MICHAEL DEMPSEY - Cranfield University

• Reading through these materials, the researcher may isolate
certain themes and expressions that can be reviewed with
informants
• A main task is to explicate the ways people in particular settings
come to understand, account for, take action and otherwise
manage their day to day situations
• Many interpretations of this material are possible but some are
more compelling for theoretical reasons or on grounds of
internal consistency
• Relatively little standardised instrumentation is used at the
outset.
• Most analysis is done with words. The words can be assembled,
subclustered, broken into semiotic segments. They can be
organised to permit the researcher to contrast, compare,
analyse and bestow patterns upon them.
Consistent with a realist ontology, a qualitative research strategy might
be expected to have a ‘retroductive’ character (Blaikie 1993:168)
whereby a model of observable phenomena is constructed which, if it
were to represent correctly underlying structures and mechanisms,
would causally explain the phenomena. The model is then tested as a
hypothetical description of the entities and their relations (incidentally
involving my undertaking in some respects a hypothetico-deductive
process). The process can be iterative, whereby, as one set of
structures and mechanisms is revealed, others at a lower level go
through the same process.
The components of the model in this project are linked in a more
complex way. Exhibit 3.2 shows us the factors which are crucial in the
management of unions and the way in which they influence, or are
influenced by, other(s) of those factors. These model the relationships
which are the basis of the research propositions set out in Chapter 2.
Blaikie (1993:163) says that a central problem for realism is to
establish the plausibility of hypothesised structures and mechanisms.
The model of this research is based on my experience in 35 years of
trade union membership, 15 years as a senior trade union manager,
critical involvement in the processes that led to the largest trade union
merger in British trade union history and the years I have spent
studying for this project, in particular acquainting myself with the
literature reviewed in Chapter 2. Layder (1993:72) provides a resource
map for realist research which contextualises such research, and this is
contained in Exhibit 3.3.
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