Data Collection and analysis 27

Upon receiving approval from The University of Western Ontario Ethics Committee (Appendix A), to collect data, I relied on a broad range of ethnographic techniques comprised of participant observation, interviews, field notes, organizational artifacts and archival information. As an observer I watched and listened to what was happening around me. Either at that very moment or immediately after the observation (e.g., at night when returning from being on site), I would record my observations along with what I felt and thought about them. My observations were mostly focused on the work of managers and the service providers. However, because as an ethnographer I did not have scripted questions or previously determined interview protocols, I would occasionally pierce quiet observations with questions. These questions at the beginning were mostly descriptive ones (Spradley, 1979) aimed at clarifying or elaborating on the work being

done by the informants. As an example, in one of my first days on site, I asked a manager to clarify what it meant to “comp a guest,” to which she responded it meant to remove all the room charges and make it a free stay at HotelCo. As I grew more familiar with their work, language and culture, my questions were more structural and contrast questions. For instance, regarding the same topic, I would ask structural and contrasting questions like, “In what cases would you comp a guest? Who makes the call to do that? How frequently does it happen? When do you decide not to comp a guest?” I would then follow these questions with requests for specific examples.

In addition to these informal interviews, I also conducted a number of formal ones (see Appendix C for a list of interviews with informants). These lasted anywhere from 60 minutes to 75 minutes, and were held in quiet offices of the managers or in the crowded resting spots such as lounges or bars. With the informants’ permission, I audio recorded and transcribed the interviews. While the focus of the interviews depended on the role and the work of the informant, I structured the interviews around three themes related to their activities as they related to a) others in their group, b) other departments at HotelCo, and c) the customers. In interviews with managers, held in their offices, I also focused on any documents or reports on their desk that they were either reviewing or authoring, as well as the signage and posters displayed in their vicinity. I then would ask for a copy of the documents, if they felt appropriate to share. Occasionally I took photographs of various spaces or artifacts using the camera on my mobile phone.

Throughout these observations and interviews, I took extensive notes in a small paper notebook. I used field notes in two related ways. I used the left side of the notebook to record long, detailed descriptions of my observations of workers’ interactions and the contextual setting, along with my thoughts and feelings about the observed activities. I used the right side of the notebook as a to-do list, to record quick reminders or questions to which I needed to return. For instance, once, while I was observing the doormen in action, I noticed the doorman calling a limousine for a customer when he had hailed a taxi for the previous customer who needed of airport transportation. I used the right side of the notebook to record: “Doormen: hailing or calling? Taxi vs. Limo. When, how and why?” Later, at a time when I was able to approach the doorman, I asked these specific

questions, and recorded his lengthy and detailed responses in the left side of the

notebook. Within hours of leaving HotelCo after a site visit, I would expand on the field notes on my laptop, including further details in the form of memos (Corbin & Strauss, 2008; Emerson, Fretz, & Shaw, 1995).

In total, I have gathered two thousand pages of field notes, interviews, organizational artifacts and other records. These form the basis of an ongoing ethnographic analysis to arrive at a theory grounded in data. While the findings of the analyses are presented in subsequent chapters, what follows is a brief account of the approach I used in the analysis of the data. At a high level, my approach to the analysis of data consists of three distinct activities: coding the data and refining my understanding of the subject matter, seeking to understand the data in the context in which they were collected, and identifying

theoretical concepts and themes through constant comparison of the collected data and the literature. These activities formed a continuous and iterative approach to the analysis of the ethnographic data (Miles & Huberman, 1994).

At first, I started by organizing the workers’ actions and activities. I developed emic categories through coding within each group (Housekeeping and Front Desk) to reflect the tasks or services performed by each role occupant. For instance, at the Front Desk, the initial categories, or free nodes, included tasks such as checking-in, upgrading, arranging for transportation, luggage handling, etc. Additionally, I developed data attributes and other categories that marked specific instances of performed service(s) or tasks within a particular context (e.g. New Year’s Eve or Valentine’s Day) for specific guests. I then grouped the specific instances to refine concepts, identify their properties, and explore possible relationships. My aim at this stage was to integrate the data to arrive at an etic understanding of what type of services were provided to whom (which type of customers) and under what circumstances. When I finally decided this path of analysis was creating more chaos than order, I took the results back to the field, and began collecting additional data related to this line of thinking. In the interviews with both employees and managers, the answer to my question, “How do you choose which services to provide to which customers?” was invariably, “It depends.”

After several iterations, I began re-analysis of the data, taking interactions — instead of merely actions — as the unit of analysis. The new focus was on the construction of narratives surrounding the service interactions, i.e., between HotelCo employees and customers, and between HotelCo employees. The purposes of the narratives were to capture the contextual attributes that surrounded the interactions, including the clues the employees would use to decide what types of actions (services) to perform for which type of customers. I continually compared specific narratives within different groups and across time to refine etic concepts and eventually to arrive at a coherent theory. This formed the foundation of constant comparative method as proposed by research scholars (Glaser & Strauss, 1967).