received clearance form the security
guard, so they did not question our presence. The security guard, similarly, could not
foresee that S-4 had entrepreneurial motives. In the situation in which we met, S-4’s
expectations and routines, but changing his own motives, S-4 was able to get beyond
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two gatekeepers. Had S-4 immediately presented himself as a solicitor, for example, it is
likely that the marketing materials would not have been passed along. That he put the
materials in a plain manila envelope 28 gave off the impression that it was work related,
not marketing related. While this example is not what is typically accounted for in stories
During our interviews, S-4 and I interpreted the activities of our day together. I
noted that I was surprised the attorney was not upset that he violated the “no solicitation”
rule. “And why would they?” he replied, “I am different because I am not listening to that
advice; but most importantly, I have an advantage that others do not. I speak Spanish
I reinforced his story, offering legitimacy to his claims by saying that “opportunities arise
in everyday circumstances and conversations. And the thing is, since you broke some
28
Here we should not forget the role the envelope plays in making the interaction
possible (Latour, 2005). Objects’ roles in opportunity enactment are discussed in chapter
5.
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Though these are interesting examples, it is important not to lose focus on how these
opportunities emerge within the world and work of others. They are simply creative uses
S-4 and I-02 have not done anything that makes one more entrepreneurial than the
investigators to assist them with various tasks. S-5 asked me to go to a door and
pretend I was looking for a friend. As I did so, he shot video of the person who answered
the door. I was coached to “pretend [I was] at the wrong house.” In another instance, I
was asked to “entertain a client” while we waited at a court house so as to distract him
while S-3 “took care of business that he should not be involved in.” So that we could
save time, S-1 asked me to check an electric meter in the back of a foreclosed house (to
see if it was on or off) while he took photographs of the exteriors. Among other things, I
was asked to reach out of a car window and grab some curb-side trash as the
I was also useful in business transactions. For example, S-4 used my presence
during an initial meeting with a client. We met the client at a Waffle House in order to
sign a contract. At the start of the hour-long meeting, 29 he introduced me as one of his
investigators, a protocol I suggested to all interviewees so that the clients would not feel
29
Many investigators criticized the length of this meeting. They try to keep contract
signing to fifteen minutes. S-3 was the only one that charged a $250 intake fee, which
included an hour-long meeting.
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uncomfortable. At one point, while he was selling the potential client on his firm (which
was unnecessary, according to S-5, “if the client meets to sign a contract, they don’t
need to be persuaded”), S-4 said “our team is highly educated, he [referring to me] is
about to complete a Ph.D., I have a Master’s degree, and my colleague [his brother] at
S-3 utilized my entire visit as a lucrative venture. Our first few hours together
were a little awkward as she struggled to find the appropriate language to describe my
presence. For example, during a phone call she awkwardly said, “I have Craig here, a,
um, a student from Illinois University. He’s writing a paper about investigating.” When it
was clear that this did not receive favorable “wow-like” replies, she tried to adjust her
descriptions to little avail. Eventually, I said she should just say that I teach at a
During the first half of our day together, she made several calls to create
meetings throughout the week with key figures— a sheriff, a defense attorney, a judge,
and a television journalist. I thought, at first, that this was not going to yield insight into
her everyday business practices. But as our week together progressed, it became clear
that this was, in fact, part of her ongoing business strategy. She was, as I-04 had
informed me, “a ruthless self-promoter.” It was not that I could bolster her image, but I
was a “good reason” to meet with these important people. “It’s Georgia, after all,” she
judge could mean favorable court treatment, something useful in a criminal defense
case. S-3’s strong connection to the sheriff’s department meant increased access to the
jail, a good thing for any client needing to speak with an investigator or attorney late at
night. The journalist, Jim Strickland, is the “Channel 2 Action News Consumer
Investigator” for WSB-TV Channel 2, the ABC affiliate of the Atlanta and South Georgia
market. S-3 has compiled onto a DVD several of the special investigative reports she
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has done with Jim Strickland. She hands this DVD out to everyone she meets. My
presence was a “good reason” to meet these important people; she told them I was
writing a book about her and needed to ask them questions. By simply meeting with
average rate for her services ($145 per hour compared to the usual $65-$85). When
potential clients call her, she mentions these connections frequently: “I personally know
Jim Strickland, the consumer reporter for Channel 2;” “Oh, that won’t be a problem, I
know the judge up there, so we need to get your hearing moved to that county”; “You
might recognize my last name [deleted], you know my family goes way back in that
county”; and, “You know, if you need a criminal report filed, I can make a quick phone
call and the police will be there quick. My husband is a police sergeant.” During every
phone call, except those from clients complaining about their bills, she mentioned a
bilingualism as a way to sell his services. (I-08 also uses her bilingualism as a major
selling point.) While attorneys seem to appreciate that S-4 is a Spanish speaker, hiring a
firm with a Spanish speaking agency owner is not the only option for clients. They could
interviewed, for example, two agency owners who advertise Spanish speaking services,
though they themselves do no speak fluent Spanish. One keeps on staff a Spanish
speaking field investigator and the other sub-contracts with firms such as S-4’s. These
opportunities. This is why one could make a case that having a diversified labor force in
language speaker. Such clients may feel that an interview will require an investigator
who is culturally and physically similar to interviewees. This means that when an agency
owner claims that his or her company is comprised of “minority specialists,” as I-08 does,
people will likely expect that the company and its investigators are minorities. Of course,
anthropologists and sociologists do. But as S-4 (I-17) highlighted, his cultural knowledge,
in combination with his Spanish fluency, helps him obtain results a non-Latino would
miss:
In this instance, it may be more productive for S-4, himself an immigrant, to conduct the
interviews. His understanding of the operation and the potential identification between
him and the undocumented workers will likely open communicative avenues that would
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otherwise have remained closed. Trust is established in the course of conversations, but
Bruni, Gherardi, & Poggio (2005) note, “as well as being an economic phenomenon,
entrepreneurship can also be read as a cultural one…. [W]hen men and women set up
context” (p. 1). While these authors primarily reference the cross-reading of gender and
Many interviewees referenced issues of gender, age, race, class, and sexuality,
both as potentiality and as a barrier. Coding of interview transcripts shows that there
sexuality. Investigators understood that there are certain ways of “doing” gender or race
that makes a difference in interactions with potential and actual clients. They also
white investigator will likely draw more attention. Similarly, a black investigator in a white
neighborhood may be seen as more suspicious than a white investigator, and a white
target may pay more attention to a non-white investigator when being trailed. In other
words, “when it comes to doing undercover investigative work, one must factor identity
into the equation” (I-29). Many investigators do. I-22, for example, noted during our
I think I’m gonna take three more [employees] on that are in their
twenties because of the alleged-cheating-spouse cases. A lot of these
folks are in their twenties, thirties, maybe even forties, mid-forties or
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This example suggests that the impressions one “gives off,” deliberately or not, matter to
the success of a case. These impressions may even determine what niche an
investigator settles in. In short, there are rhetorical dimensions to one’s corporeality,
which can be used to an investigator’s advantage, but can also become liabilities in
various settings. Utilizing performances of identity and using one’s body rhetorically is an
enhanced by how one understands and uses these factors in everyday situations. The
extent to which investigators’ identities play a role in their successes and failures can
What these scenarios demonstrate is that not all opportunities necessarily arise
through innovation, nor are they “discovered” as the traditional literature tends to
suggests (Eckardt & Shane, 2003). Instead, opportunities may be enacted over time
In this section, I highlight the rhetorical practices that investigators use to support
their monetarily valuable investigative and business practices. If we could return to the
streets of early 19th Century France, where Vidocq was developing some of the
important practices of private investigating, things that are taken for granted today—e.g.,
investigation. Billable services that clients simply accept today likely would have been
questioned.
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At its peak, Vidocq’s agency was seeing up to 40 clients a day. He was not, of
course, the only agency in town. Thus, he was entrepreneuring as part of his everyday
concerns. For example, he had to establish investigator work protocol, market his
company, and lobby for the legitimation of rules and procedures (Vidocq, 1935/2003).
Furthermore, just as issues arose between the U.S. public and Pinkerton, Vidocq and his
crew were heavily criticized by the Parisian public for their lewd behaviors, corrupt
This was, at the very least, a rhetorical strategy to show that he was committed to
within the expectations of clients, and defend practices when they are called into
question. Agency owners do this very subtly, often dropping references to law (for
they are using a constitutive rhetoric—a rhetorical style that seeks to constitute an
audience of “clients” and “potential clients.” The private investigator only benefits from
clients as important. In other words, private eyes have to rhetorically maintain the
ideology that legitimates particular practices: “[I]deology is material, existing not in the
realm of ideas, but in that of material practices. Ideology is material because subjects
enact their ideology and reconstitute their material world in its image. Constitutive
rhetorics are ideological not merely because they provide individuals with narratives to
inhabit as subject and motives to experience, but because they insert ‘narratized’
business interests are also highly institutionalized. This means that they are likely
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unaware of their participation in this social ordering. But when private investigators meet
their “narratized” clients and other actors in practical circumstances (e.g., interviewing
witnesses and testifying to jurors), they must appear legitimate. To appear “as
something” requires rhetorical work. In this regard, investigators are always already
engaged in the primordial function of rhetoric, which, according to Michael J. Hyde and
Craig R. Smith (1979), “is to ‘make-known’ meaning both to oneself and to others.
reality. Rhetoric is the process of making-known that meaning” (p. 348; italics in original).
This hermeneutic and epistemic rhetoric draws from the interpretation of the pragmatic
exigencies of the particular space, place, and time, and is creatively translated by
investigator is offering “makes sense.” The themes that follow are practices that draw
from prosaic and institutional orders. They show how private eyes use rhetoric to shape
the perceptions of clients in ways that are financially meaningful to the client and
investigator. This section is perhaps the most insightful for investigators because it offers
Closing the deal. Agency owners consistently pointed out that when they
receive an initial phone call from a potential client it is “not a hard sell” (S-3). This is
because, as I-21 noted, “when people call they want help. That’s why they called us.
They don’t know which way to turn sometimes to find the information or to get help, so
that’s what we try to do.” Agency owners simply need to demonstrate that they can
resolve some of the (potential) client’s problems. This demonstration is also a rhetorical
act, which often takes place, at least initially, via mediating technologies. A potential
30
Barry Brummett (1976) notes that “rhetoric is in the deepest and most
fundamental sense the advocacy of realities…. It is the function of managing
meaning within social arrangements, and is thus a dimension of the countless
acts and objects comprising a cultural environment” (p. 38).
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client will see an internet page and have initial reactions to both its design and the types
of claims that are made on it. This is why I was surprised to come across so many poorly
designed websites. Several interviewees criticized other investigators and noted that it
projected a negative image for the profession. For example, I-24 noted that “there are
these silly magnifying glasses or Sherlock Holmes images [on websites]—I don’t
Given that websites are increasingly an important site for first impressions, 31 it is
not uncommon to find in the first few lines of text the following type of claims: “United
a full service, professional investigative agency serving primarily the Dallas & Fort Worth
metropolitan area…We have investigated criminal and civil cases since 1980 ranging
Research Group is a full service bilingual private investigation agency. Our private
establish, among other things, an impression that the company has something unique to
offer a (potential) client and that, foremost, their experience and professionalism will be
While shadowing and interviewing, I was present for several phone calls between
investigators and potential clients. 32 What surprised me most, which I have previously
noted, is just how callous agency owners were. They did not try to establish rapport with
the potential client. They did not, for example, say things like, “well, I am sorry that you
are in the position that you are” or “I understand how painful this must be for you.”
31
Although the Yellow Pages is still the primary first stop for people seeking local
services (“Dial I for Internet,” 2008)
32
Agency owners always answered their phones, even during interviews.
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Instead, they interrogated the potential client by asking the following types of questions:
“What makes you think that he is cheating?”; “Why do you suspect your business partner
some point in the conversation, they almost always would claim, “Well, if you suspect
that she (or he) is (cheating, stealing, hiding assets, abusing, etc.), you are probably
right.” During interviews, I asked why they speak to potential clients in such a brusque
manner. Most of them replied that they want to sound objective and they want to project
confidence. “Engaging in such gushy talk will make you sound less competent. They are
calling an investigator, not a counselor. They [clients] will not appreciate your sympathy;
Individuals who call a private investigator, particularly for domestic cases, are
initially very reluctant. “I suspect that they likely go through cognitive dissonance about
wanting to have someone they love followed. They themselves feel like they’re doing
something shady” (S-4). Given that the popular narratives are not particularly positive
about the private investigating profession, it likely adds to the dissonance. Potential
clients may fear that they are engaged in a seedy business exchange. Consequently,
private investigators do not tend to ask for a caller's name or telephone number until
later in the conversation. This means that it is important that the person answering the
telephone have the authority to speak with potential clients. Callers do not, at least in my
[domestic] client’s sensory perceptions are enhanced, they are clued in because they
are nervous about losing money or hiring a shady character—so they’ll catch on if you
Where the dissonance is less, say with attorneys, they are also still concerned
with professionalism. Consequently, “they are searching for whether the investigators
sound like they are inexperienced, overselling their experience, what they can do, and
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what services they can really offer” (I-10). When I was shadowing S-3, for example, she
was obviously more cautious when speaking with her attorney clients, providing clues
during the conversation that her investigators would be cautious, “well, I am not going to
do anything, especially record anything unless you ask me to.” A phone call with a
potential domestic case client, however, led to the following claim, “we’re going to do
everything we can to find out if he’s up to something.” To “close the deal” an investigator
needs to deploy various communicative tactics and use rhetorical strategies that work for
them. The evidence shows that investigators have developed similar rhetorical styles,
apparently independently.
while shadowing S-3. She was speaking to a potential client who was seeking
information regarding her husband’s suspected infidelity. As usual, S-3 had the woman
on speaker phone so that I could listen to the conversation. The woman rambled for five
minutes about all the things her husband was doing to hurt her emotionally. Eventually,
S-3 cut the woman off and said, “If you think he is cheating on you, he probably is. What
we can do for you is a thorough investigation, which would include following him and
recording his activities. We will get as much information from you during your intake so
we know when the best time to follow him is.” The woman seemed to understand that S-
3 wanted to get “down to business” and immediately asked, “well, how much is this
going to cost do you think?” “Investigations typically run about $2500 because we don’t
know how active he is going to be.” “I see,” the woman hesitantly replied. “Well, let me
tell you something, either you want the information or you don’t, I can’t sell you on that. If
you want it, it’s worth it to you. This is an investment in your future. If we find out he’s
cheating, and it sounds like he most likely is, well let me ask you, do you have children?”
The woman replied affirmatively. “Then this is even better for you, because if you’re
talking divorce this could mean better leverage for custody, child support, and alimony.”
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After about ten more minutes, the woman agreed to the $250 intake interview, and by
the end of the following business day she had signed the contract and paid the retainer.
Investigators typically coached people where to get money (e.g., family). If the
person seemed slightly reluctant, they pushed a bit harder and tried to get the client to
skip a personal meeting and contract by fax or internet. Many investigators post their
contract on their websites and have mobile internet connections so they can always get
a potential client a contract. Many also accept payment via internet, so that no matter
where they are, the client can get a contract and make a payment or deposit. S-3
explained this practice, “…if you don’t get the money right away, they may do something
else with it. When you ask for a $5000 retainer… this person might go out and buy a
computer or pair of diamond earrings instead. We’re dealing with emotional people.”
In Georgia, it makes sense to use the language of investment for domestic cases
because, unlike most states, it is not “no fault”—proof of infidelity could mean getting
more assets from a divorce. It literally is an investment when put in these terms.
However, S-3 also told clients that it could be an investment in that “once you provide
proof to your husband that you know what he is doing, you might be able to begin
mending the relationship.” I shared the idea of using the term “investment” with several
other investigators, who though it was, as I-17 put it, “excellent advice” (I-17).
Strategic positioning. Agency owners often employ a tactic that I have labeled
strategic positioning. This is using one’s knowledge, skills, ability, identity, and so on in
creative ways to gain power or control over targets, clients, or others. It can also be a
I observed S-3 change her last name several times. She was not pretexting, so I
thought this was interesting and asked her about it. She explained, “I have two last
names, my maiden name and my husband’s last name.” She continued, discussing how
she manages her image through her office, her website, and her last name:
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If you’ve got a nice office and everything sounds good, they’re gonna
hire you. I mean people hire me just on the fact that people think I
have a nice website they think is cool, they know I’m a woman, and
they see that my name is Italian. And they go, ‘well, you’re definitely
not Italian because you’re talking about ‘y’all’ and I said, I know, my
husband’s Italian.’ So I’ve gotten business, very big business from the
north just on my last name. And I told my husband, this is - my last
name is Irish, my last name is [omitted]. And see my dad’s brother is a
millionaire and he lives in Walton county, so when I go in Walton
county or talk to people from there [referring to the person she just
talked to], my name is … [First, maiden, and married names omitted].
language that draws upon his or her audience’s prejudices. For example, S-3’s claim
that she “gets business from the north because of an Italian last name,” in addition to an
earlier admission in an interview that she did not name her company “Southern” because
she expected people would think she is stupid, demonstrates how she strategically
positions her name to project a particular business identity. I-18 and I-19 (a husband and
wife team) also described how they use I-19’s accent and I-18’s gender in strategic
ways:
CE: So even with attorneys, you would use that sort of language? It’s an
investment rather than an expense?
I-18: It’s a mixture. I guess an element of it is that I rely on my Englishness as
well. I think you have to capitalize on…
I-19: …On what you got.
I-18: …on all and any assets that you’re able to offer. [You need] to make
people think, maybe not think, but make them understand and appreciate
that you can do what you say you’re gonna do.
CE: Do you think there is sort of a bias there, a positive bias?
I-18: I know that’s there. I mean, I know it’s wrong, but…
I-19: If you [referring to I-18] had maybe a different accent, it wouldn’t go over
the same way.
I-18: I do try to capitalize on it. I think they think ‘educated, sophisticated.’ As I
said, I’ve met a number of paralegals recently at big attorney offices, and
I make sure that they ‘enjoy’ my accent, my British-ness [laugh]…
I-19: And then I meet the lawyers. [Indicating she meets with the lawyers
because she is an attractive female].
CE: That’s great.
I-18: We have to play to our strengths, and that’s what it’s about. We use our
strengths, and if it’s a male environment, you know what I mean? It’s very
much a case of working to…
I-19: Some people don’t want, they think men are more intelligent, you know?
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I-18: Sometimes, particularly in certain parts of Texas, they only want to speak
to a guy. They don’t want…
I-19: I get a lot of people that think he’s the brains so, great. That’s fine. I don’t
care.
I-18: They think she just answers the phone, so yes, we have to play to that.
You’re my girl in the office, my office manager. You know, we just have to
do that so our company appears bigger than a two-person, husband-wife
operations…
I-19: Which I love.
I-18: Keep our perspective, and, yes, I call her my office manager.
[All laugh.]
This strategic gender role playing seems to be common among entrepreneurs. Bruni,
Gherardi, and Poggio (2004) provide an ethnographic example from a small Italian
What these examples show is that investigators can rhetorically position themselves
using their identity while playing off others’ assumptions. Strategic positioning is not
subtle rhetorical claims that plant suspicions into the minds of their (potential) clients and
targets. While S-3 was speaking to the woman on the phone regarding the belief that her
spouse was cheating, she noted that “if you think he is cheating, he probably is.” Other
shadowees also did this. Even on their websites, they use a language of suspicion, “trust
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your intuition,” “one in three marriages ends in divorce,” “adultery undoubtedly causes
the greatest heartache in any marriage,” “do you suspect a company is acting
irresponsibly?” and “do you know who your business partner is?” Of course, they then
present their company as the best solution to these problems: “Disprove or confirm
suspicions of adulterous spouses with the assistance of one of our undercover agents”
calls. As with their websites, investigators told potential clients to “trust their intuition”
and “to believe in their fears,” and they would often hint to current clients that the best
example, S-4 had received a phone call from a client who wanted to thank him for a job
well done. When asked what the client had decided to do, the client indicated that he
and his wife were in couples counseling. S-4 congratulated him, but added a caveat: “I
am happy to hear things may work out, but the best thing you can do for yourself is to do
a fidelity check in about six months, make sure she is not back to her old ways.”
Small delivery companies also tend to hire private investigators. High volume
movement of goods creates ample opportunities for employees and drivers to steal
merchandise. When S-5 met with a potential client, he noted during the meeting that
“employees come up with some pretty creative ways to steal merchandise” and he
reminded the potential client that “Robbery occurs every one second, property crimes
every three seconds. Chances are they are doing something, even if it is just not driving
safely. Money spent on surveillances for a business is never lost. It’s either due diligence
that moves beyond direct persuasive claims into prosaic practices and conversations
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that function rhetorically. Alliance building typically occurs with attorneys, insurance
adjusters, and business owners because domestic clients are typically not good sources
for referrals. However, as I-21 noted, “with attorneys, it is important to stay in their
minds” (S-21). In other words, private eyes do not typically take clients of cheating
spouse cases golfing or send them holiday cards. With insurance adjusters and
attorneys, however, agency owners had better because “if they [e.g., attorneys] don’t
Strategies for building alliances were typical. Investigators said they often call
their important contacts and have mundane conversations about work and family life and
they send flowers on Secretary’s Day. But I was surprised by a few unique strategies. At
the TALI conferences, for example, new investigators were coached to target younger
attorneys just coming out of law school. Young attorneys, according to a session
speaker, “need all the help they can get when they first get started, so offering a
discount or some free work is a good strategy to build up their faith and confidence in
you. Then as they move up into higher positions within a company or get more business,
investigators that one of the most “strategic things you can do in your relationship with
who often are the ones who must call or find private investigators for a particular case.
For this reason, S-4 said he speaks with female paralegals in a “flirtatious” and
“flamboyant” manner:
of this place and go somewhere tropical.’ ‘Yeah, you’re right. How can
I help you?’ [falsetto voice] ‘This is who I am.’ “Ahhhh.” So, within a
week, two weeks, a month, they will call me and say ‘[I-17], remember
me? I’m the lady who sat and you complimented the blouse?” ‘Of
course.’ ‘Well, the attorney so-and-so wants to know when you could
come by and have a meeting with him.’ And, I’ve made like $15,000-
20,000 just off of nice comments.
attorneys will call us and say ‘I need to know who owns this vehicle, I’ve got a license
plate,’ or something like that. ‘Okay, here ya go.’ You have to have quick turn around
and…I mean, we have quick turnaround time, and that’s part of our strategy” (I-22).
What “being quick” says is that “you are an important client.” Attorneys need to know
that an investigator will attend to their needs quickly, especially when it comes to
interviewing witnesses. As I-08 noted, “the first one to get to a witness has the
advantage. You want to get to them before they change their story.”
Rhetoric(al) Matters
This chapter demonstrates that rhetoric matters. The above descriptions highlight
that the prosaics of everyday entrepreneuring requires the use of rhetorical strategies
both in business and in investigative matters. From the point of view of communication
entrepreneurs should practice becoming better rhetoricians. Much of the work product
Their preeminent work product, the report, as I will describe in the next chapter,
becomes forensic evidence and may even be understood as evidence for deliberative
action (e.g., whether or not a business person will cut ties with her or his partner).
Entrepreneurship researchers should not take for granted the role of everyday rhetorical
styles partly determine which entrepreneur gets venture capital and retains customers.
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strategies that they use to enact opportunities. In this chapter, I continue with the theme
opportunities. Objects interact with other subjects and objects; so they have, in the
words of Arjun Appadurai (1986), “social lives.” As social actants, the equipment of the
sacred product of the private investigator. The report is the exchangeable value-object of
private investigators. While having some qualitative differentiation, the report can be
been diffused.
capable of producing better reports than others. 1 In describing the process of producing
a report, I will draw upon actor-network-theory (Latour, 2005) to account for how private
eyes hermeneutically document and rhetorically translate others' practices into the report
as an entrepreneurial object. I will suggest that reports’ movement into other fields
1
This is so for a variety of reasons. Perhaps some investigators have received better
training, they are better writers in general, they are better observers, or they are more
motivated.
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The tools and objects that private investigators use can be described based on
their use, showing in what ways they are important entrepreneurially. For example, the
documented activities and putting them into written descriptions (i.e., legal reports), and
presenting the report as testimony in a courtroom requires rhetorical effort. The process
Adobe Acrobat, and so on, participate in transforming everyday practices (e.g., holding
hands in public) into a profitable object (i.e., testimony). The actor-network “investigator-
equipment” converts the observed activities into words and images that are used as
rhetorical—are used to prove clients’ cases or suspicions. But the field activities could
also become deliberative or epideictic rhetorical data for lobbying, books, blogs, and
press releases, which some private investigators and state associations are actively
“Investigative data” has commercial value, but only after it is translated into a
report. The report is an artifact that demonstrates that an investigative process has taken
place, and it allows investigators to turn everyday action into reportable and accountable
profit opportunities. Following an object rather than the investigator yields different
demonstrates why entrepreneurs must protect their commodities. So long as the report
produce it can continue to be valuable too. This is an important point. For example, the
2
Case in point: I-09 noted that many bills against the profession are often proposed by
legislators who have been the unhappy target of an investigation. Fortunately, most of
these legislators were trailed by non-licensed or non-affiliated members. Thus, he
indicated that while he was chair of TALI he would often use examples from his
investigations and other members to compare the methods he used to those used by
non-affiliated investigators. He suggested that often the evidence of unethical behavior
was an issue not of investigators, but unlicensed ones.
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begin to suspect that private investigators’ reports are “worthless,” say because the
general public has come to suspect they are typically falsified, then attorneys will no
not, attorneys will find other ways to obtain information and the mediating role of private
shadowing S-2. This account highlights the threats imposed by some new technologies.
Some objects, as I will describe, often disrupt practices and lower knowledge transfer.
These same technologies, however, are also creating new opportunities and strategic
possibilities for private investigators. I then turn attention to the report and its production,
which requires that investigators translate others’ everyday activities into rhetorical,
forensic claims. I will provide examples of new reporting methods that are possible with
studies.
In chapter 4, I related a story in which S-2 and I discussed how I would set up if I
were conducting the investigation at a difficult intersection. This field account begins just
as that field exercise was drawing to a close. So that I could obtain his employee’s
impressions of his management style, S-2 phoned one of his field investigators to
arrange an interview. The meeting never occurred. Five minutes after S-2 ended the call,
3
The use of the term mediator is important. Latour (2005) notes that “mediators
transform, translate, distort, or modify meaning or the elements they are supposed to
carry” (p. 39). Banal conversations between clients and private investigators and
sentences in reports (the style, grammar, content, etc.) can become important mediators
for maintaining the PI-client network. Investigators who do not use mediating
communication effectively will not likely retain clients.
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the field investigator called back to say that “the target was on the move.” S-2 said that
“he’d be on his way to assist him,” but did not ask directions. “Do you know where we’re
going?” I asked. “Oh, yeah, I have ‘sat on’ this guy several times already,” he replied,
“and I have the location programmed into my Garmin here [GPS 4 navigator].”
northbound on Interstate 255, I did not stop the digital audio recorder. What follows are
sections of the transcript from the telephone interaction between S-2 and the field
investigator, which highlights the difficulty of giving real-time driving directions and the
risks of relying on GPS technology. The field investigator, by his own admission in a brief
conversation following this incident, said that he almost always relies on GPS while
driving. In this example, the GPS unit creates a communication barrier between S-2 and
his field investigator (FI). The following example highlights the difficulty of
purposes of giving a sense of the pace of the dialogue, I have included the
4
Global Positioning System
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you onto the campus of SIU Edwardsville, you don’t want that.
Veer to the right, and continue on 157 into Glen Carbon and
eventually back into Edwardsville. He is doing a round robin. So, if
you find him or catch him in that area anywhere, just let me know
and I will meet with you wherever he is at.
In the midst of his cell phone conversation (meaning he is driving with one
hand)— which was competing with the annoying music of Gavin Rossdale (“Love
Remains the Same”)— it began to rain lightly. It was the type of rain that only needs the
occasional wipe, so S-2 had to trigger the windshield wiper manually. Including driving,
this made four distractions. But S-2 was also simultaneously trying to locate the target’s
address on his GPS unit, eventually abandoning the effort to keep one hand on the
wheel (there were two moments while traveling at 75 miles per hour that he steered
vehicle with his knee). 5 When he ended the phone call at 01:22:03 minutes, S-2 noted
that I should “not be scared about his driving; sometimes I get back into cop mode, and I
am very good at multi-tasking—speaking on the phone, talking over the radio, and
The FI called again. I have deleted the short intervals of the FI speaking. The
01:23:40:: S-2: Hey, what’s up man? [11 seconds] Aaghh, you want to go
the other way. Oh! I thought you were coming back to 57 (slight
laugh). [2 seconds] I, no, you just want to turn back around. Did
you go Maryville? [2 seconds] No, you just want to turn back
around and go north. [2 seconds] If you just stay on 159, I, I am
coming back up, I’ll probably be by his address before you will. [4
seconds] So, I’d. I’d like to meet with you somewhere if you’re
going to sit on him for maybe another hour or so… [3 seconds]
Um, you know where we ate that day? At the 54th Street Bar and
Grill? [10 seconds] You’re, you’re on the road right now. If you
turn around and start going north on 159, you will go right past,
the, uh, 54th street. [18 seconds] If you are on 159, just turn
around and go north and come back the way you were. [2
5
Shadowing can be dangerous for a variety of reasons—this is one example.
6
He is not the only one, of course, that gets into this mode, suggesting that it is a
product of our culture, the private investigative profession, or both. On multi-lane roads
in heavy, rush-hour traffic, I held up a laptop so that S-5 could read it and S-3 put on
cosmetics.
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As image 5.1 shows, highways 157 and 159 are parallel and run north and south.
It is not clear exactly where the FI is at time 01:15:30, but we can ascertain from S-2’s
statements that he thinks the FI is traveling eastbound on I-270, between 157 and 159:
“…go up to 459, to exit 13, take 159, the off ramp at 159, just cross the bridge come
back south, or come back west” (01:16:27). During one of the inaudible moments, the FI
must have explained to S-2 that the target did a u-turn, which almost assures that the FI
is not on I-270. 8 The FI is not where S-2 assumes, so any instructions that S-2 gives will
further confuse the FI. Assuming that the FI is on I-270, S-2 instructs him to take exit 13
(it is exit 12 that intersects with 159) and do a u-turn in order to track back west on I-270.
cross the bridge [and] come back south, or come back west.” When S-2 corrects himself,
he does it without much pause or emphasis. It sounds, when listening to the digital file,
as an illogical either-or proposition. S-2 communicates that the FI can either come back
south or west. I suspect the FI understood what S-2 actually meant, but if he did not
7
At this point, while the field investigator speaks, he looks at his speedometer and
notices that he has slowed to approximately 50 miles per hour. He accelerates back to
the posted 65 miles-per-hour limit.
8
While not apparent in image 5.1, because of its size, there are only two roads—
Meridian Road or Glen Carbon Road—that cross I-270 between 157 and 159. Both of
these roads are overpasses and have no entry or exit ways onto I-270. This is why I
assume that the field investigator is not on I-270, but likely on either 157 or 159 traveling
southbound.
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understand that S-2 was suggesting he do a “u-turn,” he would have headed south,
away from the direction desired. This is one plausible explanation as to how the FI
ended up in Maryville (point B). The FI should have simply been told to travel west when
General
location of
target’s house.
C 01:15:30
Approx.
C 01:23:40
4.5 miles
D*01:15:30
Jack’s Place, D
01:23:40
B
15.0 miles from point A
indicates, that he would arrive at the highway 157 exit at the same time as the FI: “…I
will probably be just at 157, just about the time you get to there” (01:16:41). He planned
9
Notes: A = Edwardsville; B = Maryville; C = S-2; D = Field Investigator; D* = Supposed
location of Field Investigator; Arrows = Direction of travel; Times correspond to in-text
transcript data.
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that the FI, once they intersected, would travel northbound toward the target’s home
(located north of Edwardsville). When it was clear that some confusion had occurred (at
time 1:23:40), S-2 was already on highway 157 heading towards Edwardsville (point A),
but the FI was on highway 159 in Maryville. By this time, S-2 had turned the music off, it
was no longer raining, and he was driving below the posted speech limit. In other words,
This example highlights the problems that can arise with so many technological
distractions in an investigator’s environment. It would have been better for S-2 to instruct
the FI to pull over and figure out where he was by using a map. From my own
experience as a field investigator, I can attest that this is annoying; however, I can now
appreciate this as a good practice. Driving and giving instructions may require too much
FI to “turn right,” which could mean any direction. Had S-2 simply said, “go west on I-
270” or “pull over and find out where you are at” (as I frequently heard S-5 tell one of his
investigators), the FI could have assessed his own situation and decided what actions
This example illustrates the importance of having company field protocol, training
investigators to use such protocol, and learning and practicing how to communicate
investigators, it can also enhance investigations. The optimal use of any piece of
equipment will best be achieved through proper training and practice. Thus, a GPS
system can be a great asset because it is faster than a map and can be used to obtain
data while in the field; however, the investigator should be trained how to use the system
in accordance with company protocol. One of the problems with many small firms is that
Learning to send and receive information quickly and accurately is a skill that
agency owners and their field investigators should practice. With the issue of high
driving courses for field investigators and require them as part of the certification
process. Associations should also offer courses at conferences that help agency owners
Agency owners and field agents should also place reliable communication over
efficiency:
Agency owners, according to I-13, should train field agents to communicate effectively
and use technologies reliably while under stress. I can attest that when one gets a shot
surveillance video.
Private investigators must also consider that technologies train them. Note how,
for example, S-2 may have received inaccurate details from the FI: “I thought you were
getting back on the interstate when you said, I am getting off of one—[59].” To get off of
highway 159 in Maryville is much different than getting off of 159 at the I-270 junction.
But the FI indicated to me during a brief conversation in the Buffalo Wild Wings parking
lot that he was lost. As he noted, “I have yet to memorize any streets because I am too
reliant on my GPS.” The GPS navigational system has made him a passive driver.
With GPS navigational devices, investigators can lose their cognitive maps of the
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geographical areas in which they operate. Among other things, this decreases the
chance that they will impress their clients with this stock knowledge. During telephone
potential clients as he set up consultations with them, “Oh, if you work in that area, then
let’s just meet at the intersection of I-35 and Walnut Hill at the Denny’s there, I believe it
is across the street from the Valero.” While communicating where to meet, S-5 is also
documenting that he knows and understands the Dallas-Fort Worth area—a valuable
investigation.
understand the source of the miscommunication. As he noted, “Yeah, I was giving him
directions coming back in on 157 and he was just coming off of 159, so if you go [turn]
right there, you go all the way back down south.” Referring back to Image 5.1, this
statement is also not very clear. However, by the time S-2 explained this to me he was
Among other things, this field account shows that environmental distractions are
problematic, and agency owners should require their new field investigators to
demonstrate competency and knowledge in navigating local topography before they are
allowed to use GPS technology. This requires, of course, the development of formal
control systems, which are absent among small firms in the field of private
investigations. While agency owners may be profitable without them, the absence of
operational manuals means they may spend more time frustrated and yelling at field
investigators—“no, you listen to me when I say pull over, take out a map, find out where
you are and find the fastest route to her [the target’s] house” (S-5). Dealing with
may reduce frustration and costs. At the very least, formalization may reduce the need
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to give so much attention to employee issues, allowing agency owners to focus their
daily attention toward other entrepreneurial needs. All investigators spent at least part of
Other technological risks. There are other risks associated with equipment.
These technologies, based on interviews and observations, can be classified into three
types, “toys,” “liabilities,” and “opportunity destroyers.” Toys are those “gadgets and
gizmos” that one doesn’t necessarily need, but are interesting to have. The private
investigator today needs far more equipment than the investigator of yesteryear, but she
or he does not, in most circumstances, need a beer can camera. In the few instances
where such novel devices are required, interviewees felt that clients should assume the
costs. The typical investigator will need a quality pair of 7 x 50 binoculars (with inert gas
between the lenses), reliable video and still-shot cameras, both with the highest quality
optical zoom (100-300mm) and pixels (at least 7 million), a telephoto lens attachment, a
high quality night vision attachment for video recorder, a quality computer for doing
Investigators who specialize in other areas may need more or less equipment.
For example, interview experts need a high quality digital recorder and a simple digital
camera for taking photos of interviewees, process servers may need to invest in a
software tracking program such as ServeNow or Loyal Dog, and investigators who
10
All shadowees had some sort of communication with their employees and contractors
that could be characterized as “conflictual.” S-3 and S-5 spent approximately 10% of
their day dealing with or complaining about their employees/contractors. Both tended to
speak frequently with field investigators in what I would characterize as an “agitated
tone.” Between the two of them, I observed eight conversations with field investigators
that escalated into yelling. The length of such conversations varied, but one yelled for an
impressive 35 minutes.
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that is not necessary to the process of completing a job, or its potential marketability, is a
toy. While toys may make private investigating interesting, they are not necessary to
processor program are all a private eye actually needs (assuming no video, photos or
Shadowees varied in the amount of toys they have, with S-04 having the fewest.
His office was a simple, one-person room that he rented at a discount from an attorney.
He traded down his SUV to a compact car (to save gas) and he turns down any
splurge. One investigator’s vehicle and office was a mess of cables and electronics, with
the latest gizmos (e.g., wireless charging stations). Interviewees similarly said toys can
become a financial burden, but playfully acknowledged they have their share of them:
Yes, I have toys. You’ve talked to my wife already, I see. Just now
she called them toys. But by the time you look at all the equipment
you’ve got to have, you know, and I probably do have more
equipment then some do. And I probably don’t have as much as
some. You’ve got cameras, videos, you’ve got to have equipment to,
uh, transfer the, uh, videos to film so you can send it to you client or
put it on CDs. All this necessary equipment gets expensive, but then
you’re in the PI shop or Radio Shack and you see all these cool
devices, that’s when you get in trouble financially and with your wife.
(I-16)
11
I include handgun because many private investigators do not carry handguns, though
in Texas there seems to be pressure among investigators to carry one: “’You don’t have
a gun?! Where are you from?’ I get that all the time” (I-17). While there is an issue of
safety, since several private eyes said they had “worked in sketchy neighborhoods” and
two had been robbed at gunpoint, a gun is essential only for those who provide
executive or personal protection services. It is important to note that to carrying a gun
requires certification and additional insurance. Thus, having a gun will increase the
variable costs of doing business.
12
In most circumstances, attorneys do not want private eyes to audio record interviews
because such documentation can hurt a case.
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While toys are problematic because they can eat into the financial profits of a company,
they can also be, along with other essential equipment, liabilities. 13
“Liabilities” are so for a variety of reasons, but the three most common reasons
cited by investigators are equipment failure and loss, attorney challenges, and legal
issues. The risk of equipment failure, damage, or loss is an everyday concern of all
private investigators, but especially for those who do a lot of field work and surveillance-
intensive investigations. Investigators who do domestic cases, for example, rent various
pieces of equipment to clients. While in use, GPS tracking devices and hidden cameras
can be discovered and destroyed by targets, short circuit, fall off vehicles, and so on.
While GPS tracking devices have decreased in price over the years, they are still
between $400 and $1000. While I was shadowing S-3, she spent nearly 2 hours over a
four day period dealing with tracker issues; this amounted to 3.5% of her work time
(based on a 14-hour work day). 14 She also had her office assistant doing some of this
work, diverting the assistant’s attention from other important business tasks.
While working in the field, equipment failure could mean losing key information
witness or catch the target engaged in an activity that is pivotal to a case—“You simply
can't ask a fraudster or cheater to redo something” (I-30). While a private investigator’s
cameraless observations may be good data for establishing patterns, clients typically
expect video. Given the low perceived credibility of the profession, an investigator
13
For investigators who do not specialize, they obviously can end up with more toys. For
some, they purchase junk equipment in an attempt to offer a service they are not
qualified to do. For example the “CounterTek Covert Pen Bug Detector,” certainly a nifty
gadget, is supposedly a “radio frequency detector” that can find wiretaps and GPS units
on cars. But as I-20 notes, “It’s going to pick up all radio frequencies. Basically, it
amounts to a $50-dollar-piece-of-junk. Only investigators, about six of us in the state
(Texas), with thousand-dollar pieces of equipment and training will be able to do serious
electronic sweeps and counter measures” (I-22).
14
GPS units operate by battery power, which means that once the battery dies (about 5-
10 days) it is not traceable by satellite.
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usually must have some form of visual documentation. As I-25 noted, “A far as clients
and jurors are concerned— if it isn't on video, it didn't happen” (I-25). Even with “no
money in order to retain important clients. I-13 said during a TALI session he led, “it
doesn't matter if you produce nine good reports, [clients] will always remember the one
time you didn't get it right. ‘My equipment failed,’ is not an acceptable excuse.” If it fails in
the field, equipment can cost a company thousands of dollars. While no interviewees
provided an example, I can draw upon my own field experience to make this point. I sat
on a house for almost eight hours on New Year’s Eve watching to see with whom a
client’s husband arrived and left. I accidentally left the night vision telephoto lens on
between filming activities. When the target finally left, the batteries could no longer
power the lens. Consequently, I could only record dark shadows. The client was a
paralegal for a law firm (i.e., she was a gatekeeper for a potential client). Our agency
refunded her money for that night’s surveillance, which was just under $800. However,
the attorney she worked for never again used our services.
With the move to digital formats and reliance on service providers (e.g., satellite
signal may go down at a pivotal moment. When I shadowed S-3, her office’s phone
system was having technical difficulties. She had to pay for technicians to fix the
problem. Her phones were not in operation (half a day), so the company likely missed
calls from potential clients. To deal with these concerns, many agency owners have
relationships with “spy shops,” which can rent them equipment when needed. But this
still does not alleviate the everyday stress. While I was shadowing S-5 during a hot
summer day, he was having what he called a “Murphy’s law day.” He was trying to install
a hidden camera in a warehouse. In sauna-like temperatures, S-5 could not get his
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wireless receiver to pick up the camera feed. After two hours of fiddling with it (time he
did not bill to the client), he finally declared that “this equipment [is] a fucking piece of
junk.”
may violate federal and state laws. For example, most states follow the federal rules
regarding eavesdropping and wiretap (18 USC §2518). Such laws stipulate that you can
record a conversation as long as you are a party to it. The obvious violation of this law
There are a handful of states, however, that require all parties to be notified that they are
being recorded. 15 In Illinois, where the eavesdropping statute is particularly stringent, the
law applies even when there is no expectation of privacy. The law stipulates that “a
person commits eavesdropping when he uses a device to hear or record all or any part
of any conversation unless he does so with the consent of all the parties to such
conversation” (720 ILCS 5/ 14-2), and a recording device is defined as “any device
capable of being used to hear or record oral conversations whether such conversation is
conducted in person, by telephone, or by any other means” (720 ILCS 5/14-1 et seq).
Given that it is okay to video record any public activity, where there is no expectation of
privacy, the all-party consent to audio recording can easily be violated. 16 To avoid
investigators must constantly deal with the prospect of attorney challenges. Prosecutors
15
All-party states are California, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Illinois, Maryland,
Massachusetts, Michigan, Montana, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, and Washington.
16
This law raises interesting concerns rarely discussed in scholarly research. For
researchers who do conversation analysis, for example, they could be putting some of
their research subjects into a situation in which they violate the law. For example, the
consenting research participants continue to record while a neighbor visits.
190
are, according to I-20, “ruthless” to private investigators (who work for defense), treating
them as the “lowest form of Earth.” This means that expert witnesses must constantly
make sure that they have the “right equipment” and that it is “properly calibrated”:
“You’ve gotta have computers and we keep up-to-date measuring tools. So when we go
out um, … [we] don’t get challenged about a piece of equipment that is cheap or out of
must also demonstrate that they are properly trained and certified. I-20, who attends
The more one invests in equipment, the more his or her risk increases; doing a
Finally, technology has become opportunity destroying. The internet, while it has
created many opportunities for agencies, has also hurt many investigators' businesses.
Take, for example, the sad-toned admission that I-07 provided during our interview:
Well, lemme, lemme just sort of in a nutshell tell you where I was. I
had two of these offices. I had the one next door. I had five
employees. Um, the internet did some damage to my business,
because people can go on the internet and look for people
17
Some agency owners advertise, for example, that they can do electronic
countermeasures when in fact they do not have the right equipment of training. As I-23
criticized, “Yeah, they say ‘We do de-bugging.’ And they go down here to the spy shop
and they buy a device for $99.95 that has green light, red light on it. And the instructions
say, ‘Printed in Taiwan. Put two double-A batteries in it. If the light turns red, you’re
bugged. If it’s green, you’re okay.’ Basically it is a transistor radio with no speaker on
it…. It’s picking up a bunch of stuff. It’s just so broad, you don’t know if it’s picking up
television signals, radio signals, ham radio, CB radio, broadcast, you know?” (I-23).
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Fortunately, I-07 has many committed clients who continue to supply her with work;
although she admitted that the economic crisis has led to a decrease in this business as
well. She indicated that she does not do much marketing and I sensed she was
exploring a potential career change. Her attitude was also likely cause for some of her
business decline. As I probed to see what she was doing to respond daily to the threats
brought on by internet technologies and services, it was clear that she had accepted that
there was not much she could do. Her conclusion that “all she has left is difficult skip
tracing” leads her to avoid practices that could grow her business—marketing, cold calls,
web development, and so on. While I did not shadow her to see precisely what she does
each day, it is clear she is not trying to make a case for her services. Other investigators
indicated that in the age of the internet, they actively try to persuade potential clients
from doing the work themselves: “I tell people that they can do a background check
online, but how do they know they’re really looking at the right John Smith? These
databases give false results all the time, which can lead to all kinds of problems. My
diligence is needed” (I-29). This rhetorical strategy, which could fit within the theme of
enactment. As I-07 sits in her office from day to day using the internet to skip trace, she
Objects as Opportunities
video camera, though it “frames” a particular scene and creates artificial boundaries that
are often more limiting than regular vision, can gather details of an ephemeral scene
with more detail than a human. Cameras can also playback information. A private
192
investigator with a video camera, therefore, can obtain data and create evidence not
possible 40 years ago. A video camera can also operate without the presence of a
human, which means that investigators can conduct multiple surveillance operations at
once. For example, a private eye can install hidden cameras near a warehouse for a
business client, install a GPS unit on a domestic client’s spouse’s vehicle, 18 and still be
able to physically “sit on a house” at another location. While the investigator surveys the
house, the warehouse cameras and the GPS unit continue to collect vital data. 19 This
highlights how technology makes private investigating a “hybrid activity” (Meunier &
Vasquez, 2008), with profit making practices happening across multiple spaces and
times. Investigators who use common technologies and other objects in creative ways
routines. Many cell phones can now record video. While shadowing S-5, we followed a
target and his supposed mistress into a restaurant. By propping his iPhone against the
condiment caddy, he was able to record to video targets sitting across from us. While it
was positioned awkwardly, the phone was not out of place. It was still just a phone to
those around us. The taken-for-granted assumption that we were just diners with a cell
phone made it possible to gather video surveillance without fancy hidden cameras.
According to S-5, while in some circumstances one may have to use a button cam, cell
The ubiquity and everydayness of the video camera and cell phone is precisely
what enables this opportunity for private investigators. 20 We often see people with video
18
In most states anyway, but only if both spouses’ names are on the title.
19
The investigator must still translate this data. For example the information gathered
from a GPS unit often must be connected to other data, such as where the target said he
or she was going to be and where she or he actually was.
20
Agency owners should be cautious in assuming that new hires know how to use a
video camera in investigative work. The typical rules of making home videos do not
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was once approached by a passerby as I was recording video of a target working in her
yard. I had been browsing through a screenwriting magazine at the time. I picked it up
and said, “I am a film student and I am waiting for my friend who is supposed to help me
with a school project about suburban life. I was bored so I just started shooting video of
the squirrels playing.” The passerby apologized for bothering me and went on his way.
performances. For example, S-5 showed me a unique spy cam that he created out of a
Domino's delivery hot bag. The inside of the bag was stuffed with Styrofoam squares, a
digital recorder, and a small camera. The lens protrudes through a small pinhole.
Wearing a Domino’s uniform, he explained that he will knock on a target’s door. The
occupants will likely assume that he has made a delivery error and open up the door to
assist him. While they work out the confusion, he records the interaction. In some
instances, he needs to obtain data regarding the condition of a home or the occupants of
a house. Perhaps he is looking for a missing child, a dirty home unsuitable for a child, or
a cheating spouse. Drawing on the prosaics of pizza delivery, this example shows how
entrepreneur, at least in the Schumpeterian sense, must have the foresight or “prior
apply because unique situations arise. S-3, for example, was criticized by a client for
providing poor quality video. The video had been shot through a dirty windshield and
was hazy. A not so obvious “trick of the trade” is for investigators to keep a bottle of
glass cleaner and paper towels in their vehicles. I-22 also said that novice investigators
must be taught “common sense” things, such as “flipping the camera to manual focus
during a rain storm.” The video camera’s auto focus will keep adjusting to the raindrops,
making it difficult to focus in on a distant object.
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From a prosaic perspective, entrepreneurs must be able to share their vision with others
on a daily basis and work to reproduce the opportunity once it has become legitimated. If
the product or service is new (meaning not easily comparable to another product or
service), bizarre, or complex, the rhetorical burdens are far greater—the gap in
hermeneutical horizons between the entrepreneur and stakeholders are greater. Close
but specifically start-up or new product launches in particular, provides some insight into
why products or services succeed where others fail. An objectified opportunity, whether
it is a product or service, was selected in through a rhetorical process; many are also
selected out through the same process. Agency owners (like all entrepreneurs) are
I was fortunate to meet S-1 and I-06 just as they were launching a new product
interface solution that works with existing case management software. As advertised on
the company’s website, Serve-X enables the communication between a law firm’s and a
“manage and monitor jobs throughout the service process”; “eliminate duplicate data
entry”; “reduce human error”; “increase productivity”; and “increase profitability.” Without
Serve-X, attorneys and credit collections agencies (may) keep track of cases using
particular pre-packaged software (e.g., Collect) and process service companies do the
same with their own software (e.g., ProServe 2000). That each professional field has not
yet integrated the other’s software technologies means that employees on each end of
the exchange have to repeat data entry. When the process service company serves an
affidavit, for example, its employees have to enter this into their software program and
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then relay the information manually (by email, phone, or post) to the attorney firm, who
then must update the information manually vis-à-vis their software. With Serve-X, once
data is entered on either end and into any program, the software program automatically
The Serve-X software is provided for free to both attorneys and process servers.
Attorneys and collections companies stand to gain the most from it because it eliminates
the need for staff to physically track the status of papers. Process service companies are
also likely going to absorb the fees charged by Serve-X (although they will also benefit
company’s press releases highlights this point: “We have been using Serve-X for the last
two months, and our office loves it! We have been able to cut in one half my [sic]
employee’s entire job duties. It would take 2-3 days a week to enter all the services for
each file…now [it] only takes 5 minutes. I highly recommend any office that deals with
any type of volume process serving to use this as it costs nothing and only a nominal
increase in your process serving fees!” Service Exchange Network captures a small fee
for every file that transfers through their integrating system. Since process service
companies technically work on behalf of their attorney and collection agency clients, I-06
noted that their strategy is to convince attorneys to use the software. Once attorneys
adopt Serve-X, they will then (theoretically) “put pressure” on process serving
The idea for Serve-X came about by a fusion between S-1’s understanding of
process serving and I-06’s computer programming knowledge and prior experience
working with law firms. Of course, it is not an inconsequential detail that both live in the
same small Illinois town. This highlights the roles that location, timing, and connections
play in opportunity identification (see Shane, 2008; Steyaert & Katz, 2004). From the
start, the location of both entrepreneurs facilitated a flow of ideas regarding the
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development of Serve-X. By projecting what they thought the software ought to do, they
were already shaping the types of rhetorical claims that would be possible. In return,
their potential marketing strategy re-informed what kinds of features they gave the
highlights the active role S-1 and I-06 had in enacting the opportunity and how they are
rhetorically shaping Serve-X and its position in the marketplace. But we ought not to take
for granted the instutionalized practices and objects that made the idea of this type of
documents within the fields of practices of law and process serving had already shaped
the everyday practices regarding how business is done within these fields. Without these
objects operating independently in each field, there would be no need to integrate them.
The implementation of a system that integrates the software is not a radical revolution, in
the sense that S-1 and I-06 do not have to convince people to change their everyday
practices. The ingenuity of Serve-X is that the practices that will be changed (i.e.,
reducing human interaction in the process of transferring and tracking files) plays into
the corporate logic of eliminating human labor in the process of doing business. Thus, S-
1 and I-06 are building upon the established and taken-for-granted practices, myths, and
Now that Serve-X exists, S-4 and I-06 must translate it into selling points,
software can do. As S-1 and I-06 interact with customers, they will receive feedback
regarding what is deemed important for users and adapt it accordingly. In this sense,
Serve-X (the software) will begin to act upon the field and redirect S-1’s and I-06’s future
practices and claims. It is possible, for example, that the software will reduce the amount
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of paper and fuel that is used to print and transfer files. Given the recent fashion to “go
highlighting the ecological benefits of their product. This point demonstrates how objects,
like computer software, are translated rhetorically into many things at once: an error
reducer, a “green technology,” and a profit enhancer. Of course, if the software does not
perform the field in the ways S-1 and I-06 anticipate, they will eventually abandon this
opportunity. But one thing was clear during field research: the existence of Serve-X has
changed S-1’s and I-06’s daily cares and concerns. From follow-up interviews and brief
shadowing field observations, most of their everyday practices are now directed at
promoting and attending to Serve-X’s needs; Serve-X (the software) demands their
attention.
are acts of translation because they require transforming an object’s many uses into
specific (though limited) symbolic claims. But this is not without limitations or risks. As
Law (2002) notes, “to translate is to connect, to displace, to move, to shift from one
place, one modality, one form, to another while retaining something. Only something.
Not everything. While therefore losing something. Betraying whatever is not carried over”
(p. 99). Take, for example, the description on S-5's website where he highlights the
equipment (objects) that his agency uses to catch people. Image 5.2 is taken from his
agency's website. He uses these photographs as proof that he has the appropriate
The full video was likely presented to the client as part of the report. But by creating two
still shots—two new artifacts from one—of the target moving large pieces of furniture at
two points in time, the agency owner translated evidence into examples of his expertise,
which can be placed on his website as marketing devices. In this example, the private
eye provides evidence to support his claim that the apartment was “emptied in less than
is that this should not be possible if someone has an ankle injury. As I will show when I
discuss reports, this sort of subtle implication is an important skill for writing an
“objective” report. More interestingly, S-5 does not explicitly highlight his expertise in the
passage, but instead chooses to foreground the quality of his equipment: “it was all
This example would not have been possible without the type of equipment that
exists today. What this example illustrated is that the objects produced by the equipment
of an investigation can be recycled and used in other ways. With today’s technology, the
possibilities. The telephoto lens, the camera, and the private investigator work together
to translate the activities of the target into “evidence” and “advertisements.” The
everyday act of translating objects will likely not strike readers as very profound, but this
example only further demonstrates how objects and practices are often taken for
about one’s business add up over time and likely make a difference in who succeeds
present an example of a database and its report as an object. All investigators use
databases; contemporary investigators could not succeed without access to one. But I-
17 has translated the use of databases into a claim about expediency and highlights this
in a press release: “With more than five years of experience, [company name] has help
[sic] many companies and individuals make the right choice about the people they hire.
'We can access information from across the country around the world and around the
clock, at the touch of a button,' said [agency owner's name]. This information can be
obtained through different databases available only to licensed private investigators like
[agency owner's name].'” I-17 is demonstrating the importance of the database, but he is
checks and hiring quality employees. The database, as he notes, is “available only to
licensed private investigators.” The database is transported into the field of private
that determines a “good report” from a “bad one.” Again, here is an example of how the
object “database report” can be transformed into an opportunity when rhetorically framed
as such in a press release (yet another entrepreneurial object). With the right mix of
press releases, especially free ones picked up by local media, an investigator may
receive more calls from potential clients. Those who are most visible may be the most
likely to succeed as entrepreneurs. But when I-17’s strategy is compared to I-07 (who
21
S-5’s strategy is not without risk. A possible interpretation—which could be pointed out
by a consultant using rhetorical criticism—is that the equipment is poor. It is hard to
identify the target in these hazy photographs. In the field, the investigator would have
shot additional video, including the license plate and vehicle identification of the target.
This would also not be the only shot of the target. But this is something non-investigators
may not understand. The accompanying text on the website should probably include this
disclaimer.
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feels she is losing business to the internet), it is evident that I-17 is translating the
internet into a possibility, whereas I-07 is not. While these differences in business
practices do not fully explain I-17’s growth and I-07’s decline, they are likely constitutive
factors.
navigational devices can be problematic for investigators, one of S-1’s process servers
explained that when he has a pile of court summons to deliver, he can program the
addresses into his GPS unit and it will automatically coordinate the most efficient route
to each house. I-22 similarly described how GPS devices can help in collecting important
data during surveillances, describing the device as an actor with human-like qualities:
One of the things you and I were talking about… was the GPS. On the
GPS units that we have, you can say ‘I want you to start when I start.’
You know, push the button, say ‘Now, start,’ when you arrive at
wherever you are, let’s say a surveillance. And it will track everywhere
you go, every turn you’ve made and so forth. Because there are many
times in a surveillance… where you can’t remember when he left. I
know he went up Interstate 35, but what exit did he take? I think I
wrote that one down, but then when he got in that subdivision, he
turned left, then he turned right, then he went straight, then he turned
left again. And then he stopped at this house, pulled up in the
driveway, walked out, went inside the house and came right back out
within 30 seconds or something, got in, cranked the engine, and off he
went. What was the address? In such an example, we were trying to
set up ‘cause we thought maybe he was gonna stay there for a while.
All you’ve got to do is when you pass by the front of that house, push
the button again and it marks that location. And when you get through,
if you can’t remember, it’ll play back turn-by-turn-by-turn for you on
the computer.
This final example not only describes the use of a technology in the prosaics of
surveillance, which can produce better results, and therefore a better reputation and
more clients, but it begins to suggest how data is obtained and translated into an
than the report. This is the product that investigators transact with clients, who use the
conclusion of an investigation, the investigator hands off the report to the client. So long
as all financial obligations have been met, the report is disentangled from the
notes,
Given this description, it is clear that the report is a commodity. When it is transferred
from the private investigator to the client, the means of its production are detached.
and two agents into a seller and a consumer, it is necessary to cut the ties between the
disassociated and detached” (Callon, 1998, p. 19). Although the report will retain certain
document—in the sense that it is an object and that it allegedly provides a non-biased
When the report is “handed off” to a client, it moves into other institutional fields
and informs and affects other institutionalized practices. For example, an attorney may
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decide to settle a case rather than go to court based on the outcome of an investigation
or a husband and wife may divorce. A report is a commodity and it influences other
institutional fields, so it can be said to have a social life of its own. In this section, I
describe the process of its production and illuminate how it likely influences private
practices in the present (Schutz, 1967). I will also describe how the report, once
produced, continues to influence actors by tracing its ongoing potential impact in other
fields. I will emphasize that understanding the process of its production could improve
training of private investigators and support the creation of a standardized protocol that
accountants and lawyers appear to others as highly professional is that they have
The process of report creation can be simplified into three critical moments:
during each of these stages and to capture the hermeneutic and rhetorical practices
used in its creation. While pretexting activities are creative rhetorical tactics, they are
context-specific “natural attitude.” The taken-for-granted practices of the moral order are,
therefore, sources of opportunity for private investigators. While the opportunity for doing
others’ everyday activities into evidence, which is accounted for in a report. This process
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and report, they are selecting in and selecting out details specific to a case.
Observing
According to Schutz (1967), “to the natural man all his past experiences are
external world is present to him as ordered. Ordinarily, and unless he is forced to solve a
special kind of problem, he does not ask questions about how this ordered world was
constituted” (p. 81). The private investigator no doubt benefits from the unreflexive
assumptions that his or her contemporaries have about their everyday affairs. As people
move about the world in a “natural attitude,” private investigators can work unimpeded
with the assurance that most people will not be too suspicious of their presence,
especially in public spaces. Simply put, people enter a mall and see all others as
shoppers, unless provoked to see them differently. Part of a field investigator’s task is to
act natural and assume people are not paying any attention to their surroundings.
cheater, fraudster, or criminal. While some individuals may harbor certain prejudices
about certain people, most do not assume the worst. Thus, the woman or man holding
hands while window shopping at a clothing store will not appear to others as being
engaged in some form of relationship infidelity. Similarly, people do not see others as
private investigators. This is why, despite the risks, many targets openly engage in
relationship practices (e.g., holding hands) while walking between shops. This could also
explain why so many targets end up at malls and other public spaces (a few suburbs
away from home, of course). The private investigator is primed by the client to observe
the targets’ practices within an interpretive frame not held by others. Consequently, there
is an increased risk that an investigator can falsely interpret some behaviors in order to
spend the majority of their time doing things in public spaces. While this may seem odd,
People do not cheat solely for sexual gratification, but for emotional reasons as well. To
obtain more emotional gratification, and to maintain the relationship, couples have to
rendezvousing at a hotel is not likely to have the same payoff as a date. The more public
a relationship, the more legitimate it appears to others. But the more natural the
relationship feels to the targets of an investigation, the more likely they will be exposing
themselves to the gaze of a private investigator. Similarly, the individual faking an injury
Consequently, such individuals will likely fall back into their “natural” performances,
mentioned that just a few days prior to my arrival the target under investigation “had
hobbled into a large home repair center, and despite a claim that he could not lift
anything or bend over, managed to go around the store taking items off the shelves. He
also dropped an item and picked it up.” All of this was captured on the investigator’s
iPhone camera.
such as a car’s black box captures the natural interactions between an individual and
parts of the car (e.g., brake pedal) and a cell phone captures communication patterns. It
has now become common for people to drive or operate vehicles while talking on cell
22
This is especially the case if the “cheater” is deceptively presenting himself or herself
as single to the beau or mistress.
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when a forklift operator backs over a co-worker), phone records can indicate whether the
operator was using a cell phone at the time of the accident. In many circumstances,
these details would be obtained from witness interviews and police reports; however,
some new automobiles and most long-haul trucks have been fitted with black boxes and
navigational systems. These units capture the most mundane of user activities, such as
steering, speed, brake patterns, and travel patterns. This information is used for a variety
marketing. In auto accidents, these devices are now often used to gather vital
information regarding the culpability of drivers. In conjunction with the satellite data
provided by GPS navigational devices and cell phones, it is now possible for private
eyes noted that they are now interested in learning how to gather and interpret data from
these types of devices. In this sense, many investigations now take place within virtual
One case that we had going on involved our client trying to show fault
that the truck driver that killed their daughter crossed the center line.
Interviews of the truck driver and witnesses [suggested] she was that
she was in his lane. But we were able to get the data black box from
her vehicle and the trucking company. And with the witness testimony
that she was in a passing lane and was not speeding, we know she
was trying to [legally] pass and she had a consistent speed of 63
miles per hour 5 seconds prior to impact and she does a hard break.
At 1 second she is at 17 miles per hour. The truck driver, however,
was 63 at 4 seconds, 63 at 3 seconds, 62.5 mph at 1 second and then
a hard brake showed he reduced his speed to 47 mph. While he is not
totally at fault, we could show ‘negligent retention’—he didn't take the
proper action to slow his rig down. We took this information in the
report back to attorney; he was wowed.
provided by the police department to conclude that his client’s son was not at
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fault for an improper lane change that caused an accident, but instead was the
unfortunate victim of an over-inflated tire. He was able to deduce this from the
concluded, the orange was rust from the air compressor and the pattern on the
The black box records in the first example highlight the interaction between the
driver and the automobile. The photographs in the second example provide details that
account for the conditions that likely contributed to the accident. These data are used to
construct a plausible account about what likely occurred prior and during the accidents.
Interpretation is still required to make sense of what is presented in a report and in legal
people’s (namely clients’ and jurors’) understanding of the world within their own natural
attitude. The connection between one event and the next must be explained in a way
investigator must know what to look for and how to react to given information in situ,
possible interpretations will determine the direction (and stopping point) of the
Reflecting
It is often assumed that technology like black boxes and video provide bias-free
information. But private investigators know that this is not entirely correct. Private
investigators must decide which details are relevant and which ones need to be
supplemented with additional information. They must also decide where to point the
camera; and while video cameras may provide more detailed information and offer a
“frame” activity. This means that many important contextual details of a particular scene
are often excluded. Even details inside the frame may be obscured by a camera due to
several factors including lighting, shadow contrast, user error, and intrusive objects. The
investigator must be constantly reflecting on all these issues while continuing the
investigative work. How the investigator reflects in situ and extemporaneously will affect
the interpretations and reporting of data. For example, S-5 described, that he had
While this example highlights how the video camera is able to catch details that
the investigator missed, it also highlights that because of the camera’s small design, he
was unable to see with clarity what was actually going on during the surveillance. Once
the image was displayed on his 32-inch television, he was able to see more clearly. The
camera restricted what he was able to see in the field. Had he reflected in situ on the
S-5 noted that he had missed an opportunity to reposition his vehicle closer to
the target’s girlfriend’s vehicle or to attach his telephoto lens in order to gain a clearer
image of the silver flask. While S-5 indicated that “an investigator could never say for
certain that it was alcohol in the flask, the client, the judge, and whoever else who will
watch the video will assume that it is.” Why would two people sit in a car during a child’s
birthday party? Who drinks non-alcoholic beverages from a flask? What do we typically
chase with soft drinks? The answers to these questions tend to lead to a particular
conclusion. However, S-5 did not get video that would make it obvious it was a silver
flask. As he noted, the image itself would be called into question. “Is it really a silver
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flask?” In this case, the weekend daddy was not observed to be drinking. However, the
girlfriend’s actions could indicate that the child is exposed to unsuitable people. As S-5
In other instances, the investigator must also reflect on how data could
incorrectly portray a target. While the data is hopefully going to make a client’s case,
used against someone. They were most concerned about domestic cases where
emotions run high and violence is possible, insurance cases where someone’s finances
are at stake, and criminal cases where a person’s freedom could be compromised.
Quality private investigators understand that they may deceive themselves in their
observations or that a camera may select out important details. In a hypothetical case,
but one that is similar to one I’ve experienced, an investigator could be following a
husband for an overly jealous wife. Perhaps the husband has been acting curiously for
some time, but he is not cheating. The investigator may follow the husband after work for
a few days and conclude nothing is going on. But then one day the husband suddenly
goes to the mall, though he said he was going to be at a meeting. The investigator is
The target meets a female at a jewelry store. Together they look at various
diamond necklaces. At one point, the woman puts on the necklace and the target leans
in to take a closer look. The investigator, hoping to get a good photograph, looks down
to grab his camera. In those few seconds, the incident is over and the investigator is left
wondering what happened. Did the target kiss the woman or make any other intimate
contact with her? While this situation may seem peculiar, it does not prove infidelity.
Fortunately for this investigator, she constrains her imagination. In fact, the more the
investigator observes the situation, the more she begins to see signs that this seems
more like a business transaction. At the conclusion of the interaction, the target
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purchases the necklace and the two depart with a handshake. The astute investigator
will reflect on this situation and conclude more information is needed. The investigator
will most likely choose to follow the woman, get her license plate number, and conduct a
background check.
In this hypothetical situation, the investigation into the female reveals that she is
a fashion consultant and the husband was selecting a high quality diamond necklace for
his wife. Of course, the investigator would need to decide when to divulge information to
the client. A jealous wife may overreact and ruin an investigation. Giving information to
an emotional client could also have adverse consequence for his or her relationship. If
the husband is scorned before presenting the gift, all his work will lose its romantic
expressed concern that clients will blame them. Consequently, investigators must
always engage in an intensive process of reflection while in the field, as they interpret
Just as the video camera frames situations, so does the investigator when taking
rendezvous or a dark glass bottle of root beer for an alcoholic beer. As I will show, these
issues are addressed in the writing style of reports (e.g., Appendix D). While private
eyes try to maintain a reflexive stance, it is impossible to account for every detail in a
scene when taking notes. They frame situations and filter information based on the
assumed “in-order-to motives” of the target, which are supplied by the client. Schutz
(1967) suggest that “interpreting the actor's 'motive' as his expectations, we can say that
action stands in virtue of its status as the project of an act for a given actor. In other
words, the act thus projected in the future perfect tense and in terms of which the action
receives its orientation is the 'in-order-to motive'... for the actor” (p. 88). Schutz describes
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this process as one of placing a call. An actor dials a number on a telephone in order to
reach a friend. The actor doing the activity and the observer of the activity are always
understood within the meaning context of the present future tense, as something that will
have been completed. When a target and mistress or beau meet in a mall, others will be
interpreting their behaviors based on the assumption that they are there in-order-to find
good bargains and pass time (for example). The target and his or her accomplice may
actually be “just shopping,” but the expected in-order-to motives of cheating “frames”
pertinent details and whether his subjectivity is influencing the interpretation of target’s
activities. A private investigator may, for example, observe a couple walking through the
mall holding hands, but will likely not write this down if he or she is conducting an
investigation into insurance fraud. The investigator may simply note “walked through
mall with woman identified as [girlfriend’s name]. At approximately 1645 hours, [target’s
name] bent over to pick up dollar bill in front of Neiman Marcus.” On the other hand, if
the target is being followed in an infidelity case, the investigator may provide more
details regarding the activities of the couple but omit details regarding the money.
Because the moments are fleeting and details will be lost over time, the investigator
must constantly be reflecting on what is important to note and what is not. Too much
attention to unnecessary details and inattention to important ones may lead to faulty
order-to-motives” will reduce the private investigator’s objectivity and lead to problematic
conclusions. Private eyes who account and interpret contextual clues effectively will
Reporting
from everyday interactions, institutionalized beliefs, and the everyday objects that they
and others use. While most of their practices are billable, they would not be so if there
was no way to detach themselves from these activities. This is why the report is one of
accessible manner and it frees clients from having to be engaged in the process of its
production, notably so they have more time to engage in their own sets of practices
(e.g., “attorneying”).
The report enables private eyes to provide clients with “deliverables,” which
include photographs, testimony, notes, and so on. Participants in this study noted that
providing clients with all the data collected during an investigation would not only be
messy, but overwhelming to clients. Clients want a tidy report, often in the form of a
narrative. As I-22 noted, “We do narrative [reports]. I have never found a pre-printed
report that would have exactly what we need. … I’ve never had a law firm that wanted
bullet points. They’ve always said ‘narrative type report. Tell us. Throw in some photos.’
We try to insert photos into our reports. You know, if something was going on, here’s
23
S-4 indicated that he thinks clients want narrative reports simply for their
entertainment: “People want me to give them a story, they want to be entertained. I had
an attorney who says, ‘Come on, man, give me more meat.’ And I said, ‘What are you
talking about?’ ‘Well, you know, you gave me meat, but you need more substance.’ And
I’m like, ‘Okay, explain to me.’ ‘Okay let me, like your report. Uh, here you said, on such
date you observed a female and you described the female. But your description of the
female was ‘long hair, so-so, dressed like this.’ I don’t care about that. I want to know
how she looked. On such date, I traveled to such location and during my surveillance I
noticed a female who looked frazzled. And her hair was in a ponytail and she looked
sweaty, and she looked like she had come out of a…. You see what I’m getting at?’ And
I said ‘Yeah, I see what you mean. You want me to write you a book.’ ‘Yeah, exactly,
man… I want somebody to tell me a story that I can say ‘Hey man, I’ve got an
investigator, he’ll tell you the prettiest story there is.’” Since there is no standardized
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the social. Private investigators are paid for their ability to translate a field investigation
into a coherent and usable document. As much as private investigators are being paid to
investigate, they are also being paid for the reduction in uncertainty that comes with the
process of doing an investigation. For any client in general, but for professional and
of details and practices—is what is useful. Clients do not want to do the work required to
produce a report because it distracts from their own professional practices and it may
The expectations of the client and future readers (e.g., a judge or juror) are partly
determined by institutional beliefs about what a quality report ought to look like and what
details without sounding overly specific in tone (e.g., using the trope “it appeared
that…”), military times, and wording that demonstrate due diligence (e.g., providing
license plate numbers to highlight identity), are just some of the things that seem to be
of a report). That the reports are written in such a nuanced way demonstrates that from
report provides the intention of private eyes and determines the types of practices and
interpretations that the private investigator will make. The report, in this way, is always
already completed before any investigation has begun. It frames the overall
investigation. Producing a standardized procedure and format for reports, that would be
recommended and regulated by state or national associations, could help reduce some
reporting style, all reports look different; however, all the investigators indicated or
showed me reports with the same type of story-like narrative.
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of the uncertainties that come with report writing and could further legitimate the
profession.
investigators still rely primarily on providing a written account and supplementing this
with a video on a DVD, but some (newer) investigators are changing the content of the
report itself by supplementing written content with embedded video. I-03 noted, “We’re
doing things much differently now. For example, if you get a report from me typically
they’re emailed and put in a database. I embed my video files and embed my audio files.
I’m way ahead of the curve” (I-03). As I-03 hints, clients are starting to expect more from
the report itself. Clients don’t want to have to watch a television as they read the report,
but to just click a button and watch the video within the report itself. This changes the
types of skills and knowledge required for investigators to produce a report. But whether
or not an investigator embeds the videos and audio directly into the document, or sends
Writing a professional report that appears objective and still satisfies the client is
a skill and an art. An agency owner who can do this well is likely to be retained in the
marketing device, a piece of forensic evidence, and a justification for time billed. What
the investigator decides to include or exclude is largely based on these concerns. For
the client, the report provides information regarding a course of action to take once the
information is in his or her possession. The information the investigator includes will
Attorneys do not typically present the investigator’s report in trial, but use the
information within the report to create their own accounts. I-16 said that he typically
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feeds the data [the private investigator] collected into a computer and recreates the
accident.” Thus, the report is translated into a video image, which is further transformed
into forensic rhetoric. A proliferation of YouTube video shows how animated recreation
of accidents is becoming popular. One example, that involving a motorcycle and heavy
how an attorney uses information obtained from an investigation. In such a case, the
investigator would gather witness statements from the police report, interview the truck
driver and the motorcyclist (if possible), and obtain pictures and measurements from the
scene of the accident. To provide accurate depictions, the investigator would take video
and photographs from the truck driver’s and motorcyclist’s points of view. As the video
In some cases, when it would not serve the interests of the client, the decision to
not create an animation is a wise rhetorical choice. Since all work obtained by a private
investigator is not discoverable and therefore need not be presented to the opposing
counsel. If the client is an individual, private investigators typically suggest that the client
hire an attorney so that the report can be sent to an attorney first. A cover letter is
included, which indicates that all documents are “notes to file.” If the report is written and
addressed to the client directly, then any information obtained during the investigation
becomes discoverable and can be used against the client. As I-24 noted, “Clients
sometimes put the cart before the horse. It’s advisable that they always be coached to
retain an attorney either before the investigation begins or immediately after it ends.
Given that such reenactments can easily transport people to the scene of an
accident and evoke emotions, it should not be surprising that more investigative work is
directed toward the production of reports with information that can be used to create
animations. Five of the investigators I interviewed indicated that they have connections
with people who can do accident reconstruction and animation. I-20 is an investigator
who specializes in accident and crime scene reconstruction. Because of crime scene
that jurors now expect to be exposed to creative and sometimes graphic recreations of
accidents and crime scenes. In regard to this matter, private investigators are adapting
their reporting and investigative techniques to better serve clients’ interests. Those who
do not adapt their investigative and reporting styles toward digital and visual
reenactment will likely find it increasingly more difficult to get work from attorneys and
insurance companies.
explained to investigators how he uses dramatic video reenactments “to equal the
stakes” for his clients against large companies. In particular, many of his clients are
those who file suit against trucking companies for negligent injury and homicide. During
produced by a professional film crew and Hollywood stunt artists. This “short movie”
showed the drivers being denied access to one of the company’s repair centers and
then, despite problems with one of the truck’s axils, continuing to their delivery point.
With an improperly maintained truck, violation of laws requiring rest, and in rainy
conditions, the truck drivers lost control of the truck and smashed head on into an
approaching vehicle. This accident was recreated by the stunt team, complete with an
explosion. At the conclusion of the video, an ambulance crew attends to the injured
victims. This dramatic reenactment highlights how reporting is still undergoing changes
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due to environmental and institutional influences. While Branson could just narrate this
story verbally, it is much more impressive to show them visually. It is a slow and
expensive process to adapt to these technological changes, but those private eyes who
What this section has highlighted is that the investigative report, as the primary
any investigation. Once detached from an investigator it moves into other fields of
practices. Because the report is often written in narrative form, but always with
descriptive accounts, it plays a small, but still important role in (re)producing institutional
orders by legitimating or critiquing practices. If the report ever looses this important role
in maintaining social order, whether for legal or commercial purposes, the need for
Conclusion
focused on entrepreneurs and their opportunities rather than on objects and their
products or services” (Shane, 2003, p. 33). Shane identifies five forms of opportunity
typical in the literature: “new products and services, new geographical markets, new raw
materials, new methods of production, and new ways of organizing” (pp. 33-34).
From a prosaic point of view, the descriptions in this chapter highlight that
opportunities may emerge not as resource recombinations but from the ongoing
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combination of resources. Clients expect a particular style of report and private eyes will
continue to profit from reproducing it in line with expectations. The report itself is a
As new technologies have emerged, investigators are changing the style of their
reporting. This incremental change may or may not have a major impact on the overall
computerized reporting as a major opportunity that was “exploited” by some. But this
only highlights the limitation of historical studies. Change is happening in the field now,
drawn from chapters 4 and 5 is that the a-contextual and a-historical definitions of
Opportunities do not necessarily arise “as a response” to the value chain. They
exist because agency owners continually impress upon other actors that each step of
the process in which they are involved is valuable. Given the heroic narrative of
accepting that a subtle change in how one uses a GPS unit is part of the process of
enacting opportunities or can be a threat. But as I have shown in chapters 4 and 5, such
everyday interactions between the entrepreneur and other subjects and objects make
and his or her GPS unit could result in increased investigative success, or it can lead to
everyday failures that impact future business. If agency owners use GPS units
use equipment in ways that undermine success, it may play a role in their companies’
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failure. It is these types of everyday successes and failures that add up over time. A
company that is successful may not have succeeded through innovation, but by simply
CHAPTER 6: CONCLUSION
entrepreneurship (see Hjorth & Steyaert, 2004; Steyaert & Hjorth, 2003, 2006), focused
primarily on the prosaic and social dimensions of entrepreneuring within the field of
advice by describing what private eyes do and how they do it rather than explaining what
these practices mean in relation to academic theory or other social phenomena. I know,
however, that descriptive projects can often be unsatisfying. When I read realist
ethnographies, I am often left thinking “so what?” So that I do not leave readers
unsatisfied, I hope to address this question in this chapter. I will contend that the field of
private investigators should work toward greater professionalization. I will also offer
some directions for future research. I conclude with one additional account from the field,
opportunity, I suspect some readers could question whether my themes and examples
were descriptions of entrepreneurship at all. What does using a GPS unit have to do with
entrepreneurship? How does an account of how one uses an iPhone matter? Why so
much attention to language? Why describe strategic uses of gender or ethnicity? While
not a fully satisfying answer to these questions, I would highlight that one cannot be an
entrepreneur or “discover” opportunities without engaging with the larger social world he
marketplace, or agora, was a place to exchange ideas and goods. Even in neo-classical
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without having tried out various communicative tactics of “outwitting.” To outwit implies a
communicative process.
opportunities aren’t “discovered” overnight; they are enacted over time in the most
strategy or operating in isolation; they attain the status of entrepreneurial heroes only
after they have become accomplished. But many of their contemporaries, even those
who have “failed,” were important to their success. Without others working to constitute
the field in which some entrepreneurs succeed, there would have been few opportunities
for the successful ones to discover. Vidocq and Pinkerton may have been notable, but
they did not solely make the field of private investigations. This study repositions the
investigative practices are learned socially, opportunities are enacted socially, and their
This project has shown that agency owners engage in numerous practices
simultaneously. In particular, they use rhetorical and tactical strategies to, among other
lobby for legislative changes; 9) balance their business life with their personal and family
life; and 10) maintain their financial books. All of these activities require communicative
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labor, and are best understood through lengthy field immersion and qualitative writing.
The examples that I have provided demonstrate how contemporary private investigators
of this study continue to be successful—at least in the sense that their everyday
practices are reproducing their professional field of practices and they are still in
business. In time, some of those who I interviewed or shadowed may fail to stay in
business. As I have described, their failure could be the result of failed communication in
The various themes I have provided account for just some of the practices that,
in aggregate, produce the field of private investigations. This field of practices has
specific equipment, clients, targets, and reports. The subjects and objects that I have
described matter to private investigators and are constitutive of the everyday practices
that produce (profit) opportunities. I obviously could not account for all practices that are
constitutive of the field. The accounts that I did provide will hopefully be informative to
future studies and research. When the field of private investigations has undergone
consolidation, decline, or expansion, some of the accounts in this study will inform future
failed.
This study has, at the very least, provided details that will give readers a better
contingent on others’ institutionalized beliefs and practices. The detailed accounts herein
will hopefully work to counter some of the more seedy narratives. Through this project,
Professionalization
While I was shadowing S-4, he interviewed a witness for a mortgage fraud case
provide his occupation. The target noted that he was in “private security.” This led to a
conversation regarding whether the target had an agency license or was sponsored by a
company. The target indicated that he had a private security agency license (i.e., a
Texas class B license). The target had only recently obtained his license. He had been
unemployed for over a year, “[he] couldn’t wait for a company to give [him] work, [he]
had to create work.” The target qualified for a license because he had been a computer
During their conversation, S-4 and the target discussed the treatment of the
profession by the state. Both laughed about their identification cards, which are small
pieces of paper with self-applied mug shots. Although private investigators are not
supposed to laminate their identification cards, S-4 did “so [he] could look more
‘professional.’” The interviewee joined in the criticism: “to look more professional I carry
this.” He then pulled from under his shirt a chain with a star-shaped badge engraved
be too difficult. The Texas Department of Public Safety (TDPS) houses both the Private
back against the negative popular narratives of the profession. More importantly,
legitimacy gives private investigators credibility and buffers them against everyday
environmental threats. While showing me his identification card, S-4 noted that “one time
a police officer rolled up on me while I was doing surveillance and asked for my
that it could not be real. This is why I decided to laminate it. While he was verifying my
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identity, the target left.” From my own experience in the field, I can verify this claim.
increase the risk of an investigator’s “cover being blown” or important details being
private investigators to form TALI in 1971. The association has taken several steps to
increase not only its own legitimacy, but that of the overall field. For example, it has
created the Texas Certified Investigator (TCI), which requires that the investigator pass
an examination that is deigned to supposedly identify the best members among their
group. 1 TALI members constantly lobby the state legislature proactively (i.e., pushing for
reactively (i.e., trying to kill legislation that restricts access to information). TALI also
keeps its members updated about legislative changes that affect the field and offers
specialized training classes to improve the skill- and knowledge-base of its members.
Perhaps one of the most lucid examples of trying to improve the field’s reputation,
increase legitimacy, and maintain professionalism, was TALI’s push for more self-
We [TALI and its lobbyist] got a law enacted by simply working with
our board [at TDPS]. What it did was it raised our rates [paid to the
state on an annual basis]. We got together with the Security Guard
Association and we said, ‘We want them to raise our own rates. But
the raise needs to go strictly to TDPS, not in the general fund.’ And it
was millions of dollars [in additional fees raised]. And with that money,
TDPS was able to get 27investigators to work for the Private Security
Bureau. And the director [of TDPS] at first thought nobody was going
to want this job—moving from a professional highway patrolman or a
criminal investigator—to regulating [security guards and private
1
This is something that has been criticized by some TALI members; they think that it is
cliquish.
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investigators]. He said, ‘who would want that job?’ Well let’s see, it’s
plain clothes, you get a car, and it’s eight to five Monday through
Friday. So, about 200 troopers applied for these jobs. Actually, it was
27 investigators and four supervisors. So now, the first guy they made
a case on for violating the law was a security guard from Nicaragua,
illegally in uniform carrying a gun. Guess where the Security
Company put him? In the lobby of the INS building in Houston. Is that
bold or what? That was their first case. So now, it costs us more [for a
license], but look at the benefits. I pay $350 a year for my license, I
pay about $1000 a year for my insurance, I pay sales tax—that’s part
of my overhead. To compete with someone who doesn’t pay for a
license, who doesn’t have insurance, who doesn’t pay sales tax, and
will go out and work for half the hourly rate that I would, so not only
does it help regulate us, it helps to protect my business. It was good
business sense.
This example highlights how sound government regulation can improve the field and
protect those who operate legally. While there is some discontent with state regulatory
the above positive example, highlight how maintaining associations and regulating a
profession are ongoing tasks that require effort and care. To keep its members satisfied,
campaigns and legislative lobbying. This not only benefits the organization by increasing
While some state and national associations have been attempting to improve the
profession, there has yet to be a strong push to engage more specifically in public
businesses, and consumers. State associations have not yet integrated into one national
give examinations, though they have not become socially or legally legitimized. For
example, the National Association of Legal Investigators (NALI) created the Certified
Legal Investigator (CLI) program in 1978, TALI offers the TCI, and the Association of
Certified Fraud Examiners created its own Certified Fraud Examiner (CFE) procedures.
However, these organizations have not yet been able to give these exams and
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certifications the sort of prestige and legitimacy that Certified Public Accountants (CPA)
have. CPAs adhere to strict professional guidelines set by the American Institute of
Certified Public Accountants (AICPA). By having states adopt and legally codify its
standards, the AICPA has not only increased the legitimacy of the profession, but they
have increased the barriers to entry. Another example is the American Bar Association,
which is a voluntary association that sets the standards for law schools and undergoes a
process of accrediting them. The association has formulated the model ethical codes
related to the legal profession, which have become the standards by which 49 states
complained that it is hard for them to professionalize and lobby because there is low
participation rate in state associations. But as I suggest to them, the 20% membership
rate of the American Medical Association certainly does not inhibit it from being an
important regulatory and lobbying powerhouse. I also noted that by not engaging in
strong information campaigns, much like the California Milk Advisory Board that informs
the public about the benefits of California milk and its “real California dairy families” (see
association membership. A common complaint among interviewees was that their state
associations do not keep them informed about its ongoing work. I-07 was unaware that
the Missouri Association of Private Investigators (MAPI) existed, and she has been a
profession can homogenize all of its practices. Accountants and lawyers have to deal
with a variety of contingencies and have different personal methods for addressing them.
procedures. I-17 made this point by noting that lawyers have a standard writing protocol
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for writing briefs, drafting contracts, and reporting to the court. As noted in chapter 5, the
investigative report is the perfect object to undergo standardization. In many ways, there
is already an informal code that has been passed along through normative pressures
(see DiMaggio & Powell, 1983). If reporting were made legitimate vis-à-vis the state, it
would lead to the public perception that the field has high standards. Without strong
regulatory standards and mechanisms for legitimating the field, it is not surprising that
most new regulations that restrict access to information do not often take into account
example, it can alienate those who have been in the profession but suddenly lack the
social groups based on “normative” ethical protocol, which often favors dominant social
field of practices populated by a large number of small firms. It can also buffer sole-
occupational group deploys its resources… [i.e., it’s assets] in its struggle for collective
pressures, especially those imposed by the state, they will find they have few remedies.
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In this sense, private investigator-entrepreneurs are likely better off when they stop
being “lone wolfs” (I-09) and work together to expand the reach of their field and
increase their social legitimacy. This claim is loosely supported by I.P. Popova (2006),
who in her study of the rich and poor classes in Russia, noted that both entrepreneurs
and professionals are in a higher socio-economic position than those who are not. Both
groups shared in common higher educational attainment and a broader array of skills in
general. In his analysis of entrepreneurship data, Shane (2008) found that “going to
school [including a professional or technical one] increases the odds that [someone will]
knowledge vis-à-vis research and education. In short, there are economies of learning
that come with professional association. A proposition to draw from Popova and Shane
is that being an entrepreneur in a professionalized and regulated field likely improves the
the profession. One way is to take seriously the implications of rhetoric. Private eyes
must take it upon themselves to work against the negative discursive themes in popular
culture. They should educate the public by speaking with and advertising to others the
importance of their work. Investigators can also learn from one another by discussing at
their association meetings strategies and tactics they use in everyday conversations to
counteract the negative image of the profession. For example, whenever someone
suggests to I-29 that she is a “hired gun,” she replies, “You are implying that I have a
profit motive to lie, but I also have a profit motive to not lie.” This is true. If she fabricates
reports, it is likely she will eventually be caught. This will not only discredit her reputation
and lead to lost business, but she may be reprimanded by the state and have her license
revoked. This simple rhetorical claim, among many others, can affect how others
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perceive the profession. Drawing from a finding of this study, agency owners should find
an alternative tactic to “planting suspicions.” Implying that other agencies are likely
engaged in illicit activities or will perform poorly perpetuates the troubling discourses
described in chapter 3. While this tactic may have short-term benefits, it can lead to an
overall perception that one should not generally trust private investigators.
Investigators should also think about how others perceive their practices and
equipment; or, in other words, how practices and objects function rhetorically. Meeting in
a messy car or office is not likely to give a potential client a positive impression. Several
of the investigators I interviewed had dirty offices and vehicles. I recognize that this is
the unpleasant result of working strange hours, often in a vehicle. Agency owners should
consider maintaining a clean environment part of their everyday practices. I-13, the most
financially successful of all those I interviewed, made a special point of this in a small
manual he wrote on the business of investigating: “the industry has always had to battle
preconceived reputations and having an office outside of the house helps project a more
professional image. …[I]n business, there is certain overhead that you simply cannot get
around. I have seen PI’s hold client meeting in coffee shops, which is definitely a no-no
in my book.” I-13 advocates the use of executive offices by the day if necessary, but
meeting in vehicle or in public spaces is not rhetorically good for the profession. As he
noted during our interview: “although other industries are going more to the home-office
concept, they typically don’t have to battle the negative perception that our industry is
trying to overcome.”
When shadowees dealt with a client regarding a domestic case, they always
asked the client to choose a convenient location for them. This is a good strategy, but
also opens up the possibility of meeting in the investigator’s vehicle. Sunflower seeds
spilled across the floor of a car would certainly make me reconsider hiring him or her, yet
this was exactly the state in which I found one the shadowee’s vehicles (who does meet
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potential clients in his/her car). In making the decision regarding where to meet a client,
or whether or not to rent an office, investigators should consider the financial costs and
also the rhetorical benefits of a professional image. The degree to which communication
exploratory study.
Management and organizational studies scholars operating under the “new movement”
banner have already begun to explore the intersections among discourse, narrative, and
discipline of the United States has primarily focused on peripheral issues and anti-
the public sphere). There has not yet been much research and theory building regarding
There are many ways in which communication researchers in the United States
entrepreneurship, especially for those interested in issues of democracy. Now that new
movement scholars have begun to resuscitate the meaning of entrepreneurship from its
impoverished neo-classical meanings, there is increasing need for studies that explore
Katz (2004) provide a nice argument for the necessity of this type of research,
As a socially constituted and regulated phenomenon, the policies that are established
and the rhetorical claims that actors make about entrepreneurship affect its meaning. As
Baumol (1990) notes, “how the entrepreneur acts at a given time and place depends
heavily on the rules of the game—the reward structure in the economy—that happen to
prevail” (p. 894). What the new movement approaches have already identified is that
terms. No doubt private investigators enjoy profits, but they are much more concerned
with how others will view their “work products” as a principle of good investigating, how
they contribute to social order and, among other things, how they can provide valuable
services to citizens in need. Their work is both constitutive of and constituted by their
strategies in general, but rhetorical ones in particular, might work best at rearticulating
meet needs, and profit in even in small ways [they] will find themselves awash in
television pundits, and so on and to report on “framing strategies” that seem to work (or
not). Exploring both the potential interpretations, but also correlations between
persuasive claims and changes in political activity, may prove insightful. More
examples of the kinds of application of communication theory and research that can be
Entrepreneurial Communication
and social interaction. The descriptions I provided in the ethnographic accounts were
could be called entrepreneurs, but also on entrepreneuring in situ, meant that I was
methods should not just be an instrument for studying a theory, but a method for
engaging in the very phenomenon of study. Through shadowing, I was able to see how
agency owners’ communication accounts but also what counts in the everydayness of
While I tried to avoid theory building, this project was not absent theory. I
primarily used institutional theory to suggest that most of what I observed was taken-for-
sense, especially to some investigators, they do provide points of clarification and have
provided participants with new ideas. For example, when I-22 asked, “Am I in the
minority or do others still use photographs?” (I-22), I could reply, “No, you are not.”
When I shared with others S-03’s language choices, I was met with thankful replies:
“Saying ‘it’s investment,’ now that’s a good strategy!” (I-17). I also applied hermeneutical
and constitutive rhetorical theory to suggest that private investigators create audiences
and publics. Closer examination of private investigators’ rhetorical artifacts and everyday
talk, from various rhetorical perspectives, will clarify how private investigators turn
between entrepreneurs and clients, venture capitalists, bankers, and other stakeholders
world with ever-increasing diasporas, and in societies still overcoming the history of
in situated entrepreneurial contexts (e.g., business plan pitches) could provide strategies
for improved communication and policy changes. For example, understanding the
struggles of emigrant groups trying to start businesses may give scholar-advocates the
Discriminatory social practices are likely stifling innovation and small business growth.
Language barriers for non-English speaking refugees in the United States, for example,
may preclude them from fully utilizing their skills and knowledge to add value to their
find funding to start a business. If the appropriate social apparatuses were in place,
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these individuals could lift themselves and their communities out of poverty vis-à-vis
enterprise. It is silly that language barriers should result in lost tax revenues and
employment in communities that often need them the most. An ethnological study of a
new start-up in an emigrant community could provide insight into how such individuals
negotiate the established system and structure as they obtain their business license, go
establish supply and distribution networks. Those wanting to study this from another
angle could also look at how these very issues create opportunities for individuals who
have the expertise to help lower barriers to entry for other emigrant entrepreneurs. For
example, other emigrants who offer translation or legal services are finding opportunity
involved in black market or other illicit trade. While potentially dangerous, depending on
the type of study, this work could provide policy makers with a better understanding of
the type of communication systems or logics used by criminal enterprises. No doubt that
Sudhir Venkatesh’s ethnographic study of crack dealers, reported in his 2008 popular
press book, Gang Leader for a Day, and Sclavi’s (2007) study of the Banana Kelly
Republic in the Bronx, provide important information regarding how the most destitute
2
The latter type of study was completed by Berglund and Johansson (2004). They
studied how a Swedish “Diversity in Entrepreneurship” program used communication
and education strategies to counteract discrimination. They found that the program was
working overall, but that sometimes the individuals overseeing the program reinforced
discrimination and created additional barrier. Berglund and Johansson offered
suggestions and solutions based on a critical pedagogy philosophy.
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among us are able to survive amidst great adversity (a creative entrepreneurial feat). 3
compete for resources (particularly its youth) should not be overlooked. When I
compare Venkatesh’s book with Sclavi’s, one of the differences I note is that gangs tend
to reproduce a neo-classical logic whereby each person hopes to one day ascend to
crime boss whereas community advocates choose a discourse of equality that hopes to
produce greater wealth for its group. Clearly, more research should be done to see if
these books (or my interpretation of their content) offer reasonable accounts of these
opportunities that are enacted within cyber spaces where people with various “deviant”
behaviors now congregate “openly.” It would not be surprising to find that in this new
type of agora (which may itself be maintained by an entrepreneur), where people with
various fetishes can trade, barter, and exchange ideas, opportunities are enacted daily.
functions within family business. Using concepts developed in this stream of literature,
explanations could be offered as to why some family businesses succeed where others
fail. Historical texts could be examined to better understand the similarities and
differences between founders and their family heirs. In relationships where one partner
is an “entrepreneur” and the other is not, examination of communication within the home
could provide insight into how and why some strategies are pursued while others or
the decisions of the entrepreneur. 4 I suspect many businesses start and fail as a result
3
Here I would offer actor-network-theory and its emphasis on following objects
symbolically. Using ANT, researchers would not have to spend time among drug dealers
but could trace the drugs through documentation and testimony of their distribution.
4
Conversation analysis could especially provide fascinating insights.
235
of explicit and implicit communication within the home. I placed the word “entrepreneur”
entrepreneurship stream could make a strong case for treating any stay-at-home parent
creative endeavor. 5 When a stay-at-home parent negotiates with his or her spouse for
because they are not easily quantifiable and not (ac)counted in Gross Domestic Product.
Communication Pedagogy
Over the past two decades there has been an increase in articles about
entrepreneurship education (see Green & Rice, 2007; Katz, 2003). Calls have recently
been made for the entrepreneurship education community to take “more time to reflect
(Hindle, 2007, p. 136). Entrepreneurship education programs should develop more than
just engineering or management skills and should avoid using rags-to-riches success
entrepreneurial life is common and that being in business for oneself, while personally
and financially rewarding, is not likely to yield more take home pay than an equivalent
job (Shane, 2008). Educators should also assist students in developing skills necessary
for entrepreneurial success, which includes oral and written communication skills,
5
Cicero was a fan of Xenophon and translated his work into Latin.
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experience stuffed with case studies, videos, and visits from entrepreneurs (Fiet, 2001).
must realize that their pedagogical style must work to improve the creative and artistic
capacities of their students as well as the more mechanical ones (e.g., accounting). The
critical issue is how to achieve these goals while adhering to new movement
increasing employment, organizing resources, and, while doing so, trying to eliminate
both within and without the classroom. By drawing on theories of performance and
critical pedagogy (e.g., Pineau, 2002), instructors can use creative exercises that
increase awareness about social issues and improve artistic sensibilities. Students and
teachers using communication pedagogy would begin with the understanding that
language in a figurative sense our primary means of social construction. There is always
a variety of versions of an object and each tells a different story. Some versions tend to
become more dominating, fixed and taken for granted; simultaneously, a dominant
version can always be challenged, questioned and contracted with alternate versions. By
language in the production of social order, they will be better equipped to see potential
entrepreneurial praxis (e.g., when a firm fails it means non-renewable resources have
been lost).
There are already calls within the entrepreneurship literature for alternative,
and de Monthoux (1994) suggest that management and entrepreneurship students read
fictional, non-business novels to keep in touch with our common humanity. Grace Ann
Rosile and David Boje (1996) similarly suggest that teaching postmodernist theory and
deconstruction techniques may generate new possibilities and ways of thinking about
some of the major issues of our time. Rae and Carswell (2000) propose a life-story
Using a dialogic approach, teachers and students can turn their own lived experiences
within these classrooms should be studied to better understand which strategies work at
could conduct research that tests the efficacy of current continuing education and
training programs. Data from surveys and experimental research could be used to
develop better programs for small- and medium-sized enterprises. Research from within
the communication discipline could be used to test, among other things, the role of
interviews, client meetings, and court room testimonies. Geert Hofstede’s and James
238
McCroskey’s cultural and communicative rubrics are helpful starting points. Strategies
developed from this type of research could be used to improve a private investigator’s
communication with their constituencies. Focus could also be placed on research that
obtains feedback from clients regarding what strategies and reporting styles they like
best; and such information could be used to develop better training programs and
reporting protocols.
and subjects in the field of private investigating could help professionalize the field.
strategies that are helpful when communicating with diverse groups in a variety of
about strategies used and testing these strategies through experimental design could
profession. As I noted in the introduction, there is very little industry-specific data from
which agency owners can draw. This leaves individual investigative agencies operating
primarily on anecdotal evidence. Conducting research that captures the various trends
within the industry could lead to improved operations, new opportunities, and better
A Final Account
While I was shadowing her, S-3 spent a great deal of time engaged in a
community service project. She had volunteered to assist a local high school’s DECA
teams prepare for the national competition in Anaheim, California. DECA is a non-profit
239
and entrepreneurship. This was one of the moments in the field where I was happy to be
an active participant. She and I listened to the national qualifiers pitch their business
plans and we evaluated their presentations. Two teams in particular were captivating;
they had already implemented their plans and were making profits. One team was
selling customized shoes for formal events and the other was selling customized hip hop
t-shirts. S-3 had personally invested both time and money into these students. She
helped purchase, for example, most of the materials and supplies they needed for their
presentations and she assisted them with raising funds to pay for travel expenses.
During our final hours together, we sat in the vehicle and conducted what could
She had shared with me very intimate details about her family and business operations.
Obviously, she had the right to ask me questions regarding how she would be
represented and what I planned to write about her. But I also needed time to debrief.
She had allowed me to be a part of her life for a week, and while we would likely never
be friends, she had been transformed from a research subject into an important moment
in my academic life.
Just as I was about to exit her GMC Yukon, she received a call from one of the
DECA student’s parents. He had fallen behind in a class and the school was not going to
excuse his absences for the upcoming competition. After a passion filled conversation,
S-3 assured the parent that she would make a case for his attendance. As a DECA
alumnus, S-3 understood what attending these kinds of conferences can mean in terms
of building a young person’s confidence. S-3 knew that her advocacy could influence the
school principal into giving the student an opportunity to make up his work. When I
followed up with her two weeks later, she noted that she had made a successful plea
and that all of the activities over the previous week had prompted her to fly to California
240
to support the students. It is plausible that S-3 did all of these things as a marketing
gimmick. To me, however, she appeared to genuinely care about her community.
Through her entrepreneurial work, she had made connections with people and had
gained some authority to advocate for the student. Shadowing allowed me to catch
Almost all of the investigators I interviewed mentioned that they engage in some
associations like TALI would not exist. These organizations engage in community
service activities and allocate resources as well. Following Hurricane Ike, for example,
TALI pooled member resources in order to help its members in need. I-09 noted that
without this help, he would have likely lost his business. This coordination of resources
reveals a positive dimension of private enterprise. This example shows that private eyes
are far more than profiteers; it also highlights one of the beautiful moments of an open
Private investigators certainly are an interesting group, but the more time one
spends with them, the clearer it becomes that they are just citizens engaged in various
direction future research about private investigations should take, it will be with the
desire to help this field professionalize, improve its practices, and keep local
financial terms, but in the kind of assistance private eyes provide to people in need. In
and following the path a subject or object takes. This project followed several of those
paths. This document was itself a pathway for understanding private investigating as a
241
valuable profession. I hope the praxeological descriptions herein will inspire some
readers to follow the research opportunities that have been planted along the way.
242
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APPENDICES
260
McDonald’s (2005) earlier charting of the research (see p. 468). I have italicized the
articles she included in the original. For theoretical and methodological articles, I suggest
(Czarniawska, 2007, 2008; Kephart & Schultz, 2001; Latour, 2005; McDonald, 2005).
Table A.1
Research approach
Data Collection Methods Positivist Interpretive
Notes. An asterisk (*) indicates articles that specifically use the term shadowing.
261
Table B.1.
Descriptions of Interviewees
Notes
I-01, an immigrant from Pakistan, started his company just prior to the
legislative changes in Missouri that now require 3-years experience working
with as a field investigator or police officer. So despite not having any formal
training as a private investigator, he was able to obtain a license and begin
business. He moved to the Unites States over 15 years ago and has worked
primarily in the service sector. He specializes in cheating spouse cases. His
interest in the field began while working as a part-time security officer at a mall
during the holiday season.
Notes
I-03, a retired police chief, was one of the most aggressive agency owners that
I have met. He specifically discussed his marketing strategy, his work with
defense attorneys, and his “branding” techniques. He wants his company to be
recognized as the “block ops guys, the go to people.” In addition to defense
work, he also does “premium/hard serves” and some surveillance. I-03 and his
(table continues)
264
Notes
I-04 (also S-1), though very successful, did not use aggressive language to
describe his company. He indicated that he does not engage in tactics to try to
weed out the competition, as he feels others do to him (e.g., pretexting
agencies to see if investigators would agree to do something illegal). As he
continually stated: “I do not want to do things that will bring me ‘bad karma.’”
He was one of the most helpful and assisting interviewees, providing me with
several leads and discussing in detail what he felt were the many challenges
the industry faces. He primarily offers process serving services, but he also
had a very large investigative unit and recently started a biometrics finger
printing service by buying it from a competitor. He also has a real estate
business that is valued at over a million dollars. He also just launched another
company, Serve-X (a process server software), with his partner (I-06). I-04 has
a small office staff, which seemed to be satisfied with their jobs. In a lunch
conversation he said he thinks he is a socialist because he believes in public
healthcare.
Notes
I was referred to I-05 (also S-3) by I-04. She is an agency owner that
specializes in criminal defense and domestic cases. Our first interview took
place over the phone and it was obvious that she was working on something
else while we talked. She was one of the easiest interviewees because she
would speak without interruption for 5-7 minutes without pause. I-04 described
I-05 as a “ruthless self-promoter,” and even paid $20,000 to shadow her. He
spent a week with her learning how she operates her business. Of all
interviewees, I-05 used the most competitive language to describe her
business practices. She was also the most interested in how this research
could benefit her company. For example, she as asked if I would write
something specifically about her. She described that she is most interested in
marketing and being her own boss. She does various things to distinguish her
company in the marketplace: “I used to spend fifteen thousand dollars a year
on DVD’s…, so now I’m getting a new one made with new cases ‘cause I
found a missing person, a missing daughter. And I’ve been on TV a couple
more times…. And then the biggest wave of the future is websites and
optimization. So I’ve invested so much money, and I spend about $3,500 a
month and it has already paid for itself….”
(table continues)
265
Notes
I interviewed I-07 in her messy office. She and her office assistant had recently
moved out of their other office, consolidating into a single room in order to
reduce expenses. I-07 works specifically in the area of skip tracing and
criminal profiling. Her primary interest is to do investigative work that can be
completed in her office, though she will go out of the office when necessary.
She has been on national television, highlighting one of the cases in which she
tracked a career criminal and serial rapist via the internet. She created a “fake
profile” (one that she knew he would like) and convinced him to come to St.
Louis, where he was arrested. She is currently writing a book about her life,
she has started a foundation that aids families of survivors of crime, and she
speaks publicly about sociopaths and crime. She has been working on her
journalism degree for more than fifteen years, and hopes to one day finish it.
She has not been able to do so because “business is too good.”
Notes
I-08, a Certified Texas Investigator (TCI) and board member of TALI, was a
very prominent figure at the first TALI conference that I attended. She
introduced herself to me, thinking that I was a new investigator and TALI
member. Most people spoke very highly of her, indicating that she is one of the
few investigators who coaches new agency owners and supplies them with
any information and documents that they may need to be successful in
business. I-08 and I had made arrangements to have dinner and interview at
the conference, but our schedules were not well coordinated. I completed the
interview via phone at 11 pm at night while she “multi-tasked” and prepared to
go out looking for a witness. The interview started while she was at her home
office and ended while she was in her vehicle traveling to downtown Houston.
(table continues)
266
I-08 works primarily in the area of defense and advertises that her company is
“minority owned and multi-lingual.” She hires investigators with language skills,
and currently offers services “in Spanish, French, and two African languages.”
Her company claims to be “minority specialists” and “mitigation specialists.”
Notes
I-09, a former President of TALI, is a soft spoken man with many years of
experience. He was in operation before TALI existed and before there were
licensing requirements. He has “done various things over the years” and his
business has been “both large and small.” He’s oscillated between “six-figure”
years and $20,000 years. Most recently, his home was destroyed in Hurricane
Ike, but TALI members collected donations and supplies to help him “weather
the storm.” He, like I-09, is a TCI. Like many of the investigators, he received
his insurance benefits through his wife. Currently, he is a sole-proprietor but is
thinking of forming the company as a limited liability company because he has
recently hired a secretary. He has recently “re-niched” after his friend retired
and gave him a client, noting: “I’ve stumbled into a niche now. I do widow
checks. In Texas and Louisiana, if someone is killed on the job, their survivor
can take a lump sum payment from workers comp, or they can get the
maximum workers comp benefit every week for the rest of their life, or until
they remarry. And then, extra money for each minor child, or, up to 23, if
they’re still in school. Well, every year someone has to go visit the widow and
find out, number one, make sure she’s still alive and Junior’s not cashing the
checks, and number two, have her sign a form saying she’s not remarried and
not living in a common law relationship.”
Notes
I interviewed I-11 with I-10. I-11, a correctional officer for a Texas penitentiary,
works as a private investigator part time. He plans to eventually do it full time.
I-11 is mentoring I-10 about business-related issues. I-11 primarily does
domestic-related cases and private security.
(table continues)
267
Notes
I met I-12 while shadowing S-3. I-12 is a certified polygraph examiner and
does background checks, primarily for insurance and financial institutions. He
owns the company with his wife, who deals with client relations and maintains
the books. He considers himself “now retired” and is slowly disbanding the
company by taking on fewer clients. S-3 was very interested in noting during
our interview that she would like to take on some of his clients, though S-3
seemed a little reluctant. We actually went to I-12’s business because a client
of S-3 wanted to have a “lie-detector test” to prove that he was not mistreating
home owners at the exclusive gated-community where he worked. After the
client left, we met with I-12, who graciously allowed me to interview him for 45
minutes.
Notes
I-14 works a great deal with I-03, who referred me to her as a potential
interviewee. While she has her own license, she collaboratively works with I-03
so she does not have to assume the risks of operating her own firm. She is
also a police deputy, so she does private work part-time. She does plan to do it
full-time after she retires, which she hopes will be relatively soon. She
describes her work as general investigations and primarily insurance- and
domestic-related surveillance.
(table continues)
268
Notes
A recently retired police officer, I-15 (also S-2) was in the first year of
operation. He recently retired from the police department and has had his
private license for only two years. He works primarily with I-26 and has an
agreement to take over I-26’s surveillance unit, though this was abandoned
within the six months that I continued to have conversation with these two
participants. He wants to specialize primarily in insurance investigations and
domestic cases. He plans to continue to work with I-26, but will likely not
continue to do work exclusively for him. The benefit of working with I-26 is that
“he has an established reputation and strong advertising presence in yellow
pages, internet, and… [so on].”
Notes
I-16 is a top board member and executive member of the Associated
Detectives & Security Agencies of Illinois (ADSAI). While it is one of the oldest
associations (founded in 1933), it is not the largest or most influential. I-16
supposedly has a new business venture within private investigations, but was
unwilling to discuss it with me “‘Cause…uh…frankly, no one around here has
ever done it.” He was to have the operation going in September 2009, but
relentless Google searches and checks to his website have thus far not
indicated that the venture is in operation. His background is in railroad
investigations and insurance, and so he has a unique niche as he continues to
work with railroad companies. While he takes domestic cases, he typically
gives these to his contract-employees and focuses his attention on his
accident and civil cases.
Notes
I-17 is the highest educated investigator that I interviewed. He has a Master’s
degree in exercise physiology. He got involved in investigations through a
friend who is an attorney. His experience in doing research as a graduate
student helped him get a job as an in-house law firm investigator. From this
experience he realized that he could do investigative work for attorneys,
particularly in the area of witness interviews and other investigative services
requiring documentation (e.g., interviewing witnesses in fraud cases and
accidents). Although he is a relatively new firm, he already has a strong
network and a professional image, complete with a downtown office.
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Notes
I-20 was one of the most unique characters I interviewed, and also one of the
most popular among other interviewees (i.e., they frequently mentioned his
name), although not for necessarily good reasons. People had suggested that
they had at one time or another been in a fight over the TALI listserv with him.
He was aware of his reputation. As he noted, without being prompted in regard
to listserv issues or others opinions of him, “We’ve had some open fights over
the internet, most of the other investigators don’t like that I suggest many of the
things they’re doing is illicit.” He has worked as a private investigator in San
Francisco, El Paso, and Austin. He specializes primarily in crime scene
analysis and investigation for defense, blood pattern analysis, and firearm
examination and reconstruction. He often serves as an expert witness. He has
recently solved a murder investigation and was given special recognition by
the family at the TALI Midwinter Conference (the jealousy among many of the
conference attendees was palpable). He says he spends upwards to $10,000
a year on specialized training (not private investigating), attending forensics
conferences, typically only frequented by public investigators. He also
specializes in electronic countermeasures, which he said only about six people
in the state of Texas are qualified to do (though many others advertise and do
it). He was one of the more liberal investigators I interviewed, stating that he is
very concerned about the encroachment of the state (police) on individual
freedom. He prefers to work as a defense expert.
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Notes
I-21 (like I-05) began a career in the profession of private investigations for
somewhat personal exigencies. She was a single mother in need of a more or
less flexible-time job. I-21 has two bachelor’s degrees (communication and
sociology). She also noted she is a semi-professional photographer. She
initially began as a field investigator for an agency, but quickly established her
own company. Her small company now employees 6 part-time contractors and
she plans to hire more soon, “because her business is doing well.” Specializing
primarily in the area of civil, domestic, and business investigations, she has a
strong web presence with a well-read blog. Like the other Austin investigators,
she has her own office space near downtown, “for legitimacy purposes.”
Notes
I-22 is a former Lieutenant at the Texas Department of Public Safety (TDPS).
He was forced to take early retirement. While working for TDPS he was trained
in the area of electronic countermeasures, a skill set that gives him a unique
niche in the private sector. He also specializes in executive protection for
international business people who visit Austin. Simultaneously, he works as an
on-staff corporate security specialist for a large firm in the Austin area. Of
course, he also does not pass up domestic cases. At the time of the interview
he employed four investigators but had plans to hire three younger
investigators. While employed in the profession, I worked a big insurance case
with I-22 in Mobile, Alabama. I continue to do contract for him as his social
network manager and website developer.
Notes
I met I-23 at the TALI summer conference in Austin, Texas. I started a
conversation with him at random and then continued the interview by
telephone a few weeks later. I-23 is a bilingual investigator working primarily
for a small law firm that specializes in defense work; however, he now has his
own agency license, and while serving the needs of his primary client, is also
taking on additional work. He worries about operating his young company
while his oldest child begins college in fall 2010. I-23 has a bachelor’s degree
in mass communications and public relations.
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Notes
I-24 had a law enforcement and computer career prior to becoming a private
investigator in 2001, partly for economic reasons. Focusing primarily on
domestic cases, he has built a fairly substantial client base in the insurance
industry as well as the domestic arena. Besides employee costs, he spends
about $10,000 a year on advertising, which includes yellow pages, Google,
and Yahoo! ads. This is important, according to him, for maintaining a large
number of domestic cases, which are not commonly a referral business. His
insurance clients, who took several years to retain them, do offer many
referrals. Though he has investigated accidental deaths, robberies, and
computer crimes, he prefers surveillance. He operates solely out of his home
and prefers to meet with clients where it is convenient for them.
Notes
One of the youngest agency owners that I met, I-25 works primarily for an
attorney and does some of his own work on the side. He was able to obtain his
license by working part time for a local investigator. He plans to eventually
bring on additional clients and only work on retainer for the attorney that now
currently employs him. His area of expertise is in civil and criminal defense.
Notes
I-26 works primarily as an outside corporate investigator, doing fraud
examination for small businesses. He is an accountant by training and is a
certified public accountant and certified fraud examiner. He started in
investigations after the savings and loan scandals, hoping to help farms and
small businesses avoid risky investments; this led to doing some investigative
work, which he says he found more interesting and better return on
investment. He does some domestic cases and for a short period of time, he
was planning to spin this division off, slowly selling it to S-2.
Notes
A former police officer in Memphis Tennessee, I-27 relocated to Missouri for
family reasons. He was burnt out on public policing and thought it would be
interesting to work in the private sector. While attending a few night classes, he
met a young attorney who was looking for someone as a witness interviewer.
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272
He started working for the attorney and “was immediately hooked.” Now he
works exclusively for attorneys doing mitigation research for civil and criminal
defense.
Notes
I-28 has owned several businesses, but now works primarily with attorneys on
immigration and drug-related defenses. He also offers some domestic
services, particular for missing or exploited children. He has a pre-law degree
and an undergraduate degree in public administration. He worked for the
Texas Department of Public Safety for several years while managing his other
small enterprises.
Notes
I-29 bills herself as a general investigator “doing everything that she can get
her hands on,” though most of her work tends to be skip tracing and domestic
cases. She complained extensively about the “good ol' boys” network in TALI
and felt that she did not get much support or mentoring from them. She also
though that they were far too radical and had politicized the listserv. Several
interviewees actually left one of the conferences after one of the speaker’s
gave a racist diatribe. She also has an interesting niche of checking on nursing
homes and child care facilities for families. She was currently in the process of
setting up a secret shopper program.
I-30 is an investigator with perhaps one of the most unique niches. He is a fire
and arson investigator, working primarily for defense attorneys. He also offers
underwater salvage and water accident investigations. This includes doing
boating accident reconstruction and investigations for clients who have been
harmed by water pollutants. While he doesn't make a lot of money from
investigations, his primary “bread and butter,” as he a called it, is serving as an
expert witness throughout the world, but primarily in the United States, the
United Kingdom, and Australia.
Notes. a Interviewees were asked to describe their identity. Some categorized themselves
by race, others by ethnicity.
b
I asked interviewees to “just give me a range that you fall into age-wise.” These were
their responses.
c
YinO = Years in Operation
d
Many investigators were reluctant to give me financial data, so I asked them to just give
me a range or estimate of their annual gross income and an estimate of their profit
273
margins. If they gave me an “about statement,” this is represented with * (e.g., $35,000* =
about $35,000. If they said something like “more than…,” this is represented with the
figure and a + (e.g., $150,000+ = “more than $150,000).
274
Table B.2.
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275
(table continues)
276
Notes. a Interview length is actual time of recorded audio. The time in parentheses is the
audio time that was transcribed.
b
This is the number of the transcriptions, which corresponds to data regarding the
amount of money spent on transcriptions.
c
CPAM = Cost per audio minute. This is the fee charged by the transcriptionist.
d
TTC = Total Transcription Cost; the amount I paid for the transcription service.
e
Estimated Personal Time Invested. The estimated personal invested include time solely
given to interview preparation, the interview, listening to tapes, preparing transcriptions
or transcribing tasks I completed without the aid of a transcriptionist. Clearly, hiring a
transcriptionist saved me time.
* Indicates that there were multiple interviews.
All times are based on actual commute time. For example, if I was already at a
conference, I did not include this in the time dedicated to the interview. Also, if I also
shadowed the individual, I have not calculated our time together, just stand-alone
interviews.
277
Table B.3.
Equipment
Atlas.ti: Qualitative Data Analysis Software $160.00
Dell Minicomputer $403.00
Digital Recorder $149.00
Sony USB Foot pedal and Software $58.50
Wavepad Sound Editor (free: www.nch.com.au/) $0.00
$770.50
Supplies
Specialty Envelopes/Labels $58.28
Labels $5.25
Printer Ink (280 at $0.018 cents per page) $5.04
Stamps $54.00
Thank you cards $6.50
Batteries for digital recorder $12.00
$141.07
Travel
Vehicle Travel (Includes long-distance travel only) $3,040.95
- St. Louis area field research: 1,280 miles
- Georgia Trip: 986 miles
- Texas Trip 1: 290 miles (to St. Louis airport)
- Texas Trip 2: 613 miles (to St. Louis airport,
Dallas to Austin)
- Texas Trip 3: 2,360 miles
- Total: 5,529
Airfare/Train $365.00
- Texas Trip 1: $123.00
- Texas Trip 2: $242.00 (returned via Chicago)
Lodging $1,030.00
Meals $103.00
$4,538.95
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278
Miscellaneous expenses
PI Class at John A. Logan Community College $55.00
Conference Registration (TALI) $110.00
$165.00
TOTAL $6,200.06
279
following not-so-uplifting exchange I had with I-18 and I-19, a married business team:
CE: Right. So you guys have young children, right? And you both own the
business?
I-18: Mm-hmm.
CE: So that leads me to my next question: How you deal with health
insurance?
I-18: Yeah, how do we? … Ironically, not that long ago [I had] to go into the
hospital.
CE: Really? I hope you’re doing okay.
I-18: Yeah. Yes, yeah. But in terms of covering costs, we don’t. We don’t have
health insurance. We need it. But we can’t afford it.
CE: Well, your insight would be interesting then. How do you think this
changes the dynamic of business ownership in the United States given
that there isn’t a social[ized] system?
I-18: I don’t know. It’s difficult. I mean, at the end of the day our aspiration is
obviously to generate enough income to provide for these things. I don’t
know that I would quit what we’re doing to, for example, take a job just for
medical, but at the same time, how do you cover the costs should the
unexpected arrive? My opinion is that there is a place for socialized
medical care in this country, I don’t know that they’ve quite figured out the
way to do that properly, really, because there’s a lot of people that say
they’re against it, they’re for it… I don’t know what the answer is.
CE: It’s a very costly investment….
I-18: It really is. We looked into the cost, and unfortunately [I-19] suffers from
migraines as well. And so to get coverage to take care of that as well…I
think it was $800 or maybe $1,000 just for her.
…
I-19: We just started looking into it because after [I-18’s] visit to the ER, I said
that we just can’t afford it. It was just shy of a $10,000 bill.
Notes: While many private investigators start their business after they retire (and
thus have company- or state-sponsored health coverage) or have a spouse who works
for an organization that provides the insurance for both (e.g., Interviewee 09’s [I-09] wife
works for a school district), 10 out of the 30 interviewees (33.3%) do not. Almost all of
them, despite their varying opinions about a public option, stressed that they fear a
medical expense will force them out of business. Other common issues dealt with the
potential loss of retirement savings that were used to pay for start-up expenses and
VITA
Graduate School
Southern Illinois University
Dissertation Title:
Shadowing Practices: Ethnographic Accounts of Private Eyes as Entrepreneurs
Publications: