Establishing an interpretative approach

The identified gap in the study of women’s under-representation and the research interest of this study are compatible with a particular research approach, that of phenomenography. Phenomenography originated in educational research conducted in Sweden in the late 1960s and early 1970s (Bowden and Walsh 2000). The objective of this research was to see the world from the student’s perspective and in so doing, focus on the experience, as described (Ashworth and Lucas 1998). Since its emergence this research approach has been used across a number of disciplines including nursing,

business and management (Sandberg 2000; Partington, Young and Pellegrinelli 2003; Sjostrom and Dahlgren 2002; Bendz 2003).

Phenomenography is a qualitative research approach which seeks to describe differences in conceptions, primarily in learning situations (Dall’Alba 1996). It aims at describing the qualitatively different ways in which reality is experienced (Marton 1981). ‘Phenomenography is a research method adapted for mapping the qualitatively different ways in which people experience, conceptualise, perceive, and understand various aspects of, and phenomena in, the world around them’ (Marton 1986, p.31). In the phenomenographic approach, conception refers to people’s way of experiencing or making sense of their world (Sandberg 2000). The unit of phenomenographic research is an emphasis on the way of experiencing something and the research object is the variation of experiencing something.

In this study, the phenomenon being studied is that of achieving the role of chief executive within the Victorian local government sector and the conception being studied

Chapter 3 – Conceptual Framework

is an individual CEO’s understanding of her/his career development and identity as a CEO. The relationship being examined is the one between the career path, including barriers to and facilitators of career advancement (the experience) and the CEO (the experiencer). The emphasis is on what has been experienced (career path) and how it is experienced (how the CEO understands this experience). Central to this study is a particular emphasis on gaining the perspective of the CEO, in accordance with establishing a second order perspective. In phenomenography the researcher seeks to capture how the world appears to other people (Marton 1981). The object of the research is therefore to determine the variation in ways of experiencing phenomena.

Marton and Booth (1997) argue that a way of experiencing something is related to how a person’s awareness is structured. It contains both a ‘what’ consideration, which corresponds to the object, and a ‘how’ consideration, which relates to the act. The aim of phenomenography is therefore to discern and describe different ways of experiencing phenomena and individual conception. Its goal is to identify the structural framework within which various categories of understanding exist by identifying variation of the world as experienced. It is the emphasis on identifying difference and variation that set it apart from other research approaches. Marton and Booth (1997) suggest that a way of experiencing something is related to how a person’s awareness is structured. To this end, the critically important questions are ‘what is experienced?’ and ‘how is it experienced?’ The ‘what’ aspect reflects the individual’s way of experiencing a particular phenomenon. A way of experiencing a phenomenon can be described in terms of a structure of awareness. A particular structure of awareness has a structural aspect that is made up of both an internal and external horizon, as well as a referential component (Fai Pang 2003). The structural aspect of a way of experiencing is comprised of the relationship between different aspects of a phenomenon, which constitutes its overall meaning.

Marton and Booth (1997) explain the nature of the structural aspects as being made up of both internal and external horizons. The internal refers to the different parts that make up conception or experience, whereas the external aspects demonstrate how the experience is defined within its context. This framework for understanding experience draws on gestalt theory, where experience is seen as an identifiable whole that is created within the context it is experienced, recognising that the experience may be made up of

Chapter 3 – Conceptual Framework a number of different aspects (Marton 1988). This therefore determines that any experience considered, must incorporate identifying the whole experience and its component parts and that this must be considered within its context. The structure of awareness also has a referential component which specifically refers to the meaning attributed to the phenomenon. In this way the ‘what’ aspect of structure of awareness refers to the object itself, whilst the ‘how’ aspect relates to the act and is described as the dynamic relationship between the two components of human awareness - the structural and the referential.

The focus is on variation of experience and on interpreting this variation in terms of identifying different categories that capture the essence of the variation (Marton and Booth 1997). From a research perspective the research focus is on developing categories of description that will ultimately make up an understanding of the experience. Capturing experience in this way, by establishing categories of description that reflect experience, is referred to as the outcome space (Marton and Booth 1997). The outcomes of phenomenographic research are presented as a ‘hypothetical outcome space developed from the researcher’s analysis and interpretations of the collective experience amongst a sample group’ (Akerlind 2002, p.2). The outcome space is therefore the representation of the qualitatively different ways of experiencing the phenomenon in question.