Data Coding

“Each researcher needs, through experience and reflection, to find the forms of analysis that work for him or her” (Stake, 1995, p. 77)”. Following Stake’s (1995) exhortation to use direct interpretation or categorical aggregation to make meaning of case research data, in vivo codes from interview data as well as the researcher’s own constructed data (from the in vivo codes) were used for the experience and learning parts of the data. Subsequently, constructed data were used as meaning units to begin critical realist data analysis to identify mechanisms and through them suggest possible causal effect(s). “The case and the key issues need to be kept in focus. The search for meaning,

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the analysis, should roam out and return to these foci over and over (Stake, 1995, pp. 84-85)."

A sample:

In Vivo Coding: Sample Participant Responses:

Participant A: But the zones were very loosely organized. They're all here and those are the key operational components but there was no official connection locally.

Participant B: so we had to revise the whole structure within the zone. You know, realign in terms of the reporting relationships. We also did some kind of

consolidation of roles, so that was important.

Participant C: And then we started to align our thoughts on how to go about proposing a leadership team, which included operational leaders for jurisdictions.

We drew up what we considered to be our service areas

Participant D: Certainly with the realignment, the initial step of identifying the zones, getting the senior leadership in place. And looking at the functions, the programs and the services

 getting the senior leadership in place

121 3.3.5 Theme Identification Process

Being that the objective of the research is the identification of causation of learning from a restructuring experience, the structure of the interview questions in the interview guide, were laid out in two broad categories - experience and learning - during the research design phase. This is where the researcher naturally started the identification of themes from the data in the transcribed interviews. This was done by the researcher asking himself the questions:

Is this about experience?

Is it about learning?

Yin (2009) suggested that case study researchers should start analysis by playing with the data and asking questions while Stake (1995) encouraged researchers to adopt ordinary and naturalistic ways of making sense, “giving meaning to first impressions as well as final compilations” (p.71) and using “intuitive processing to search for meaning”

(p.72). As the researcher intuitively answered the questions above about experience and learning, relevant interview data were placed either under experience or under learning categories. The rationale for what was included and what was left out followed the Stake’s (1995) proposition that it is “Not the beginning, middle, and the end, not those parts but the parts important to us” (p.71), a point he argued expansively and because it is very important to understanding the researcher’s approach, is quoted fully:

This is case study... our primary task is to come to understand the case. It will help us to tease out relationships, to probe issues, and to aggregate categorical data, but those ends are subordinate to understanding the case. To devote much time

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to formal aggregation of categorical data is likely to distract attention to its various involvements, its various contexts. Usually, we try to spend most of our time in direct interpretation. (Stake, 1995, p.77)

The further review of the interview responses produced themes under these two main broad categories that represent the focus of the empirical aspect of the current research: what did the leader experience? What did s/he learn? – see Figure 3.1 below.

Figure 3.1: Architecture for Theme Identification

The theme identification process started with identifying words, phrases, and sentences in the transcripts that seem related to learning and/or experience. The researcher did all this work via electronic files in Microsoft Word format. This made it easier to highlight, underline, insert comment, cut, copy, paste and otherwise easily mark up the transcripts.

First phase:

Upon reading the transcripts, words, phrases, and sentences within individual transcripts were colour-coded to differentiate sections that related to learning and those

Restructuring

Experience Learning

Themes

Experience Themes

Learning Themes

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that related to experience. Then all green sections from all the transcripts were grouped together in a new learning file while all red sections were grouped together in an experience file.

Second Phase:

In this phase, the two files, learning and experience were reviewed separately to further understand their contents. Phrases and sentences that seem to refer to same or similar subject of learning or experience, following natural meaning units (Lee, 1999) were grouped together by cutting and pasting them into the same column, a technique that is

“particularly useful for identifying subthemes” (Ryan and Bernard, 2003, p.103).

Third Phase:

Further review led to labelling or naming these columns. The thought process guiding this labelling and naming were the questions, what type of experience? What type of learning? Answers to these questions resulted in same or similar experience and learning being grouped under one label or name.

Fourth Phase:

The fourth phase looked at broader categories for the particular classes of learning and experience. These resulted in the broad themes for both learning and experience.

The Themes

The themes that resulted from the four phases of theme identification are shown in Table 3.2 below.

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Table 3.2a: Identified Themes in Details Context/Experience Themes Leaders’ Experience

Relative to themselves as Individuals

Leaders’ Experience Relative to the Organization and the Health System

Sub themes: Sub themes:

Reacting Understanding

Performing Criticizing

Struggling Hoping & Improving Being Humble

Influencing Supporting

Envisioning/Futuring

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Sub themes: Sub themes: Sub themes:

Change in perceptions description of the outcomes, a later and further process was embarked upon as part of the critical realist inferential processes to identify and explain the mechanisms behind leader’s learning outcomes.

Inferred mechanisms – from abduction and retroduction - were employed together as explanatory vehicles for leaders’ learning context and outcomes with abducted mechanisms coming first in sequence before retroducted mechanisms which are critical

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realism’s “central mode of inference” (Lawson, 1998, p. 156). The work of identifying mechanisms started with the questions – What can be inferred from what the data is saying? How can these be abstracted and described conceptually? This then led to the middle column below which represents the first inferential stage of abduction. The process then went further to ask new and different questions: what needs to exist to help in explaining the concepts in column two? What can be inferred from these concepts that originally were inferred from the data? In other words, in this particular context, what reality must exist in order for learning to emerge? This is retroduction, the second and critical realism’s final stage of inference. It yields the mechanisms “that derive directly from the nature of the bodies involved” (Easton, 2010, p.121).

As seen below in Table 3.3, the inferential processes led to the identification of five mechanisms:

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Table 3.3: inferential Processes and Identified Mechanisms

Contextual Description Abductive Re-description Retroductive Imagination Examples:

 several group meetings during restructuring;

 meeting a lot of different people

 hearing what other people have to say during the meetings

 Choosing to chair a committee so one’s influence is maintained (action)

 Watching other leaders handle issues well (observation)

 Reflecting on the effectiveness of current skills and concluding “I am not there yet” (reflection)

 Comparing oneself between two time periods and seeing one as being more deliberate

 Expressing that one has changed from his ‘traditional’ leadership style

Examples:

 Introspection

 Contrasting

 Reflective expression  Introspective Engagement - Learning by

reflection Examples:

 Mimicking other leaders

 Picking up what one wants to emulate

 Witnessing what one doesn’t want to be

Examples:

The Described The Re-described The Imagined

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This research came up with multiple abducted and retroducted mechanisms as shown above as vehicles to explain how short-term informal leadership learning takes place. Mechanisms that explain events can be one or several; this makes sense in open systems. Bhaskar (19981; 1998b) as well as Sayer (1992), Clark, MacIntyre and Cruickshank (2007) and Pawson (2001) supported the notion of multiple mechanisms and Benjaminsen (2003) opined that “Factual events can be composed of the effects of different mechanisms” (p.7). These mechanisms were generated through action, observation, and reflection.