The Interview Process

Semi-structured and unstructured face-to-face interviews formed the main key method of interacting with the SMEs. The need for interaction gives first-hand interpretation regarding the firm’s purpose and position regarding e-commerce (Nandhakumar & Jones, 1997). Thus it was necessary that a key informant would be an owner or top manager who was knowledgeable about ICT and e-commerce initiatives in their organisation. Most informants were able to meet this criterion except in three organisations (C1Alpha, C8Estate, and C9Autoco) where some top managers in the firm could articulate business issues well but were not adequately able to explain ICT issues in their firm. In such cases, the information so gathered was critically analysed with the opinions of the more knowledgeable manager in the firm.

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A sample of the questions that were developed after the review of literature was sent in advance to allow the interviewees to be familiar with the research questions and what was expected of them. These questions have been provided in Appendix A. The questions were asked in an interactive manner that allowed the informant to describe various issues in their organisation.

The first category of questions focused on the nature and background of the organisation: the size, location, number of employees, the type of ICT being used and on what activities, the type of Internet connection, whether the organisation had a website, and reasons for developing these services, and the reasons why, if they did not apply. Issues that relate to the mission and business objectives, culture, and structure, were probed as well as managers and their educational background, their interest in growing the business and where they were leading the firm.

The second category of questions related more to the use of Internet, e-mail and web technologies and the extent of their use. In linking up with the first set of questions, I was interested in knowing the relationship between the business objectives and the organisation’s Internet and website development. This would build up to questions that related to benefits and challenges of using Internet and web technology where applicable. I also interacted with the interviewee in such a way that we were at the same level in the understanding of what e- commerce is, without making them feel uncomfortable or uneasy. This level of investigation naturally evolved into the third category of questions. The third category of questions focused on the challenges that an SME was facing in using Internet and web technology, and an effort to understand how these challenges had emerged in the firm. A comparison of the corporate website was used to frame questions that related to their contents and their purpose. I was also able to probe into the external local and global environment and what role they played in the SMEs pursuit of e-commerce. However, questions were not asked in the exact order as listed in Appendix A, as the researcher depended on keeping a systematic flow of discussion. Answers to RQ3 were also intuitively derived through the integration of literature, company reports and the responses and analysis of all research questions.

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A summary of the interviews undertaken is presented in Table 4.2.1.

During Phase I (as shown in Table 4.2.1), the number of interviews undertaken with each manager is shown in brackets. Follow-up interviews have been categorised as Phase II, as the researcher inclined to unstructured type of questions which aimed to establish ‘why’ or ‘how’ certain decisions regarding e-commerce adoption were made. The total number of interviews for both Phase I and Phase II was thirty-seven (37). Three firms were unable to participate in Phase II due to various reasons that are explained in section 4.2.5, and other relevant sections of this thesis. A total of twenty-one (21) telephone interview conversations were conducted to clarify issues with the interviewees in the first six SMEs (C1Alpha, C2Beta, C3Gamma,

Table 4.2.1 Summary of Interviews Undertaken

SME Phase I Phase II Face-toface

Interviews

Telephone Interviews C1Alpha General Manager (2),

Buyer (1),

General Manager (2) 5 4

C2Beta General Manager (1), IT Manager (1) Systems Administrator (1) General Manager (2), IT manager (2) 6 5

C3Gamma Chief Operations

Manager (2), Finance Manager (1) Chief Operations Manager (2), Finance Manager (2) 7 4

C4Teq Managing Director (2) IT Manager (1)

Managing Director (2) 5 3

C5Home Managing Director (2), Finance Manager (1)

Managing Director (1), 5 3

C6Lodge Managing Director (2), Finance Manager (1)

Managing Director (1), 4 2

C7Panda Managing Director (2), 2

C8Estate Managing Director (1), Finance Manager (1)

2

C9Autoco Human Resource

Manager

1

Total

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C4Teq, C5Home and C6Lodge). The firms C7Panda, C8Estate, and C9Autoco were unable to participate in telephone interviews.

Most interviews were digitally-recorded although in some cases, the recording was interfered with, and sometimes the manager had disapproved of this undertaken. An informed consent form and data protection agreement were signed and retained by the interviewee and the researcher. All face-to-face and telephone conversations were personally undertaken by the researcher as required by interpretive case studies. The researcher also took note of some highlights and pointers during the interview and telephone conversations for deeper analysis about their meaning in the context of the SME under study. Keeping the flow of the interview was very important so as not to distract the interviewee during the interview process. The data collection from interviews ended when it was felt that no new information was being generated from information obtained from subsequent interviews (Patton, 2002, p. 246). Summaries of notes taken from each interview were written into a Word processor within 24 hrs of the interviews (Walsham, 1995b), and also Windows Media player for some images, and photos. The recorded interviews were also uploaded into Nvivo with an aim to make further analysis of the data. It was later learnt that Nvivo could not make critical analysis of the data, thus the application only served the purpose of managing some of the data.