The Individual Case Interviews of Stakeholders

The case interviewees were different from the convergent interviewees and this situation was created to avoid bias that may develop through the interview process where the interviewees may have prior knowledge about the questions and the sequence of interview questions.

However, the interviewees could assume the nature of the questions in this stage that these barriers were suggested by certain stakeholders, but for certain reason this assumption may not significantly influence the responses of the interviewees at this stage. Firstly, they were not involved in any way whatsoever in the convergent interview and therefore have no idea about who actually suggested each of the barriers. Secondly, the scope of the interview at this stage is to investigate whether the interviewees have any reason to believe that these suggested barriers are applicable to their specific operations or the entire fishery operations in the country. In the situation where the interviewees believed that these barriers are applicable or not, it was investigated to what degree or level or strength they are? These were unveiled by asking the interviewees questions that will allow them to rank or score the barriers in the form of “Disagree

=0, or Nearly Agree = 1, or Agree = 2, or Strongly Agree = 3”.

Nevertheless, none of the interviewees was given the opportunity to see or browse the questions, because the purpose of the questions is to guide conversation in line with those barriers suggested in stage I. In all cases of the interview process, the interviewees were given enough chance to modify their responses and explore the issues involved. For instance, at any time the interviewees wished to discuss and elaborate further on exactly what was meant by the suggested barrier, their views and perceptions of the barriers or whether they thought that barriers suggested could be classified differently or could be reframed to give different meaning or they thought that such a barrier don’t even exist or whatever the case, the interviewer allowed the discussion or conversation to continue up to the point when the interviewee is satisfied with the interview.

Scoring system including “Disagree =0, or Nearly Agree = 1, or Agree = 2, or Strongly Agree

matrix as illustrated in Table 32, Chapter 4, page 180. For simplification and ease of understanding a list summary of ranking of barriers from interviewee’s comments were developed in Table 38, Chapter 6, page 258, but it was read to them by way of assuring them that the response recorded represented their views on the barriers.

Contrary to other studies on HACCP barriers, the cost of implementing HACCP was considered as an incentive or disincentive barrier under specific condition. In the case of SMEs or fishery, businesses it was strongly agreed (3) that financial constraint is an incentive or disincentive barrier, because financial support is needed to strengthen the capacity of the SMEs after their infrastructures were destroyed during the 10 years rebel war. But for the central government to establish a level plain field by enacting appropriate policies, standards, enforcement and training the cost is not a barrier, because several funding have been provided by the international community to the Sierra Leone Government for strengthening the capacity of food safety control system.

All the interviewees in stage II supported the argument that the government should not use financial constraint as a reason for not enacting and enforcing appropriate food safety policies and standards for the fact that Sierra Leone is receiving financial supports from international community to strengthen food safety control system. It was also argued that the lack of government priority to fund food safety control system is mainly cause by lack of understanding and awareness of modern food safety requirements, which are among the barriers identified. Therefore, the two barriers “lack of understanding” and “lack of awareness” replaced financial constraint as barrier because these could be the reasons for government failure to fund the repeal, replace and enforce food safety control system that is compatible with HACCP. HACCP is comparatively new to many developing countries especially LDCs despite widespread dissemination of its literature by international community and developed countries. Most LDCs including Sierra Leone are not applying considerable training, effort and time towards globally recognized food safety control system and are still not adequately aware of the HACCP practices. This was clearly manifested during the interviews where certain senior government regulatory authorities said they have not yet heard about HACCP and found it difficult to adopt it as national food safety policy. Also senior government officers interviewed were not willing in

general, to give details as to government financial expenditure in other areas of priority and this study did not quest for that, as the aim of the investigation was to unveil the barrier, though such areas could be relevant for further research.

Retrospectively, this study attempted to determine the impact, degree and strength of gain for each barrier identified by the application of a “Likert-type” scale of four divisions including

“Disagree =0, or Nearly Agree = 1, or Agree = 2, or Strongly Agree = 3”. As indicated above this division implies that score 0 is the non-agreement by stage II interviewees on the barriers suggested by those in stage I, whilst a score of 3 is a total agreement that the barrier suggested exists in “ reality”. However, there were intermediate barriers between 0 and 3 including 1 and 2 based on the views and perceptions of the interviewees. These views and perceptions were fully recognised by the author even though the situation could be different for different countries. We should also remember that HACCP is specific and therefore the priorities of barriers in Sierra Leone could be different for other countries.

The score 1 implies that the barrier suggested has been nearly agreed but the stakeholders believed that it is not a strong barrier, and therefore has little or no significant to the successful implementation of HACCP in Sierra Leone. For example, the fishery business in Sierra Leone is not competitive as they are only producing for domestic consumption and most of the time or if not, all the time, the supply is far more than the demand and therefore the marketing environment is not busy enough to make staff often carry out many tasks simultaneously. That means at this stage in Sierra Leone “lack of cueing mechanism” has little or no significant on the successful implementation of HACCP. However, one would expect that this opinion might change when the fishery businesses become competitive by exporting products to developed and sub-regional markets following the commencement of implementation of HACCP.

The score of 2 indicates that the barrier is also agreed by the interviewees as significant but it is not strongly significant to the commencement of the implementation of HACCP in Sierra Leone. It is not strongly significant because it may not be the building block for the successful implementation of HACCP, but if not removed it could delay the implementation or could cause long-term failure of the system. For example, one of the barriers that scored 2 was the “lack of

motivation”. The stakeholders believed that lack of staff motivation could come in during the process of implementing HACCP but may not stop the commencement of HACCP. However, lack of staff motivation could lead to failure of HACCP after the implementation has started. The score 3 implies complete and strong agreement of the barriers by the stakeholders in Stage II, and was considered the building block because without its eradication the commencement of the successful implementation of HACCP will hardly take place in Sierra Leone fishery businesses. For example, lack of fishery policy compatible with international modern fishery safety requirements such as EU legislation, Codex Alimentarius and so on was strongly agreed to be one of the most significant barriers, because without eradicating it, the commencement of successful implementation may not take place in Sierra Leone. These scales allow the determination of a value for each barrier and largely facilitated the prioritization of the barriers in terms of eradication through any targeted intervention by the stakeholders. For example, the first barrier to be eradicated could be the lack of appropriate fishery safety policy compatible with international fishery safety legislations and/or standards. This has been the single most important barrier in the fishery businesses in Sierra Leone, because the regulatory authorities are fragmented, uncoordinated and have nothing to regulate, whilst the fishery businesses have nothing to comply with by law in terms fishery safety and overall quality assurance.

Likert-type scales fit into this study since they are regularly used to measure attitude with success by providing several options of answers to a question or scenario (Cohen, Manion et al., 2000), and for the fact that the theoretical and conceptual framework of this study focused on “knowledge, attitude and behaviour”. Responses to interview questions have used various classifications ranging from 3 to 20 wherein 5 or 7 responses took the form of strongly disagree = 1 to strongly agree = 5 (Jamieson, 2004). It has also been argued that responses may either be even or odd numbers and there is always a choice of selecting less or more numbers depending on the situation and the research techniques (Cohen, Manion et al., 2000). The HACCP barriers in Sierra Leone fishery businesses are largely influenced by the “knowledge, attitude and behaviour” of government, fishery businesses and consumers, and therefore the satisfactory opinion of the stakeholders was paramount. In this regard, the author decided to avoid the use of too many classification of responses as this may lead to confusion or indecision among the

stakeholders where overly fine distinctions are being placed on interviewees who do not make such distinctions in their own minds.

In contrast to the position of the author it has been suggested that more categories may allow the interviewee more choice and also allows for more gradations in response; but the researcher was more confident with the use of less categorization to avoid confusion, conflict and dilemma among stakeholders who have not been able to implement HACCP and even not adequately familiar with the HACCP system altogether. Equally, using even numbers may tempt the stakeholders to make definite choice that could be biased, rather than taking the middle or undecided or neutral positions, which may happen when there are also odd numbers of response classifications available to the stakeholders, through the thinking and assessing the “real” fishery safety situation including critical analysis of the prevailing obstacles to fishery safety and market competition in the country.

In this study, there are as few as 4 responses available to the question about the HACCP barriers that are perceived by the stakeholders who have the authority and influence over the national fishery safety control system. The likert-type scales used here set the responses range to 0 at the left end of the scale indicating disagreement over the barrier suggested in stage I, to 3 at the right end of the scale indicating strong agreement of the barrier suggested in stage I, based on their knowledge, understanding and experience of fishery operations in Sierra Leone. In between the left and right ends of the scale, there are intermediary responses of 1 and 2 indicating less significant and significant barriers respectively. The application of these 4 characteristics of scale enabled the use of fewer options of responses to the questions to avoid confusion, conflict and dilemma among stakeholders, and creating the scenario for both even and odd numbers for the stakeholders to take middle and undecided or neutral positions.

In fact, during the pilot testing it was discovered that 4 to 5 options were the best for the stakeholders to cope with during the interviews considering their lack of adequate understanding and awareness of HACCP system. In the pilot testing it was clearly shown that there were no gradations of “Disagree” classification set at the left hand because it was obvious that if the stakeholders failed to perceive the existing barrier there were no need of any gradations of the

“Disagree” classification that could be meaningful for them and the aims and objectives of the study.