For the purposes of Empirical Project I, the author contacted fourteen potential interviewees. Of those, twelve responded positively, but one interview did not materialise due to logistical and time constraints of the prospective interviewee.
The author conducted all interviews in the period from January to April 2010.
For Empirical Project II, the author contacted and interviewed eight people in the period from August to October 2010.
The author determined the approach to ―group sample‖ selection by considerations of relevance to the issue at hand, methodological soundness (representing a diversity of views) and subjective estimation of the probability of quality access. Therefore, the overall approach was non-probability, purposive sampling, with the main aim to enable the author to answer the research questions (Saunders at al, 2007).
The first iteration of sampling regarded a potential interviewee‘s capacity to discuss the research problem. To qualify as an informed participant, he or she should have been involved in the strategy-related activity. A preliminary assumption, conformed by the pilot interview, was that in Severstal‘s reality, only the members of the top corporate team and first-tier members of the business units teams were involved in strategy-related discussions and activities. Therefore, a potential pool of interviewees was limited to the top team members in the corporate centre and business units. In addition, a lower-level
―strategy professionals‖ (i.e. mid-level staff members working in ―strategy-related‖ Strategy and M&A departments) were added to the list, in order to secure a broader representation of views not limited to the top team, as discussed in the methodology section.
To gain a better insight into the topic, the author included all corporate and business units‘ directors for strategy on the interview short list. All of them agreed to participate. For ethical and bias-related purposes, all current or former direct reports of the author were excluded from the pool of potential interviewees.
The ―critical realist‖ epistemological position employed by the author also influenced the approach to the interviewee sample selection. This approach calls to include a sufficient number of different perspectives into the sample to secure external validity. To comply, the author ensured that there was an appropriate balance of corporate centre and business units‘ employees, as well as a broad representation of geographies, in terms of both location and areas of responsibility. In addition, the author endured that the sample included former employees (to mitigate a ―participant bias‖), as well as the employees from outside of Severstal proper (i.e. the representatives of companies from the
―Severstal Group‖ business group which belonged to the same majority shareholder and shared their management company with Severstal prior to official separation of ―core‖ and ―non-core‖ businesses in 2006).
The longitudinal nature of the study also meant that length of stay in the
covered the whole period of interest, from early 2000s untill 2009. Therefore, the author preferred to interview those employees who started their career in senior or strategy-related positions earlier, although in reality there were very few such people. In addition, the author ensured that there was a balance between coverage of earlier and later periods. Involvement of former employees also greatly facilitated a proper coverage of earlier stages.
Finally, once these considerations were used to limit the potential choice, the author used a subjective judgement to evaluate ease of access and opportunity for a high-quality, open and detailed dialogue.
In order to facilitate potential demographic analysis and cross-interview comparison of diverse perspectives, the author referenced each interview by a number of characteristics, including interview date, duration, interviewee‘s position in the company (the last occupied in the case of former employees), interviewee‘s position in the corporate centre or business unit, interviewee‘s primary location and region of responsibility (where relevant, in case the responsibility is company-wide, it is considered to be ―global‖). The author assigned each interview a unique reference number reflecting the interviewee‘s position in either the corporate centre or business unit and his or her region(s) of primary responsibility.
Prior to the meeting, each interviewee received a written request, outlining the purpose of the research project, results achieved to date, interview structure, key questions and confidentiality terms. To ensure internal validity, the author conducted all interviews using the same tools and sets of questions, although
the author asked interviewees to feel free to expand on any topic they find relevant or skip those where they don‘t feel to be competent enough (see question list and interview debrief in the Appendix). The author requested each interviewee to allocate at least one hour for a meeting, but did not place restrictions on the interview duration. Interview length will depend entirely on interviewees‘ time limitations and the speed and relevance of discussion.
Interviewees received guarantees of confidentiality and were assured that the author would only reveal their responses to the relevant members of Cranfield University faculty and external examiners, who in turn are limited by confidentiality restrictions. Even then, interviewees‘ names would not be revealed.
To address the internal confidentiality implications and facilitate cooperation, the author suggested substituting in the transcribed tapes all real company names with symbols, only outlining their industry and relative size (particularly when M&A deals are mentioned). Similarly, the author substituted people‘s names for ethical purposes in the places describing instances such asconflict, mistakes, and controversial relationships. Whenever possible, the author conducted the interviews in English.
The author asked interviewees if they would consent to taping and further transcribing the interviews. Of the eleven cases, eight agreed to recorded interviews. The author captured responses of the other three through field notes during and immediately after an interview.