Data analysis

While research material was collected mainly from two sources, public reporting and interview, there were total of three separate analyses. First the executive directors’ comments on quarterly reports were analysed separately following Gioia methodology in the purest form that it was used within this study imposing minimal predetermined structure to allow for discovery. Secondly the same quarterly reporting was analysed as a whole seeking to highlight signs of dynamic capabilities based on a predetermined structure. Lastly the interview transcripts were analysed also taking advantage of Gioia methodology.

3.3.1 Analysis of public reporting

In analysing data, it was important to note details in described actions and attitudes and especially, to recognise repeating themes and changes over time. To provide valid scientific

value the analysis and recognition of different elements needed to be rigorous and transparent in how these themes were recognised. Analysis of data for this thesis mainly draws on Gioia-methodology as presented by Gioia and Corley (2012). This is a methodology where the analysed material is systematically through multiple steps condensed to expose themes and wider dimensions actually presented in them. The methodology can work especially well in discovering or developing new concepts without being too bound to expand on previous constructs. While the final purpose of this study is closer to latter, the use of this methodology for part of the analysis has allowed for a more open ended understanding of the organization and its development before colouring the analysis with the expectations derived from dynamic capabilities literature. This methodology was used especially on detailed analysis of the executive director’s comments.

At the first stage of analysis or 1^st order analysis large number of categories emerge from the material and is systematically coded. Gioia and Corley (2012) specifically note that at this stage the analysis should “faithfully adhere to informant themes, we make little attempt to distil categories”. The goal is to identify categories of things said in the text, or other analysed material. Gioia and Corley (2012) mainly discuss use of interviews. As they also note the number of categories/codes at this level can become very large. In this thesis just the coding of executive directors´ quarterly comments yielded more than 120 individual codes. The coding used is best described as descriptive seeking to present and condense the primary topics of the comments rather than for example emotion coding - using codes to mark emotion present in the material. To aid in the analysis I utilized Atlas Ti 8 program.

For the second order analysis researcher seeks similarities and differences seeking relationships and structures among the first order codes in order for second order themes to emerge from the material. For this thesis connecting codes to each other was assisted but not solely directed by co-occurrence between codes in the materials. The assumption here is that codes that are repeatedly linked to same bit of text are more likely to be thematically linked.

In case of the directors’ quarterly comments, the original mass of codes was condensed into 15 code groups/themes. They can be seen in table 2 in findings chapter.

At this stage we are in theoretical realm (Gioia and Corley 2012) and for the next step must ask: “Whether the emerging themes suggest concept that might help us describe and explain the phenomena we are observing.” For this thesis the themes from executive directors’

comments formed four very distinct categories presented in table 2 in findings chapter. Two

of them relate strongly to recent changes and difference between the directors while two others relate to two important elements of the business in general.

These themes and categories further allowed evaluating the changes over time in both the organization and its executive directors’ commentary on the situation. This portion of the analysis was inspired by two strategies for theorizing presented by Langley (1999), quantification strategy and temporal bracketing strategy. I first sought to quantify the directors’ comments based on the relative frequency that the different themes and categories were coded in their comments. I did this at annual level comparing frequency of each theme to total number of codes for said year. Hence possible difference in the length of the comments and the total number of codes between years will not bias the result. The goal here was to determine what topics reserved largest share of attention each year. The results can be seen in graphs 1 and 2 and they revealed three mutually distinct periods. In accordance with the temporal bracketing strategy (Langley 1999) this allows the organization state over time be analysed in limited number of more distinct blocks. Findings that separate those blocks are further discussed in findings and discussion parts of this thesis.

For wider analysis of quarterly and annual reports to evaluate presence of dynamic capabilities, I used the above described methodology in a reversed way. Rather than constructing codes, themes and larger concepts organically from coding of the material, I built these structures based on the literature review or the dynamic capabilities model and its applicability to change. This is justifiable as key purpose of this thesis is to identify if dynamic capabilities suggested by literature are present. As such a theory-based model is reflected against the researched material rather than building an organic model from said material as with initial analysis of the director’s comments. It should be noted that these comments are included in the overall analysis of the quarterly and annual reports in addition to their own separate analysis. The structure of the coding system used is presented in appendix 1.

3.3.2 Analysis of interviews

The analysis of the interview data was based on two fundamental elements. First the interview material was subjected to an analysis with Gioia methodology as described for executive directors’ comments in previous section to identify themes and concepts. These demonstrate the content of the data for the findings with more analytical rigor than simply

taking the interviewee’s answers to each question. Many of the resulting themes and categories could be directly linked on some aspect of the structure built to present dynamic capabilities. The results of this analysis from first level codes to third level categories are presented alongside the findings chapter in appropriate sections. They are also collected in the appendix 4.

Additionally, while there were also open-ended questions, a large part of each interview was structured to directly question the interviewees on an identified aspect of dynamic capabilities, such as questioning what kind of information the organization follows in its environment or how/how much employees encounter each other. The answers could then be directly compared to what literature suggests.

3.3.3 Bringing the analysis together

To structure the final analysis and findings the analysis and results from both public reporting and the interviews were reflected against an analysis structure of the dynamic capabilities model developed from the coding system used for the analysis of whole quarterly reports with predetermined codes to represent the dynamic capabilities. This final analysis structure provides for more concrete questions on what things add to the organization’s dynamic capabilities and what go against them. The analysis and findings then focus on answering those questions. For example: Does organization set significant or unnecessary limits on internal information sharing or not? Does the culture accept experimenting and failure or not and is this changing? The goal was to clearly present if the findings would match the dynamic capabilities model and what would not.

This final analysis structure is utilized in structuring the findings chapter and is also presented in the appendix 2.