Data Collection and Analysis Methods

This research applied a structured data collection method within a case study design starting with an analysis of organizational data found in corporate announcements, annual reports, corporate sites, public articles and in social media and a series of interviews conducted at the research sites. The semi- structured interviews allowed repeating questions and therefore the comparison between different individuals and cases. Organizational data allowed to understand the general purpose, products and services, history, values, vision and culture. In addition to understand how the organizations are structured, hierarchical models, their challenges in the market, the competition, strategies, how they differentiate and how they follow market change such as demand and new technologies. Of further interest was how they communicate internally and externally, what kind of technologies they utilize, how they define collaboration among employees, groups and departments, their position about openness, transparency, how they utilize information technology and where they utilize it and for what purpose. For instance, where ICT is part of core business processes and where ICT plays a rather supporting role. This provided a general view of each organization from the outside, which means how they perceive themselves and how they would like to be seen. These individual data sets from each site provided in addition the possibility to contrast between an external and internal view of the interviewees, the organization and its management.

The preference was set on semi-structured interviews, because they allow to ask more questions if they lead to further details during the interview (Bryman & Bell, 2011). The interviews aimed to investigate three main areas: organizational behaviour concerning openness, transparency and communication, social media integration in a business context and its impact on the collective decision-making process. Since some effects are of a subtle nature, which means the interviewee is not fully aware the questions had to be carefully evaluated to collect this information. Hence, this is another reason for semi-structured interviews since they allow focusing in certain directions to uncover important insights.

The interviewees represented different roles to gain different perspectives in an organization on different hierarchical levels. They represented senior management, IT managers, team leaders, knowledge workers and other professionals from different departments. This was of importance to understand the influence of relationships in social networks, different perspectives within the organization between the individuals and how they perceive benefits if any, similarly or differently. Questions focused on the process of decision-making, such as who makes the decisions at what level and what are the technological aids implemented. Furthermore, the interviews delivered data about the usage of social technologies and the barriers preventing further integration.

The study followed an analytical framework that used transcription of the recorded interviews, organizing and preparing the transcripts for analysis by formatting and structuring sentences. After the structuring followed an in-depth study of the text by reading them several times, making notes, applying open and axial coding techniques, building concepts and categories following Silverman (2011), Creswell (2009), Bryman and Bell (2011) and Kvale and Brinkmann (2015). The analysis of each case followed a cross-case analysis that allowed comparison of the results, interrelating the categories and interpreting the relation between the cases (Yin, 2009). For the analysis, the analytical software NVivo was utilized to structure and to code and to work through the large amount of data, collected in the interviews. The aim of the analysis was to identify, understand and interpret common patterns of behaviour. A focus was set on perceived and real benefits or disadvantages if any and barriers that may exist concerning the application of social media integration in the area of collective decision-making within formal and less formal groups. The analytical process followed theoretical knowledge discussed in this study, previous research and utilized scientific analytical tools and methods following a rigorous research procedure.

The analysis of the data started with the transcription of eighteen hours of interview recordings into two-hundred-fifty pages of text. Each interview was structured into sections following the interview guideline. The transcription was supported by a transcription software, which allowed to listen to the recorded interview while writing, going back and forth if needed to understand each interview section and statements of the interviewees. After that started the structuring of the data with coding line by line of the transcripted interviews by utilizing a thematic technique identifying words or parts of sentence summarizing into ideas, concepts, actions, relationships and meanings the statements provided. In a first iteration two-hundred codes were created keeping the focus on relevance to the research topics. These codes were further condensed and refined in another iteration into one-hundred-thirty-five codes. In a next step the codes were sorted into twelve themes along the main

blocks of the interview guidelines and a focus on the research questions. For this analytical work Nvivo software was used to keep the overview about the vast data and to allow drilling down into specific topics of the interviews and to compare between the cases. During the reporting of the findings the codes were used to identify significant areas for research to pick interesting quotes from the interviewees and reflect and interpret how they link to topics such as perceived individual and collective organizational decision-making processes or perceived risks and disadvantages of social media integration.