Lacity and Janson (1994:149) offer this view of validity:
Ultimate proof of an idea or theory is its acceptability to common sense. An important test of validity is liking an idea, feeling right about it, being able to use it to throw light on a previously hidden aspect of organisation. Objective proof seldom will exist somewhere outside one’s self that will demonstrate correctness or validity. No statistical test will do this for us; no amount of replication will make acceptable an idea that does not square with experience.
The question that reliability poses is this: if the study was repeated, would the same result be achieved? Validity on the other hand, questions whether we really are measuring what we think we are measuring. The approach of interpretivism rejects the notion that frequency is an indicant of importance and suggests that validity checks are largely based on the acceptance of the scientific community. If fellow scholars find meaning in the research, it is deemed valid and worthwhile (Lacity & Janson
1994:149).
Miles and Huberman (1994) purport that the issues of validity and
reliability in qualitative research vest in the skills of the researcher, who is essentially a person more or less fallible, who is observing, interviewing and recording, while modifying the observations, and interviewing by means of recording devices in various situations. They provide the
following guidelines to researcher-as-marker in a good qualitative study:
• some familiarity with the phenomenon and the setting under study
• strong conceptual interests
125
• a multi-disciplinary approach, as opposed to a narrow grounding in a single discipline
• good investigative skills, including doggedness, the ability to draw people out and the ability to avoid premature closure.
In the process of this research study the author has endeavoured to demonstrate validity through rich descriptions, thorough analysis,
triangulation of sources and methods, peer review and participant review.
Authors such as Miles and Huberman (1994) have discussed the issue of validity, reliability and objectivity relating to qualitative research. Some additional commentary is offered in this section before concluding the research methodology section of this thesis. The additional commentary relates to the notion of trustworthiness as proposed by Lincoln and Guba (1985). They suggest the following criteria for evaluating research work conducted within an interpretive paradigm: credibility, transferability, dependability and confirmability.
‘Credibility’ refers to how the construction of the researcher relates to the realities and views of the enquiry’s respondents in the phenomenon under study. Lincoln and Guba (1985) recommend a set of activities that help to improve the credibility of the research results. These include prolonged engagement in the field, persistent observation, triangulation, negative case analysis, checking of interpretations against raw data, peer
debriefing and respondent checking. Data were gathered across four sites spanning the period of 2007 to 2009, with extended observation at
certain sites until 2011 and into the period of thesis finalisation. This period met the suggestion by Vallaster (2004:110) that prolonged observation can be ‘defined’ as spending five to six months at a site.
Engagement was therefore prolonged and persistent, and much was harnessed by the researcher in terms of organisational insight and depth of information. The data generated was significant and contained thick descriptions. Data triangulation occurred throughout the course of the
126 study and although a single researcher was deployed throughout the
study, which is not unusual for such studies, professional peer reviews and debriefings were periodically conducted in relation to coding and analysis to aid the logic of the researcher. These sessions were conducted by team analysis of the coding conventions, consistency and analytical framework applied, and included both research and brand practitioners.
Some respondent checking was conducted and several respondents were interviewed a second time to ensure clarity of data and interpretation thereof, and as a basis for the looping of respondent feedback. Coding the knowledge and experience was aided by the use of Atlas.ti software,
supported by appropriate technical advisory material relating to its usage and tutorial matter. Negative case analysis was also utilised in the form of two contrast cases in the process of case selection and analysis. The
credibility of the research findings was also verified by the fact that most criteria were mentioned by more than one respondent and at more than one site. Theory saturation was achieved as mentions of criteria became increasingly redundant.
‘Transferability’ refers to the extent to which a researcher’s findings in one context can be applied to another one. Lincoln and Guba (1985:298) posit, however, that it is not the researcher’s task to provide an index of transferability, but to bear the responsibility for providing data sets and descriptions that are sufficiently rich to enable another researcher to make judgements about the transferability of the findings to different sites or contexts. As referred to above, the data in the analysis is
extensive, sufficiently documented and significant thick descriptions exist to meet the requirements for transferability.
‘Dependability’ refers to the qualitative researcher’s equivalent of
replicability, which is a nearly impossible notion in a theory building study such as this, due to its flexible design. More appropriately, it is considered
127 as the sense making and researcher account for changing conditions in the phenomena. According to Lincoln and Guba (1985), such changes and shifts are indicative of a successful enquiry, provided they are tracked and traceable. The use of Atlas.ti software in this study has enabled extensive electronic note-taking and memo usage that has full traceability to dates, links, explanatory notes and descriptions, thus enabling dependability of the findings.
‘Confirmability’ is concerned with establishing the extent to which the data and interpretations of enquiry can be confirmed by others who read or review the research results and establish that they are not a function of a researcher’s imagination. The major technique for establishing this is through an audit of research processes and findings in a way that
assertions and interpretations can be linked to the data themselves. While an independent audit of this research has not been conducted, a full
digital record of all data will be made available with the final submission of this thesis. This will contain original transcripts in the form of primary documents and a full electronic audit trail of coding, code families,
memos, memo families, networks and network families in an html format in order to enhance trust in the confirmability of the data and the logic of interpretation through full transparency of information.
As a final point, the identities of the case organisations have been
disclosed with the permission of participating companies in the initial case backgrounds, and for ease of simplicity were referred to in an abbreviated form thereafter. Although confidentiality agreements were offered to each participating organisation, all were comfortable with disclosure and are recipients of the final report. Individual identities of executives and
managers, however, have been made anonymous to ensure openness of commentary and full disclosure of key points of view. The ethicality of the work is thus protected.
128 Eisenhardt (1989:548) suggests that theory derived from case study
research is likely to possess important strengths like novelty, testability and empirical validity, which arise from the intimate linkage with
empirical evidence. It is thus well suited to new research areas or research areas for which existing theory seems inadequate. Eisenhardt also maintains that strong studies are those that present interesting theories meeting the test of concept development and being grounded in convincing evidence, concluding that the accumulation of knowledge involves a continual cycling between theory and data and in turn from data to theory. The author trusts that this has been achieved in this work.
Researcher bias according to Yin (2003:62) can be balanced by openness to contrary findings in contrast cases. This has been achieved in this study with an equal approach to both support and contrast cases, and was further mitigated by the deployment of the peer review and
evaluation methods described in Section 3.3.2.4. Additionally, data triangulation and the constant comparison method were adopted throughout the data analysis phase. It is the author’s view that,
consequently, a high level of objectivity is embedded within the research.