Data explication

Hycner (1999) advises against the use of the term analysis relating to phenomenology, preferring ‘explication’. This is because ‘analysis’ implies

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“breaking into parts” whereas ‘explication’ is seen more in terms of researching the elements while still keeping a sense of the larger phenomenon.

Giorgi (1985) developed an empirical methodology in the Husserl tradition which looks to use phenomenological reduction in the search for the ‘essences’ of a phenomenon. Cope (2011) describes the steps as:

1. the interview protocols must be transcribed verbatim as soon as possible after the interview

2. the interview protocols must be reread repeatedly in order to achieve the sense of the phenomenon in its entirety as seen by the research participant

3. the interview protocol is broken into specific ‘meaning units’ – bracketing and phenomenological reduction

4. the interviews are then taken from the language of the participant and written in the disciplinary language of the interviewer.

5. the transformed meaning units are synthesised or clustered where the units cluster together naturally (Hycner, 1985)

6. Eidetic reduction, utilising reflection and intuition will then yield the ‘essences’ of the phenomenon

Hycner (1999) developed this explication process of Giorgi and this has been simplified into five phases by Groenewald (2004) as

1. Bracketing and phenomenological reduction 2. Delineating units of meaning

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3. Clustering units of meaning to form themes

4. Summarising each interview, validating it and where necessary modifying it

5. Extracting general and unique themes from all the interviews and making a composite summary

This research used the explication processes of Hycner (1999) and

Groenwald (2004) as a basis for the phenomenological analysis of the semi structured interviews. Further, the data explication was done without

qualitative data software analysis (QDAS) software in keeping with

phenomenological research theorists who deem such tools inappropriate for the achievement of “phenomenological insights”.

Bracketing and phenomenological reduction

Bracketing and phenomenological reduction is the central epistemological strategy of the phenomenological researcher. It is a purposeful effort by the researcher to reduce analysis to a subjective

interpretation, not influenced by the researcher’s personal opinions or indeed prior theoretical knowledge of the area being studied. This is referred to as adopting the ‘phenomenological attitude’ which is different to how a person normally makes sense of the world. In this research, the goal is to

understand and describe the lived experience of senior management of academic institutions of the pertinent issues, from a strategic management perspective, during the entrepreneurial evolution of their academic institution.

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Phenomenological reduction is achieved by the researcher “bracketing” or suspending any prior theoretical knowledge to allow the ‘lived’ experience’ to emerge from the interviews. Consistent with phenomenological research, this researcher did not develop any prior theories or constructs in advance of conducting my interviews. However, a full literature review was done in advance of the interviews in order to facilitate the development of research questions which would contribute to the state of the art. Bracketing is described by van Manen (2014, p 215) as " parenthesizing, putting into brackets the various assumptions that might stand in the way from opening up access to the living meaning of a phenomenon".

To achieve this, following each interview, this researcher wrote notes which captured any emphasis made by the interviewee. This researcher then followed the advice of Hycner (1999) and listened repeatedly to the interview in order to develop ‘gestalt’ - a holistic understanding of the interviewees lived experience. A full verbal transcription of each interview was completed as soon as was possible after each interview. Each interview was read and reread many times until a true holistic understanding of the interview

emerged. It is through achieving the phenomenological attitude that this researcher could then move forward to the critical phase of delineating units of meaning.

Delineating units of meaning

The next step in the phenomenological explication involves the extraction of statements (meaning units) which are deemed illuminating in

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relation to the phenomenon. This is an extremely thorough process of considering every phrase and sentence in order to capture the participants true meanings. This involved the simultaneous reading and listening to the interviews to capture both the relevant statements and also the importance and other cues from simultaneously hearing the interview. This critical element of the research is rendered more challenging by the need to remain in the phenomenological attitude and continue to bracket my own prior knowledge. Hycner (1985, p282) notes that this step is done while retaining the phenomenological attitude as “this point does not yet address the

research question to the data”. Having delineated units of general meaning, this researcher then proceeded to apply the research question to the

meaning units with the desired objective of determining whether each meaning unit give insight into the research question.

Clustering units of meaning to form themes

Once a list of non-redundant units of meaning for an interview had been completed, the next step was to consider whether any of these units would cluster together to form themes. Bracketing any previous theoretical knowledge and indeed themes which were noted emerging in previous interviews was important here to allow themes to emerge naturally from the interview. The eliciting of these themes, or essences, common to a number of meaning units required the use of “artistic judgement” (Hycner, 1999), referred to as “imaginative variation” by Husserl (1931). Essentially, this involved considering each meaning unit from different perspectives, grouping

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related meaning units and identifying significant topics or themes from each of these clusters. It should be noted that overlaps occur where meaning units were clustered under more than once theme.

Summarising each interview

Once the above steps were completed, this researcher proceeded to write a summary of each participant’s themes and explanation. The aim of summarising each interview was to capture the themes which emerged and present them as an accurate and holistic account of the participant’s

experience of the phenomenon being studied. The interview summary contextualises the themes through giving “a sense of the whole” Hycner (1985). The summaries of each interview are contained in chapter 4.

Validation and Member checking

Phenomenological methodology, through utilizing the process of bracketing, protects the validity of the interpretation of the data from the bias of the researcher. Further, through using member checking, returned to each of the participants to ensure the information captured during the interview process was valid. This researcher sent to each of the interview participants a verbatim transcript of the interview and the summary of the interview which captured all the information provided to me by the participant. Each

participant was afforded one week to respond, and they were informed that no response would be taken as approval to proceed. None of the research participants responded and the non-response was accepted as a positive

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approval to proceed. Creswell (1998) notes that member checking in this way contributes to the credibility of the final study through affording the interview participants the opportunity to determine if both the interview and the summary are correctly captured. “If the investigator is to be able to purport that his or her reconstructions are recognisable to audience

members as adequate representation of their own realities, it is essential that they be given the opportunity to react to them” (Lincoln and Guba, 1985, p 314).

Extracting themes and making a composite summary

Having identified and summarized the themes unique to each interview, this researcher then looked to create a holistic view of the data through the identification of the themes which emerged common across the interviews. Hycner (1999) in this regard proposes capturing both the themes seen across most or indeed all the interviews but also the individual

variations. In keeping with suggestion from Cope (2005) on how to maintain an inductive approach, themes that were identified across the interviews are initially written up without reference to the literature. This allows the data to ‘speak for itself’ in the first instance.

An important element of inductive theory building is positioning the themes which emerged during the research within the extant literature. This process is referred to as ‘enfolding literature’ and it is considered important to

consider the emergent themes with a wide scope of literature (Eisenhardt, 1989). Coffey and Atkinson (1996) emphasise the importance of ‘going

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beyond the data’ and discussing the data with respect to the theories that support the research. However, it was also remembered at this point that the objective of phenomenological research is to inform regarding a particular phenomenon and not to achieve “empirical generalisation” (van Manen, 2014). To this end, the explication process was concluded through the development of a composite summary which reflected the emergent themes in terms of the literature.