Semi-Structured Interviews

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1994: 5). Therefore, both predictable rigor and sensitivity to real,

intervening human conditions are balanced and appropriate dispositions.

3.7.2 Semi-Structured Interviews

Interviews are conducted with a diverse group of participants who are directly involved in KYF2 organizational strategy, and whom engage in improvisation activities. “Interviews are a highly efficient way to gather rich, empirical data, especially when the phenomenon of interest is highly episodic and infrequent” (Eisenhardt, 2007: 28). I am selecting highly knowledgeable informants who view the minimal structures phenomena from various strategy management perspectives.

The interview focuses on understanding subject responses from their point of view; in context of and situated in minimal structure improvisation behavior. Interviews are intended to reveal applied, operations-oriented individual perspectives, how these persons construct meaning, and social realities about strategy management using improvisation with minimal structures. Individuals were selected intentionally. “Purposive sampling is based on the assumption that one wants to discover, understand, gain insight; therefore one needs to select a sample from which one can learn the most” (Merriam, 1988, p. 48).

The interviews investigate the experience of the event, its relationships, and/or the emotion for the subject. Intensive, focused, and

semi-structured protocol interviews enable experiences to be described by the interview participants with reference to concrete situations; as the events or episodes appear and make sense to them. King (1994:15) recommends that one have “a low degree of structure imposed on the interviewer, a preponderance of open questions, a focus on specific situations and action sequences in the world of the interviewee rather than abstractions and

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general opinions.” These factors are taken into consideration in the

protocol, and Appendix A provides copies of the Plain Language Statement, Interview Guide, and Consent Form.

Participants are asked to reflect on their direct experience, to go beneath the surface of ordinary conversations (Charmaz, 2006: 26), as well as their understanding of those experiences, and associated feelings, in relation to KYF2 strategic management, but not to attempt a full recounting of all the initiative details; not a memory test. I ask them “what” and “how”

questions to encourage them to reconstruct and narrate a range the

essential elements of the experience (Seidman, 2006: 17). Their responses become the core foundation of my case study narrative produced as a text for further analysis. Appendix B introduces the Semi-Structured Interview Protocol Questions.

Interviewees were chosen purposefully among a range of participants, and selected based on their position and expertise. The questions used to engage participants are intended to stimulate conversations in which the researcher takes cues from interviewee with respect to their approach to the topic, such as expressions, questions, metaphors, and sidetracks in dialogue. I primarily listened for concepts and themes, and pursuing these in collaboration with the participant. Their perceptions of the phenomena of using minimal structures are examined through their detailed

descriptions to understand the lived experience (Creswell, 1994: 12).

The interviews produce content that may remain concealed in unexamined events, etc., and discover meaningful shared themes in common

experiences. Analysis of transcribed data is characterized as open;

focusing on meaningful units as the most granular segments of text with self-sustained meaning. These are described as concepts, themes, and patterns versus categories. The goal is to identify what is invariable across

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all manifestations of the phenomena of minimal structures (Tesch 1994:

147).

3.7.3 Reporting

My research approach avoids the mistake of constructing a report

composed of a simplified, sanitized collection of facts. Czarniawska noted that “stories capture organizational life in a way that no compilation of facts ever can; this is because they are carriers of life itself, not just

‘reports’ on it” (Czarniawska, 1997: 21). The interpretive oriented,

inductive approach will build an argument for certain culturally significant propositions, and portray an informing context as to how the case details and facts interweave (Van Maanen, 1988: 30).

I am striving to accurately represent the interaction between events and those who experience these events to better understand their

contextualized interpretations, and given meanings, of the processes they enact. I am present in these acts, either as a participant myself, or in immediate proximity as an observer. An important heuristic in the success of communicating my understanding of minimal structures is to remind myself “it is the written report that must represent the culture, not the fieldwork itself.” A culture is not precisely a scientifically observable item,

“…but is created, as is the reader’s view of it, by the active construction of a text” (Van Maanen, 1988: 7).

To organize the recording and telling of the research experiences, I use devices from several reporting methods. The objective is reasonable coordination of the large data stores acquired during the initial collection phase of the case study. These devices focus the written material along three complimentary dimensions described in the next section:

operationalization, format, and the reflexive voice.

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3.7.3.1 Operationalization

The case study presents a container for the classification and

categorization of data. This structure enables coordinated, but flexible, abstraction of content in the direction of the emerging data patterns and themes. As the textual narrative organically grows with each iterative pass through the data, the composition begins to look more like a purposeful story of the phenomenon rather than a list of chronological facts (Denzin and Lincoln, 1998: 155). To logically extract the theoretical argument from the case data and evolving narrative, I elect to take up the Theory-Building Structure articulated for case study researchers (Yin, 1994: 140).

The application of the model is intended to enhance and refine the nature and strengths of my theoretical reasoning in support of the developing argument (Jaccard and Jacoby, 2010: 279). The use of a Theory-Building Structure is epistemologically defensible with respect to the inductive theory construction, and remains faithful to the iterative stages

represented in my research design framework. A case narrative approach is particularly well suited to new research areas or research areas for which existing theory seems inadequate. This type of work is highly

complementary to incremental theory building from normal science research. The former is useful in early stages of research on a topic, or when a fresh perspective is needed, whilst the latter is useful in later stages of knowledge creation (Eisenhardt, 548-549).

3.7.3.2 Format

Pettigrew presents a set of four research reporting output formats, and further recommends attention to the achievability of each varied format in context of research method, the delivery sequencing, and the suitable formats for an intended audience (Pettigrew, 1990: 279). One of the four,

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the interpretative theoretical case, deliberately moves the analysis and writing beyond the first level analytical reporting chronology. I employ the interpretative style as an explicit, intentional attempt to engage and

understand the text narrative, and also seek to link the emerging

conceptual and theoretical ideas inductively derived from the case to both the stronger analytical themes within the case and wider theoretical debates in the literature. The method leads to a generalizing process of linking the empirical findings in the case to other published empirical data (Pettigrew, 1990: 280). An interpretative theoretical case format aligns with my intended grounded theory methodology.

3.7.3.3 Reflexive Voice

Weil demonstrates the creativity and potential contribution of opening space in the case study text to convey multiple voices, or realities. She developed a narrative approach embracing the research process as well as the outcome, and created a varied texture, unconventional description of the field where the researcher’s observer voice, the researcher’s reflexive voice, the reflexive interaction with the data, and the participant’s voice, as a practice of “remaining alert to different voices of others and of herself” (Weil, 1996: 225-230).

My role as narrator becomes one of orchestrating an equitable outcome for all participants, in which their voice is given space to influence the story.

This writing device assists me in being attentive to all aspects of knowledge and points of view residing in data, processes, decisions, and so forth.

In the spirit of giving time to a reflexive voice in creating the report, I struggled over the election of a fourth dimension: Van Maanen’s “Formal Tales” ethnographic approach. From the aspect of narrative style, I sensed benefits in leveraging a practiced style of deriving generalizations through

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concentrated inductive and inferential logic, implied in with the narrow approach (Van Maanen, 1988: 130). I appreciated the concept of creating a text that “travels” beyond its context, which would lend itself to

interpretative extensibility into other domains. I resisted the temptation to indulge in an experiment in ethnomethodology techniques, which may result in unknown, or disproportionate, costs to other dimensions of my reporting plan.