Epistemological and Methodological Issues

In this section I explore some of the key issues that underlie a constructionist study, specifically pertaining to the development, collection and interpretation of material. From both epistemological and methodological points of view one needs to distinguish between the ways in which experiences are constructed by people to make meaning of situations and the researcher’s attempt to make meaning of the reported experiences of participants. Seidman (2006) and Guba (1990) agree that the construction of the meaning of a participant’s experience is a function of the interaction between interviewer and interviewee. Schwandt (1998, p. 222) summarises the roles of the researcher and the participants in a constructivist or interpretivist approach:

The constructivist or interpretivist approach believes that to understand this world of meaning one must interpret it. The inquirer must elucidate the process of meaning construction and clarify what and how meanings are embodied in the language and actions of social actors. To prepare an interpretation is itself to construct a reading of these meanings; it is to offer the inquirer’s construction of the constructions of the actors one studies.

Construction of experience thus takes place on various levels. In any form of primary research the researcher must first decide what factors are worth including. The end result may at first seem fairly arbitrary to the reader but if done well by the researcher it becomes convincing. Some of the factors may emerge from perceived gaps in the literature, some from personal experience, including observation and conversation, some simply because they are of interest to the researcher. The breadth of factors included also depends partly on the aims of the researcher. Does he/she investigate a few factors, as many as possible, or let the factors emerge from the narratives of the subjects? And if, for example, issues arise that were not originally conceptualised in a carefully planned investigation, are they ignored or factored into the

interpretation of the findings? In addition, how deeply does the researcher go? The nature of the material provided by respondents depends, therefore, on what the researcher was exploring and how she or he went about mining it. A weakness of the “traditional question and answer” interview, according to Holloway and Jefferson (2000, p. 31) is that the interviewer decides what the themes are, the order in which they will be presented and the language in which they couch their questions. This can limit the nature of the answers given in a way that a more open narrative approach might not. Conversely, narrative accounts (Boje, 2001) and grounded theory approaches (Strauss & Corbin, 1998) may not engage concepts that the researcher thinks may be relevant and will therefore remain unexplored.

In this study the range of factors to be investigated was intentionally wide but I did not exclude the possibility that other factors may have played a role. Had fewer factors been investigated, but to a greater depth, the findings would have looked quite different to those presented in the next chapter. Had more factors been included and had more or fewer or different questions been asked, the results would again look different. Any claim that a researcher has ‘uncovered’ people’s experience of change can only partially be substantiated. The reader therefore has to contend with the author’s construction of which factors were relevant.

The participant’s construction of the experience of change first occurs through examination of the issues, causes and consequences surrounding it, then through reflection, and even later and more concretely through the articulation of language. The words participants use in interviews are the outcomes of retrospective, and therefore reconstructive, processes. The ‘reality’ they refer to is that which was recalled in the interview, and not necessarily that of the time of the change. Thus interviews are likely to trigger some memories, but not all.

The next level of construction is that made by the researcher of the constructions of the participants (Schwandt, 1998). In one sense this is the co-construction of events referred to by Bryant and Wolfram Cox (2006). Transcript material can provide a wealth of detail and the choice of the researcher in deciding what to use is subjective. Additionally, the researcher and subject may place different meanings on words, as the discussion of the interpretation of ‘resistance to change’ in this study indicates. When people are given - and take - the opportunity to add to or in any way amend the details of a transcript, which was part of my interview protocol, they may to some extent indicate agreement with the interviewer’s construction of the conversation. However,

my participants chose not to comment on the content of what had been recorded in the interviews, nor added new material. Secondly, they did not get to see the analysis of textual data and may therefore not agree with my interpretations.

My own biases and values may be detected in the constructions I place on the constructions of the participants. I have experienced change in various organisations where I have worked, as change leader, manager, agent and recipient. In my current organisation alone changes have included a new strategic direction, new organisational and departmental cultures and leaders, restructuring, redundancies, office relocations, and changes in technology, schedules and policies. I have been party to many discourses on change in this organisation (and others), at different hierarchical levels, and in many contexts. My own perceptions of these events and their affective and behavioural components could have influenced my constructions of the reports of participants in this study. So too could the professional body and academic workshops or conferences on change I have attended and the classes on change I have taught. I therefore had to be aware of these potential influences. One source, cited in Gergen and Gergen (2000, p. 1033) suggested that her ethnicity did not give her “insider status” in researching another ethnic group but that shared experience enabled her to provide a “comparative perspective that is implicit, intuitive and informed by my own identities and positionalities.” Likewise, my experience has provided me with useful insight into organisational change processes, and their causes and consequences, but could well have coloured both the interview questions and the analysis of the responses. Issues of this nature are explored in more depth later on.

Arguing against the conventional wisdom that researchers should be dispassionate and objective in the research process, Gubrium and Holstein (1997, p. 59) suggest that ‘emotionalists’ (defined as qualitative researchers of emotion) “plunge directly into the subjective fray, at times becoming passionately engrossed.” Similarly, Ellis (1991) suggests that researchers of emotions should reflect on their own emotional experience as a means of better understanding those of their subjects. She goes even further by suggesting that, within limits, researchers can express their own emotions in the context, for example, of fieldwork or interviews, to encourage the subjects to open themselves to emotional expression. “In interactive introspections, the researcher works back and forward with others to facilitate their self-introspections. The object of study is the emergent experience of both parties” (p. 129). However, I mostly resisted this temptation, and this degree of co-construction, opting for the more traditional, objective

- and dispassionate - approach. On a few occasions, however, I admitted to participants that I had experienced similar reactions to them. This did not appear to affect the nature of the interview in any way, or influence the data.

Where there are two or more researchers different constructions are brought into play. As part of the process of writing a thesis a researcher presents an analysis of data to supervisors. Their comments influence the final product. The first conference paper that emerged from the empirical work in this study (Smollan, Matheny & Sayers, 2007) went through various stages of co-construction. I had conducted the interviews and produced a table of quotes on the chosen theme and an analysis of them. Then all three of us separately analysed the table and the transcripts and discussed our interpretations. Other joint conference papers and the book chapter (Matheny & Smollan, 2005) were the outcome of a process of co-construction. The final level of construction is that which the reader brings to the researcher’s interpretation of the participants’ responses. Each person in the chain of construction of meaning may have a different interpretation.