“The emphasis in qualitative analysis is “sense making” or understanding a phenomenon, rather than predicting or explaining” (Bhattacherjee, 2012, p. 113). Unlike quantitative re- search where data collection and data analysis are completely separate processes, that is not the case with qualitative research where these processes quite frequently are interconnected and dependent on each other (Recker, 2013). Additionally, the analysis of quantitative data is driven by statistics and mostly does not depend on the researcher, while the analysis of quali- tative data on the other hand highly relies on the researchers’ analytic skills and ability to un- derstand and analyze the context in which the data has been collected (Bhattacherjee, 2012). Analyzing qualitative data “involves summarizing the mass of data collected and presenting the results in a way that communicates the most important features” (Hancock et al., 1998, p. 24). The most important characteristic of the data analysis which is done in qualitative re- search is that there is very big amount of data to be analyzed by the researcher who usually in first place has no knowledge of which part of that data is considered to be relevant or not in the results at the end, nor the reasons about it (Recker, 2013).
The thinking about how to analyze the data should not start before knowing the subject of the interview and the purpose of the interview (Kvale, 1996). Hence we clearly set the subject investigated as well as the purpose we are aiming to do with our interviews. As suggested by Kvale (1996), it would be too late to think about the method of analysis after conducting the interviews. So, after developing our interview guide we had comprehensive idea on the meth- od of analysis for the data of our interviews.
Many techniques exist for analyzing data from conducted qualitative research, while among the most popular are (Recker, 2013): coding, memoing, critical incidents, content analysis and discourse analysis. We conducted the data analysis by first converting the interviews into text
through transcription, and then we went through the coding phase in order to reduce the amount of data and identify relevant data, so that we are finally able to focus on analysis of the data from the coding phase.
3.3.1 Interview transcription
The transcription, as part of the data analysis, is the process of preparing the interview mate- rial for the next analysing phase by converting the audio recording into text (Kvale and Brinkmann, 2009). In our study all the interviews were conducted in a face-to-face form. We recorded the interview using smart phone applications that records the audio in a high quality. We started transcription right after each interview in order to be able to remember the impres- sions which we had during the interview itself and reflect it to the related transcript. Further, this way of transcribing will give us chance to gain better understanding of the interviews. Taking the fact that we are two members in this thesis, we decided that the transcript for each interview should be mainly done by the member who runs the interview. In order to improve the quality of the transcripts, transcripts will be cross-checked by the other member (Table 3.2). The high quality of the interview allow us to perform the transcription easily word-by- word and as well as for the cross-checking. After the transcribing was finished we sent the transcripts for the interviewee for their review and comments as suggested by Kvale and Brinkmann (2009).
Table 3.2 Summary of the transcribing process
Interviewed done at Transcript number Transcribed by Checked by
T-Mobile Transcript 1 Bojan Najdenov Fadi Makhoul
One (Telekom Slovenia Group) Transcript 2 Bojan Najdenov Fadi Makhoul
DBank Transcript 3 Bojan Najdenov Fadi Makhoul
C-Retail Transcript 4 Fadi Makhoul Bojan Najdenov
IKEA Transcript 5 Fadi Makhoul Bojan Najdenov
Semos Transcript 6 Bojan Najdenov Fadi Makhoul
3.3.2 Coding and analyzing
Analysing qualitative data understands analysing a big portion of textual data (Bhattacherjee, 2012) which volume we needed to reduce in order to be able to draw conclusions out of it. Our approach in data analysis is based on Miles and Huberman (1984) analysis of qualitative data which is considered as flow of three concurrent activities: data reduction, data display, and conclusion drawing and verification. It is important to have in mind that all those phases are not taking place in separate manner. Following that we performed the data reduction by selecting the sentences and focusing on it and also by summarizing some others. The second phase is the display phase which mainly assembles and presents the information in a way that assists the next phase of making conclusions. The third phase of the analysis is drawing con- clusion based on the information display.
– 32 –
The process of coding implies applying codes to a portion of text, which should lead to pres- entation of the data in a digestible way (Bhattacherjee, 2012). The coding scheme that we applied in our analysis was drown out of the themes we discussed in Chapter 2.4: intelligence phase, design phase, choice phase, effect at subunit level, effect at organizational level, effects on organizational memory, effects on organizational intelligence and decision making. In ad- dition to that, we added an extra code concerning the interviewee’s profile.