Documentary evidence

The documentary evidence I mentioned above included archival reports; corporate documents, such as annual reports, sustainability reports, company regulations, newsletters and organisational charts; Central Bank reports; publications about the global telecommunications industry; journal articles; websites; newspaper articles; and reports of research firms. The body of documents I relied upon the most is given in Appendix 1: List of Empirical Materials. I reviewed these to obtain evidence about Sri Lanka Telecom and its context that could not be obtained easily from interviews.

Archival reports such as Administration Reports, Ceylon Blue Books and Sessional Reports were used to obtain evidence about Sri Lanka Telecom for earlier periods. These are available at the National Archives and contain information about the Department, its administrative and accounting practices, and other information about the country from the

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1850s to the 1960s. Due to their number, I did not read all of these archival reports. I chose some at random and also referred to reports from years of special importance. For example, I read the Ceylon Blue Book in the year in which the Ceylon Telegraph Department was established, and Administration Reports during the Firstand Second World War periods to identify specific incidents and exceptions in the use of accounting practices. To obtain greater insight into how events taking place in one particular year linked with previous years’ events, Administration Reports for a few consecutive years were reviewed.

I utilised the Sri Lanka Telecom website to gain an understanding about the present organisation, including its operations, the nature of the business and the services provided to customers. Restricted access to some important corporate documents was a limitation in obtaining empirical material. Sri Lanka Telecom was especially reluctant to part with evidence relevant to corporate strategies. I reviewed documents from other sources, such as press releases, newspaper articles, business magazines, documents issued by the stock exchange and government archives. These covered wider contextual aspects about the organisation. As well as using this document-based information in order to supplement the evidence obtained from interviews, I asked informants for their views on some issues reported in these documents, particularly in annual reports and print media.

Past newspapers and some publications about the global telecommunication industry and the telecommunication industry of Sri Lanka were reviewed from among the documents available at the National Library and Documentation Board. Newspaper articles and debates on the reform of the industry, and on privatisation of the organisation to form Sri Lanka Telecom, provided views of different people about the reform and privatisation process. Most of the newspaper articles supporting the industry liberalisation process were written by the Secretary to the Ministry, the Minister and other prominent proponents of the change. There were a few articles that criticised the reform process, written by representatives of trade unions and journalists, to express concerns about the negative implications for subscribers5

and employees.

Changes in the economic, political, social and technological environment of telecommunications both globally and locally that could not be found solely from interviews

5 _{In the publications that I referred to, people who receive services from the Department were called “subscribers” or the} “general public” until the transformation in 1991. The term “customers” in a commercial sense started after the Department became a Corporation. Informants referred to them as “customers” without making any distinction between the two periods. I will use the term “subscribers” or the “general public” until 1991 and thereafter “customers” as appropriate.

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were derived from books on the history and economy of Sri Lanka, publications by the Central Bank of Sri Lanka, websites, publications on world telecommunications and newspapers. Moreover, in-depth understanding about the global and local telecommunication industry, including trends and the evolution of technological aspects, were obtained from various publications mentioned previously.

In dealing with the above documents, I have been cognisant that they are subject to the interpretations and partiality of the authors. Thus, the evidence I obtained from these documents reflects the context of the organisation according to only one particular perception. For example, articles published by those newspapers that tended to support the party in Government also supported the reform of the industry and the privatisation of the Corporation, whereas articles in those newspapers that supported the Opposition party criticised the process. Even though so called personal and organisational biases involved in documentary sources are generally cited as a limitation in research, I understand that any source of evidence has limitations stemming from, among other things, preconceived ideas, furthering personal interests and indifferences. As I argue in this study, individuals construct knowledge subject to their individual perceptions. Thus, any evidence or knowledge about a particular circumstance, situation or event that appears to exist is partisan towards the observer’s beliefs and purposes. For example, in the case of corporate documents, many are prepared for a specific purpose (e.g., a prospectus is prepared for a public share issue); and those that I reviewed may have been prepared to justify a specific objective of the organisation, according to management’s interests and discretion. It was for such reasons that I attempted to obtain a wide range of evidence from other publicly available sources, such as the Department of National Archives, business magazines and the media. This evidence obtained from other sources also provided background information in relation to particular incidents. Through collecting evidence from a variety of sources, I was able to understand how various people perceived things differently: there was no intention to “triangulate” in order to arrive at an absolute or objective truth.