essential-guide-to-qualitative-in-organizational-research

106 –––––––––– QUALITATIVE METHODS IN ORGANIZATION STUDIES ––––––––––––––––––DTA DIARY COLLECTION AND DEBRIEFINGAt the end of the month, I visited each respondent at work to collect their diaries and hada general discussion of their experiences around the following questions:• how they had selected what activities to record (namely what constitutes a relevant projectactivity) and what was omitted;• the ease (or otherwise) with which they were able to record activities;• the degree to which they felt keeping a diary changed the activities under review;• how often they recorded events; and• the degree to which they found the diaries useful.Most claimed to have recorded their major activities concerning the project, excluding phonecalls or brief discussions between colleagues working closely together (although a fewrespondents did record this material). Respondents varied according to whether they thoughtrecording the activities actually changed their perceptions of that activity or their methods ofpursuing the activities. About half felt that the diaries had had no impact. However, threeothers reported that the process of keeping a diary made them more reflective (for example,‘made me consciously deliberate over shortcomings’, ‘made me use my time better’) and gavethem insight on their activities: ‘. . . you realize [in meetings] you didn’t make a decision –so woolly it was a waste of time . . .’. The important thing to note about this debriefingmaterial is that it is an integral part of the research study which aided my interpretation of theactual diary material.What can I do with the responses?This is something that might be most helpfully considered before designing the diary. Againthis seems like an obvious point but often we find ourselves at the end of a research projectwith a mound of data by which we feel overwhelmed. The manner of analysing the data islargely dependent on the purposes of the research and the format of the diary, and it is notthe purpose of this chapter to describe all potential forms of analysis. The case study outlinedbelow gives one specific example. However, you could also consider a ‘thematic’ analysis(looking for common themes in the data either across instances with one individual or acrossindividuals, see King, Chapter 2, this volume). Stakeholder analysis (for example, Burgoyne,1994) might be helpful in comparing different perspectives from different individuals on thesame event. You could also look for patterns and changes across time using, for example, eventlisting and time-ordered matrices (see Nadin and Cassell, Chapter 22, this volume).DTA DIARY DATA ANALYSISAll 10 diaries were returned. Given the open-ended nature of the task, it was hardly surprisingto find considerable differences in response ‘styles’. Some respondents made very brief entries,while others were much more expansive.Each of the diaries was then transcribed as an ‘activity diagram’. Figure 9.3 comes fromthe Project Manager’s (PM’s) diary and Figure 9.4 from the User Project Manager’s (UPM’s)diary. Figure 9.5 is from a recent recruit to the team. In all of the figures, only a subset of thematerial is reproduced here to ease presentation.The major activities identified form the central ‘bubbles’, surrounding these are specific