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MICHAEL DEMPSEY - Cranfield University

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• Reading through these materials, the researcher may isolate<br />

certain themes and expressions that can be reviewed with<br />

informants<br />

• A main task is to explicate the ways people in particular settings<br />

come to understand, account for, take action and otherwise<br />

manage their day to day situations<br />

• Many interpretations of this material are possible but some are<br />

more compelling for theoretical reasons or on grounds of<br />

internal consistency<br />

• Relatively little standardised instrumentation is used at the<br />

outset.<br />

• Most analysis is done with words. The words can be assembled,<br />

subclustered, broken into semiotic segments. They can be<br />

organised to permit the researcher to contrast, compare,<br />

analyse and bestow patterns upon them.<br />

Consistent with a realist ontology, a qualitative research strategy might<br />

be expected to have a ‘retroductive’ character (Blaikie 1993:168)<br />

whereby a model of observable phenomena is constructed which, if it<br />

were to represent correctly underlying structures and mechanisms,<br />

would causally explain the phenomena. The model is then tested as a<br />

hypothetical description of the entities and their relations (incidentally<br />

involving my undertaking in some respects a hypothetico-deductive<br />

process). The process can be iterative, whereby, as one set of<br />

structures and mechanisms is revealed, others at a lower level go<br />

through the same process.<br />

The components of the model in this project are linked in a more<br />

complex way. Exhibit 3.2 shows us the factors which are crucial in the<br />

management of unions and the way in which they influence, or are<br />

influenced by, other(s) of those factors. These model the relationships<br />

which are the basis of the research propositions set out in Chapter 2.<br />

Blaikie (1993:163) says that a central problem for realism is to<br />

establish the plausibility of hypothesised structures and mechanisms.<br />

The model of this research is based on my experience in 35 years of<br />

trade union membership, 15 years as a senior trade union manager,<br />

critical involvement in the processes that led to the largest trade union<br />

merger in British trade union history and the years I have spent<br />

studying for this project, in particular acquainting myself with the<br />

literature reviewed in Chapter 2. Layder (1993:72) provides a resource<br />

map for realist research which contextualises such research, and this is<br />

contained in Exhibit 3.3.<br />

59

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