Semi-Structured Interviews

The decision to use semi-structured interviews was made as a direct result of the pilot study (see chapter 6), because they create “space for the researcher to probe a participant’s responses for clarification, meaning making, and a critical reflection”, and provide “a great deal of versatility” (Galletta, 2013: 24). Semi-structured interviews offer a much deeper insight into a participant’s opinions than a completely structured questionnaire, while still allowing for a relatively easy comparison of results.

After the formal research theory was tested by quantitative means and the results of the analyses became available, the qualitative part of the research in the form of semi-structured interviews could be executed. This step was used to further explore the value preferences of Chinese executive managers and, for example, to see whether any value items had been identified which were relevant in a Chinese context, but which were not included in the original questionnaire by G.W. England. Other aims of the qualitative research were to come to a better understanding of how both executive managers and employees characterised the types of corporate culture in their respective companies, and to look for a possible rationale behind the obvious contradiction between confirmed high levels of employee-organisation value congruency and a comparably high level of a need to compromise. Finally, the semi-structured interviews were intended to provide indications as to the grade of perceived commitment among the participating employees.

Following the guidelines of the University of Leicester on “Interviewing for Research”

(http://www.le.ac.uk/emoha/howtointerview/questions.html), two separate sets of questions were developed, one each for managers and employees. The questions were phrased to ensure that they touched on the different foci of the hypotheses in order to support the main purpose of the qualitative section of this study, i.e., in order to provide additional and deeper insights into the chosen research topics.

The executive managers were asked six questions, for example:

Which values are most important to you personally?

To what extent are your personal values reflected in the organisational values of your company?

The employees were asked another six questions, for example:

Why do you prefer working for a private Chinese company instead of, for example, a state-owned enterprise (SOE)?

What are the most important organisational values in your company?

A full list of questions along with selected interview transcripts can be found in Appendix D.

In order to establish the reliability of the qualitative data, the following approach was adopted:

1. Six interviews were performed as a pilot to further fine-tune the questions, to obtain additional experience in conducting this type of research, and to ask for suggestions regarding the structure and content of the interviews. It turned out that the participants of the pilot interviews were able to answer all questions without any major difficulties.

2. Afterwards, the pilot interviews were carefully evaluated and adjustments to the questions implemented.

3. Based on the carefully adjusted interview outline, the actual interviews of the main study were conducted six to nine months after the pilot interviews, some interviews earlier, some a little later in the data collection process.

4. Since the researcher worked in China for more than 25 years and fluently speaks the language, he himself conducted all interviews in Chinese. The interviews were recorded with the permission of each interviewee. The length of the interviews varied between seven and 30 minutes. A total of 12 managers and 14 employees from five companies were interviewed.

5. All interviewees participated voluntarily in the qualitative research. The interviews were conducted in a relaxed atmosphere, with only the researcher and the interviewee present in the room, and without any kind of additional supervision.

5.9.1 Analysis of the Semi-Structured Interviews

In the first step of analysis, the interviews were transcribed. In the second step, the interviews were translated into English by a team of Chinese and English language professionals, with supplementary retranslations carried out where necessary. The finishing touches were applied by an independent translator, and the transcripts were subsequently organised in a table format (see Appendix D4–D7).

The organisation of interview passages into tables allowed for a direct comparison between them, and thus for the detection of patterns supporting the results of the quantitative analysis. Topics pertaining to the research question were identified and structured in order to enable a mapping of the content (Galletta, 2013: 121). The major statements of the participants in regard to each of these themes were then summarised in a separate column, and the original quotes where underlined in the interview transcriptions. In a further step, the statements of all interviewees from the same company were catalogued in a separate table, and the statements of the managers and employees within each firm were compared as well. Finally, these tables were complemented with representative quotes for illustrative purposes (see Appendix D3).

5.10 Summary

This chapter described in detail the design, methods and instruments used to conduct the pilot and main studies of this research. Based on the literature review and the results of the pilot study, it was decided to rely on a mixed methods approach, combining quantitative with qualitative elements, and including a number of semi-structured interviews.

The quantitative part consisted of two questionnaires, one designed for managers and one for employees. Both questionnaires were based on well-established research instruments, of which all but one had already been successfully used in research with

Chinese samples. Reliability, validity and generalisability issues were carefully addressed in order to ensure research results of consistently high quality.

The next chapter will present the results of the pilot study and the development of the formal research theory.

6 Pilot Study and Formal Research Theory