Methodological choices

The choice of method follows from the philosophical perspective and the research question. The main methods used by qualitative researchers are observation, documentary analysis, interviews and audio/visual recordings. These approaches are often combined in one study (Silverman, 2006; Cresswell, 2009; Locke, Silverman and Spirduso, 2010). The researcher anticipated challenges researching individuals such as Chairmen, ESFs and NEDs of FTSE 100 companies who are members of the corporate elite. Extant literature has highlighted the difficulty in gaining access to them for the purposes of research. There are well observed rules of confidentiality with regards to matters in and around the boardroom and disclosure is difficult to obtain. In addition, the scant research on the appointment process of board directors indicates that it takes place ‘backstage’, through informal and discrete processes and is rarely documented.

Observation techniques, where the researcher becomes a participating observer or a non-participant observer in order to gather data on the phenomenon of interest, would have been difficult to achieve with members of the FTSE 100 corporate elite. Further, as this study is concerned with the lived experiences of individuals involved in the NED appointment process, observation techniques were not considered appropriate.

Documentary analysis and/or recordings could have been a useful method. However, there is none available publicly on the NED appointment process. Interviews were considered the most appropriate mechanism for gathering rich data. Kvale (1983: 174) defines the qualitative research interview as:

An interview whose purpose is to gather descriptions of the life-world of the interviewee, with respect to interpretation of the meaning of the described phenomena.

The goal is to see the topic from the perspective of the interviewee and to understand why and how they have this perspective. In order to meet this goal, qualitative interviews have the following characteristics:

A low degree of structure imposed by the interviewer; a preponderance of open questions; and a focus on specific situations and action

sequences in the world of the interviewee rather than abstractions and general opinions (Kvale, 1983: 176).

A key feature of the qualitative interview is the relationship between the interviewer and interviewee. The interview is an opportunity for the researcher to probe deeply to uncover new clues and to secure vivid and accurate accounts that are based on personal experience (Burgess, 1982). The researcher is actively involved in enabling the participant to explore their experiences and opinions in detail (Easterby-Smith et al., 2002). Qualitative interviews vary in length and style depending on the researcher’s philosophical assumptions. As a social constructionist, this researcher’s focus is on the constructive nature of language and how it actively constructs the social reality of the interviewee in interaction with the interviewer. This researcher adopts a loose structure to the interview, uses probes to follow up points of interest and is mindful of the need for reflexivity as the researcher. In deciding on the degree of structure to bring to the interview, researchers need to be mindful of the main reason for conducting the interview. The aim of interviewing NEDs in this study is to understand how they construct the reality of their appointment experiences using their personal framework of beliefs and values, which they have developed over the course of their lives. These beliefs and values help them make sense of and explain their experiences as they have happened in their appointment as NED. As Pettigrew (1997: 338) explains:

Process is a sequence of individual and collective events, actions and activities unfolding over time and in context.

The researcher must conduct the interview such that the opportunity is present for these insights to be gained. The researcher chose a loose semi-structured interview as the most appropriate mechanism for this exploratory study; to provide direction towards the main topic of the interview and to allow for some probing without being intrusive as the story unfolded. In this way, the interview can provide an interactive opportunity for the researcher to explore ideas, themes and experiences with the interviewee. The interviewer is instrumental and actively involved in enabling the participant to explore their experiences in detail (Easterby-Smith et al., 2002). An interview protocol was drawn up for the interviews with NEDs using three broad questions to frame the appointment process:

1) How did you get appointed as a NED to x company?

2) Who was involved in the process?

3) a.. What were the criteria for selection?

b. Why do you think you were appointed?

These questions were each supported by further probing questions to ensure that rich data was obtained from each NED. In the pilot study, the interview protocol for NEDs was adapted for interviews with Chairmen and ESFs (see Appendix B). For the main study, the interview protocol for NEDs was used with additional probing questions to be used if needed (Appendix C).

In interviewing board directors who are members of the corporate elite, the researcher is presented with some challenges, which have been widely acknowledged in the literature (Pettigrew, 1992) and impact the design and output of this study. These are issues of, access, confidentiality, power and openness.

3.2.5.1 Issues with interviewing – access and confidentiality

A major reason for the dearth of empirical research about board processes is one of access and confidentiality. Zald (1969: 110) wrote about this difficulty:

There is a scarcity of meaningful data and only at a few points have I been able to tie my arguments to evidence. Boards of directors are hard to study.

Twenty years later, Zahra and Pearce (1989) underscored Zald’s point and noted the difficulty in studying process components of corporate governance. According to Leblanc and Schwartz (2007: 843), boards of directors as a class, they tend to be closed groups, bound by confidentiality, privilege and custom, with significant access difficulties and other practical limitations as well. For instance, corporate directors tend at present to be fairly homogeneous in terms of gender, race and socio-economic level.

In terms of absolute numbers, they are a relatively small, concentrated and inter-related group of individuals, with behaviours, linkages and associations not commonly apparent or accessible by most lay people and academics. As a result, accessing and studying boards of directors empirically and effectively becomes a very difficult undertaking for researchers.

In fact, Leighton and Thain (1997; XV) go on to liken a board of directors to a ‘black box’. Even though extant literature has for over thirty years called for more qualitative studies about the ‘black box’ of board processes, a review of the published qualitative literature on corporate governance by McNulty, Zattoni and Douglas (2013) found that, between 1986 and 2011, less than one percent of the research on corporate governance was qualitative. The challenge of access has been highlighted as a critical barrier. Fortunately, a small number of qualitative studies have been identified that suggest access is challenging, but not impossible. Demb and Neubauer (1992) interviewed 71 board members in eight countries using structured interviews lasting two to three hours. Mace (1972) used a similar methodology in the United States, though his 75 interviews were conducted in the 1960s. Lorsch and MacIver (1989) interviewed ‘nearly 100’ directors for their study. Pettigrew and McNulty (1995) conducted in-depth interviews with 20 NEDs in the UK. They obtained access by using two distinguished connections from the Centre for Corporate Strategy and Change Advisory Board. These connections sent out letters to twenty directors and produced a one hundred percent positive response rate. This success led the researchers to claim that ‘access to elites is best effected by fellow elite members’ (Pettigrew and McNulty, 1995: 851).

This qualitative study confronted this challenge in its most acute form by interviewing first-time NED appointees to FTSE 100 companies, an acknowledged tight knit community. Studies advise researchers to use their institutional affiliations and personal connections where possible (Hertz and Imber, 1993). In this study the researcher utilised known connections, who were distinguished members of academia, to make contact by letter with an identified group of NEDs who had gained their first appointment to a FTSE 100 company in the last 12 months. Through this method the researcher gained access to two directors. Following up on these the researcher used a snowballing sampling technique to identify the remainder of the sample. The snowballing technique is useful for researching a unique population that is difficult to access through traditional means (Heckathorn, 1997). Forms of ‘snowball techniques’

range from: utilising a gate-keeper in the form of a director previously interviewed who would act as sponsor for a recommendation to another board director; to a peer process where one director would suggest access to one of their peers and follow up on the suggestion (Leblanc and Schwartz, 2007).

Although these techniques were very effective in gaining access to members of the corporate elite, concerns regarding their validity have been raised in the literature. If researchers only gain access to certain informants then the issue of random error exists and the sample could be declared a non-random and at worst an invalid sample.

Whilst these dangers are acknowledged and the disadvantages of a dependency on personal recommendations, Leblanc and Schwartz (2007) would argue that these concerns are not critical when one is engaged in qualitative, grounded research. As an alternative to non-access, snowballing is justified in these circumstances (Pettigrew and McNulty, 1995). Further, the issue of confidentiality was partially addressed by using snowballing. Inter-related directors who had offered access to their peers often know one another on a first-name basis and are members of the same social circles.

There often exists a ‘club’ mentality and there is a good deal of goodwill towards the recommended researcher. The researcher supported this further by emphasizing the confidential nature of the interviews and the anonymous nature of the findings with each interviewee in detail at the beginning of their interviews.

3.2.5.2 Issues with interviewing: power and openness

Studies on elite interviewing are unanimous that a power balance exists in favour of the interviewee (Kvale, 1996). The problem of power asymmetry begins at the access stage, when the desired interviewees seem so remote that the distance between them and the researcher is emphasized. In addition, interviews are normally held in the interviewee’s own ‘territory’ (Fitz and Halpin, 1995) making the physical environment appear quite daunting. As a result, the researcher is put into the position of a

‘supplicant’ so humbly grateful to obtain an interview that they are unwilling to be demanding in the interview (Cochrane, 1998; Thomas, 1993).

Another problem emanating from power inequality and an overly deferential interviewer (Berry, 2002) is the difficulty of getting prestigious, well informed people to hew to a

‘standardised line of discussion’ (Dexter, 1970: 2). Further, elite subjects may easily dominate the interview because they are ‘professional communicators’ (Fitz & Halpin, 1995: 68) used to addressing a wide range of audiences and developing elaborate and persuasive arguments (Ostrander, 1993). In this case, the researcher is at risk of displaying a form of ‘hostage syndrome’ by suspending their judgement in the face of an elite member’s display of power. The researcher risks overestimating the importance of what elite members have to say or can become overly partisan in their

reading of the interviewee’s version of events. (Ostrander, 1993; Useem, 1995).

Ultimately, problems of this kind are not easy to discount with explanations of methodological rigour. The role of the researcher is to acknowledge these challenges and through self-awareness and honesty guard against them. In addition, the reflexive approach I adopted when doing this study has helped me to challenge these processes, by preparing thoroughly for interviews to ensure maximum credibility and rigor in the interview and the ensuing data analysis.

Literature debates the issue of the openness of elite interviewees with some regarding elite members as being individuals who will give the party line. Others see elite members as more open than more junior executives, in fact liking a challenge to their intellect and being very frank (Thomas, 1993; Fitz and Halpin, 1995). In this study most interviewees were exceptionally open and through skillful probing, the researcher was satisfied that she had got a full version of the story from those who were more selective or discrete. This skill of the researcher has come from over 20 years of interviewing experiences.