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

176 –––––––––– QUALITATIVE METHODS IN ORGANIZATION STUDIES ––––––––––––––––––CASE FEATURESACCOUNTINGORIENTATIONSShop steward –constituentrelationshipsCommitment totrade unionismExposure to in-companyfinancial trainingREPRESENTATIVEproactivedefinition ofconstituents’interestsDELEGATEreactive mediationof managementand constituentsCommitment totrade unionprinciplesCombative parochialismwith an ambivalencetowards trade unionprinciplesAmbivalencetowardstrade unionprinciplesNo exposure toin-companyfinancialtraining exceptone shop stewardExposure toin-companyfinancialtrainingFinancialscepticFinancialcynicFinancialrealistAccomplishment of roleFigure 14.4A summary of the influences upon senior shop stewards’ propensity to hold particularaccounting orientationsexposed to in-company financial training. During fieldwork he had expressed Machiavellianrepresentative propensities and a combative parochialism couched in an ambivalence towardstrade union principles. This suggested that his espoused accounting orientation would showa potential for ‘cynicism’ which could lie dormant until he was exposed to financial training.In the subsequent round of interviews my expectations regarding the three sceptics and tworealists were accurate. Meanwhile the potential for ‘cynicism’ in the sixth informant wasconfirmed and illustrated how factors that relate to the senior shop steward’s accomplishmentof his role mediate the potential impact of any in-company financial training intervention.Moreover, this data seemed to corroborate my earlier speculations about the significance ofthose factors for mediating the potential impact of such training upon ‘sceptics’.CONCLUSIONS ––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––This example of the application of AI illustrates how it seeks to capture aspects of the socialworld from the perspective of actors and allows the revision of hypotheses and conceptualstructures through the analysis and elimination of negative cases. In doing so it attempts tomaintain a faithfulness to empirical data gathered from a relatively small number of cases asthe research process moves from that data to the construction of categories and from theelucidation of their case features to theorization and generalization. However underlying theseprocesses are a number of epistemological and ontological ambiguities which are worthoutlining.