Structured Interviews

Research Question 1 concerns the identification of the beliefs employees hold regarding the outcomes of their adoption of LBs. These data can be obtained by asking a sample of respondents that is representative of the population of interest what they consider to be the advantages and disadvantages of their engagement in the behaviour(s) (Ajzen, 1991; Ajzen & Fishbein, 1980). Although this information could have been obtained via open-ended questions at the beginning of a questionnaire, the interviews would enable the researcher to summarise responses and present them back to interviewees for verification, and to use prompts such as ‘what do you mean by that?’ to ensure complete understanding. This was particularly important given the lack of research in this area.

The interviews served several other functions: To enable the researcher to get a feel for the culture within the organisation and how employees felt about previous change programmes that had taken place, information that could prove useful for interpreting the findings; and to capture data on the job characteristics employees particularly like and dislike to inform the job satisfaction measure in the questionnaire. Although the job satisfaction scale selected for the study is valid and reliable (see Section 3.5.2), given the diversity of the jobs of employees involved in the research, a more bespoke job satisfaction measure was deemed more appropriate. The interviews conducted with the pilot study also served to identify the salient referents for the subjective norm measure.

To ensure that the views of a cross-section of staff were heard, the researcher asked the organisations to carefully select employees from different levels, departments and functions and with different demographic profiles to take part8. The organisations confirmed that the participants were a good mix of the target sample and that most employees invited to participate did so. They did not feel that any particular group of individuals were less willing than others to participate. The discussions were not tape-recorded for one important reason - employee willingness to participate in this aspect of the research and for them to be open about their attitudes towards adopting

8 Selecting participants from different departments and organisational levels was not necessary at Arvin because only non-managerial engineers were targeted.

LBs was essential and there was a general feeling among senior management in each of the participating organisations that employees would be less willing to participate or that the integrity of their responses would be compromised if the discussions were tape-recorded. The following countermeasures were taken to ensure that all relevant information was captured and that subsequent analysis would be accurate:

• A structured schedule containing pre-defined questions was used (see Table 3.2).

• Detailed notes were taken during the interviews.

• The interviews were scheduled to allow sufficient time immediately afterwards to make additional notes.

• Interviewees were presented with the interview notes and confirmed whether they were a true reflection of their responses.

• Analysis of the notes was conducted on the same day as the interview.

Table 3.2: Interview Questions

1. What do you think would be the likely advantages of your adopting

Lean behaviours at this company in the next few months?

2. What do you think would be the likely disadvantages of your adopting Lean behaviours at this company in the next few months? 3. Whose opinions would you take into account when deciding whether

or not to adopt Lean behaviours at this company in the next few months?9

4. What characteristics of your job do you particularly like? 5. What characteristics of your job do you particularly dislike?

6. What major changes have taken place since you have worked here? 7. What are your thoughts about those changes?

A 30-minute slot was allocated for each interview, which normally broke down into 20 minutes of interview time and 10 minutes for additional note-taking. Based on recommendations by Hedges (1985), the researcher started each interview by giving

a simple explanation of what the discussion would be about (i.e., to gauge employee’s feelings about adopting LBs), and informing interviewees that the interview data would be used to develop a bespoke questionnaire that would be issued to employees at the site. To encourage honest responding, all participants were assured that the interview would be completely confidential and only groups of responses would be reported. LBs were defined to participants at the beginning of the interviews as the behaviours listed in Section 2.4.

Ajzen and Fishbein’s (1980) ‘principle of compatibility’ argument states that, when eliciting beliefs and using this data in subsequent TPB questionnaires, there should be correspondence in action, target, context and time elements. Attempts were made to meet these requirements with interview questions 1 and 2 as far as possible. However, the organisations could not confirm when they would be able to administer the Time 1 questionnaire. Therefore a time reference of ‘the next few months’ was used. Although this was not ideal, it was considered the most appropriate approach to adopt under the circumstances.

The participating Ivax site wanted to invite all 750 of its employees to complete the Time 1 questionnaire. In order to have discussions with a representative sample of staff in a cost- and time-efficient way, focus groups were conducted in addition to structured interviews. Focus groups offer a low-cost method of obtaining many viewpoints in a time-efficient manner (Bloor, Frankland, Thomas & Robson, 2001). The same questions listed in Table 3.2 were asked to focus group participants and Ivax confirmed that a representative sample took part in the discussions. For the reasons detailed above, the discussions were not tape-recorded. However, because focus group discussions are dynamic and complex, a second independent researcher took notes alongside the researcher to ensure full data capture. The independent researcher’s role was solely to note-take; they played no part in the development/delivery of the questions or in the analysis of the responses. A 2-hour timeslot was allocated for each focus group. The discussions usually took an hour, leaving an hour for additional note-taking.