Theory Construction

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can fit their theory exactly to the many details of a particular case….

reminding readers that parsimony, robustness, and generalizability characterize superior theory” (Eisenhardt, 2007: 29).

Whereas this is a bounded study of a single organization setting, multiple

“strategic episodes” of strategy management are empirically examined.

These episodes help to illustrate various contextual perspectives about the KYF2 strategy as practice activities using minimal structures (Creswell, 1998: 74), which further build comparison of diverse practice views (Yin, 1994: 45-46).

I am focused on the activities associated with minimal structures rather than outcomes or products. The meaning of these activities to study

participants is of primary interest, and I become the medium by which data about their lives, experiences, and structures of the world are interpreted.

Subsequently, am I conducting research in the field with close, daily proximity to the research subjects, within their structure, touching the same content, and part of the organization story and atmosphere, to observe behavior in its natural setting.

3.4 Theory Construction

Based on the nature of my research questions, I am electing a qualitative case study investigation of minimal structures. “Theory building seems to require rich description, the richness that comes from antidote”

(Mintzberg, 1979:587), which are revealed through developing a case narrative. Case studies are demonstrated as an effective empirical

approach to generating new theory (Eisenhardt, 1989:535; Gersick, 1988;

Harris & Sutton, 1986). “The qualitative case study is an intensive, holistic description and analysis of a bounded phenomenon such as a program, an institution, a person, a process, or a social unit” (Merriam, 1988, p. xiv).

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In this respect, the case study provides a presentation of the data as a discursive telling of the KYF2 story, and “since it is a theory-building approach that is deeply embedded in rich empirical data, building theory from cases is likely to produce theory that is accurate, interesting, and testable” (Eisenhardt, 2007: 26).

The goal of my inductive theory construction schema is to discover the meanings different strategy activities have for people, and how their

understanding and use of improvisation with minimal structures is impacted and defined by these meanings (Jaccard and Jacoby, 2010: 256-257). This theory-building research initiates a study aligned to new theory

development, with no hypotheses to test (Eisenhardt, 1989:536). My

descriptions of the minimal structure phenomena are derived from personal conversations, observations, participation, and reflections, which comprise the substantive elements for inductive theory building (Merriam, 1998: 19-20). My approach and methods support the notion that the study process should leave

the grounded theory researcher as free and as open as possible to discovery and to the emergence of concepts, problems and

interpretations from the data. - (Glaser, 1998: 67)

According to Creswell (2009: 13, 229), grounded theory is “a qualitative strategy of inquiry in which the researcher derives a general, abstract theory of process, action, or interaction grounded in the views of

participants in a study.” I intend to learn from the people, the situation, and my own reflections in the practice of conducting research, without preconceived beliefs shaping what I observe, firsthand, in the field. I will

“…begin the research with a partial framework of ‘local’ concepts,

designating a few principal or gross features of the structure and processes in the situations” that I use to formally compile the case study data, yet

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remain “…sufficiently theoretically sensitive so that [I] can conceptualise and formulate a theory as it emerges from the data” (Glaser and Strauss, 1967: 45-46).

Glaser and Strauss (1967, 2009) saw the function of theory as follows:

1. Theory should enable prediction and explanation of behavior.

2. Prediction and explanation should ultimately prove useful to the practitioner in practical application.

3. Theory should be able to guide and provide a style of research regarding particular areas of behavior.

4. Theory should provide clear concepts so they can be verified in present and future research.

5. The concepts should be clear enough to be operationalized for future quantitative studies when appropriate.

6. The theory must “fit” the data rather than be forced; in other words, the theory must readily explain the behavior under study.

These principles for practice of theory construction represent sound and stable advice, which I accept and endorse as guidance in my methodology.

I use an embedded case study design, where five units of analysis (Yin, 1994: 41) are employed to examine applied uses of minimal structures in detail, and implement a grounded theory-building methodology that emphasizes the technique of allowing theory to emerge from the data rather than using data to test theory. Furthermore, five core attributes of knowledge production expressed in Mode 2 research influence the spirit of my inductive theory-building plan: knowledge production in context of application; transdisciplinary; heterogeneity and organisational diversity;

social accountability and reflexivity; and diverse range of quality controls (Maclean, MacIntosh, and Grant, 2002). The final product of building theory from case studies may be “concepts, deliberate and emergent

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strategies, a conceptual framework, or propositions or possibly mid range theory” (Eisenhardt, 1989:545).

3.5 Research Design Framework

The research design provides a stepwise structure for developing an explanation of minimal structures, grounded in the case study narrative data. The qualitative research paradigm recognizes reality as subjective and diverse from the perspective of the study participant, and I observe the recommendation that investigators may formulate a research problem and identify some hypothetically important variables from extant literature references “but avoid thinking about specific relationships between

variables and theories from the onset” (Eisenhardt, 1989:536).

The iterative steps of my framework structure, presented in Figure 3.1 below, therefore, begin with no particular assumptions about theory or the data. The framework also provides the elements of my case study protocol, and offers a persistent guide for conducting my theory-building study of the KYF2 case (Eisenhardt, 1989:536). Larger version offered in Appendix R.

Figure 3.1: Inductive Theory-Building Framework Structure