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

168 –––––––––– QUALITATIVE METHODS IN ORGANIZATION STUDIES ––––––––––––––––––‘interaction rituals’ (Goffman, 1972) so as to establish feelings of ‘mutuality’ (Beynon, 1983) –that we had something in common in terms of interest and experience. Through theseinteraction rituals rapport was usually established and gradually I eased conversation aroundto their roles as senior shop stewards. Through the felicity of my sponsor, informants had aninitial idea of what I wanted to talk about. I tended to reinforce this impression by stating myinterest in their experiences as senior shop stewards and how their roles might have recentlychanged. Basically, I was using Douglas’ ‘principle of indirection’ (1985: 137) to encouragetheir self-disclosure and then subtly manipulate dialogue towards my main focus – DAI.Phase II: defining the phenomenon and identifying variationsAs the term implies, processes of AI focus upon the analysis and interpretation of data. Exceptfor induction, it does not specify how data should be collected. In principle it can thereforebe used to analyse data that derive from any method of collecting data that has been appliedin an inductive fashion, such as life histories, participant observation, repertory grids, and soon. In the research reported here data were collected through life history interviews. This wasbecause life history research is regarded as having a primary concern with the ‘. . . phenomenalrole of lived experience, with the ways in which individuals interpret their own lives and theworld around them’ (Plummer, 1983: 67). This allows access to how individuals ‘create andportray’ (Jones, 1983: 147) their social worlds. Significantly they are taken to avoid theproblems that beset the ‘brisk’ interview (Bulmer, 1975) in which respondents are impelled,by the structured prompts of the interviewer to make statements which although fitting intothe researcher’s conceptual and theoretical pro forma, give little opportunity for them toarticulate the ways in which they conceptualize and understand their own worlds.Although life histories can be used to ‘provoke, suggest and anticipate later theorizations’(Plummer, 1983: 124), a research strategy guided by AI procedurally formalizes this processand explicitly introduces theoretical concerns during fieldwork. But because AI entailssampling according to emergent theoretical criteria so as to enable comparison, inevitablysome of the depth traditional in life histories is traded off. Essentially, these overt theoreticalobjectives militated against the orthodox use of life histories, as exemplified by Shaw (1966)and Bogdan (1974), in which the outcome is in the form of comprehensive biographies ofsingle subjects. Thus I used life history interviews to generate and document informants’accounts of their lived-in organizational realities with an emergent focus upon how theyperceived DAI in collective bargaining.Where it was practical I had decided to interview each informant at least twice. The firstround of interviews were aimed at gaining their confidence and eliciting descriptive data thatcould be used to generate dimensions of similarity and difference across the whole cohort (seeSpradley, 1979) regarding their perceptions of, and orientations towards, DAI. By guiding theinterview around pertinent issues through the use of various prompts and questions, the natureof which being contingent upon the ‘state of play’ in our interaction, I elicited anddocumented their perspectives. These processes necessitated some degree of skill and intuitionon my part, especially in regard to when to remain silent or whether to follow up somecomment immediately, or how to phrase mutually intelligible prompts which allowedinformants’ elaboration upon a significant issue without inadvertently fixing the terms inwhich they spoke, or the perspectives which they articulated. In some of the earlier interviewsI suspect that I made blunders, but through reflection upon these mistakes I was able to learn