Data Sources

This current research utilised interview transcripts and documents as data sources. Perceptions and accounts from officers involved in DDPs and KT were solicited through interviews. Interviews are appropriate to investigate organisational processes, from the perspective of the participants (Yin, 2014). In identifying which officers to interview, purposeful sampling was adopted, because it allowed the researcher to intentionally select individuals with a better understanding of the central phenomenon (Creswell, 2012). Only relevant officers who potentially had in-depth knowledge about KT in the context of DDPs were targeted. In addition to collecting data from the Indonesian context, to fully appreciate the partnership’s expectations and processes, it was equally important to canvas the views of the Australian university officers. Such information assisted the investigation on how knowledge was transferred between the Indonesian and Australian universities. As the main focus of this case study was the Indonesian universities, the participants from the Australian university were limited. Table 3.3 in the subsequent page lists the participants who agreed for interviews in Indonesia and Australia.

To ensure anonymity of the research participants and assist in identification of extracts from a particular participant, labels were used to discriminate different data sets (Rubin & Rubin, 2005). For instance, in Table 3.3, the AU’s Director of International Division interview data set was labelled as AU University Executive 1, while the Rector at IU-A was identified as IU-A University Executive 2. The use of labels also helped the researcher to be more objective in analysing the data as he was not fixated on the names and the personalities behind the names (Gibbs, 2007). In Table 3.3, the labels were placed in brackets. In addition, the participants’ positions were pseudonyms, but they described the participants’ responsibilities. There were 10 participants from each Indonesian university and seven participants from the Australian university, 27 in total. They came from the university executive-level, faculty-level, and school-level officers and academics. The number of participants at

organisational structure as mentioned earlier and the current study had less emphasis on the Australian partners’ KT perception. It is interesting to note that there were a substantial number of Australian alumni working in the two Indonesian universities.

Among the 20 Indonesian participants, eight of them did their advanced degrees in

Quality Assurance Manager (IU-B University Executive 3)

As noted in Table 3.3, although the number of participants at each Indonesian university was similar, the composition of participants based on the organisational level was not identical. There were five school-level academics at IU-A, and the other five were university and faculty-level officers. Although Lecturer C was not a member of the School of Computer Studies, he was suggested by IU-A’s leadership because of his involvement in establishing a new faculty at IU-A, which was claimed to be inspired by a similar faculty at AU. Four of the IU-B participants were IU-BIC staff members, mainly consisted of IU-BIC managers. Although they were not exactly from a faculty at IU-B, they were placed at the faculty level in Table 3.3 as it was the closest equivalence for IU-A and AU’s faculties. Besides the Director, three other participants were from IU-B’s central executive. The International Manager was in charge for the overall international activities of IU-B, thus an important source-person for the current study that focuses on international DDPs; whereas the

other two managers were interviewed for their involvement in IU-B’s internal KT process. From the school level, the Head and the Deputy Head of School participated in the present study.

The AU participants ranged from Director of International Division, staff in charge of overseas marketing and cooperation at the faculty level, Deputy Dean, and academic coordinators. The Post-Graduate Program Coordinator was included in the present study as he used to work for an Indonesian university that had the first DDP partnership with AU and he was considered an Indonesian partnership specialist and had a lot of insights to share.

Relevant documents regarding the DDPs from the participating universities were also gathered. Documents can be useful to enhance evidence and support 3.4. As their actual names expose the identity of the participating universities, these documents were given pseudonyms and identified through the labels between brackets in the Table for quick identification in the analysis.

Table 3.4 Documents obtained from the Participating Universities

IU-A IU-B AU

As seen in Table 3.4, the documents obtained from the participating universities were listed based on which institution provided them to the researcher, which explains why Memorandum of Understanding between IU-B and AU was placed under AU’s column. Not all universities made available the required documents in keeping with their particular confidentiality policies. Some documents were not given as full copies and the researcher was only allowed to take notes of the documents’ relevant content during the data collection. Finally, some documents were in Indonesian language, which were selectively translated to English to illustrate implied or anticipated KT processes (see Sutrisno, Nguyen, & Tangen, 2013 for more discussion of the translation approach adopted in this current study).