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

238 –––––––––– QUALITATIVE METHODS IN ORGANIZATION STUDIES ––––––––––––––––––had influence over this particular outcome. The ‘Uncertain’ coding has been used for‘Personal’ because it is difficult to establish whether the Speaker is implying that his view –that rowing is part of university life – is something unique to him, or widely shared by otherundergraduates.The second attribution is coded ‘Unstable’, ‘Specific’ and ‘Controllable’ for the samereasons as the first, but this time the cause is coded ‘Internal’ because it refers to the Speaker’swish to try a new sport. The attribution is also coded ‘Personal’ because there is moreevidence that the Speaker is implying that the attribution refers to something whichdistinguishes him from other undergraduates. The third attribution is coded ‘Unstable’ becausethe cause ‘not enjoying the club atmosphere’ appears to be a ‘one-off ’ occurrence and thereis little indication that the Speaker believes that this will be typical of other clubs that he joins.It is also coded ‘Controllable’, because although the Speaker may not have been able toinfluence the club atmosphere, he was able to take the decision to leave the club. In the fourthand fifth attributions, the causes, both of which relate to not being from a public school, havebeen coded ‘Stable’ and ‘Global’, this is because not having attended a public school, in thisSpeaker’s opinion, appears to have ongoing and potentially wide-ranging consequences. Inaddition, both of these attributions are coded ‘Uncontrollable’ because there is little to indicatethat the Speaker believes that he could have influenced the outcome in either case, or changedeither cause.In attributions (6) and (7), the Speaker appears to externalize responsibility for having leftthe club by stating that there was ‘no real structure’ in the club and that ‘the team did not feelright’. Neither of these suggests that the Speaker considers cause or outcome to reflectanything personal about himself. Attribution (6) is coded ‘uncontrollable’ because there isnothing to indicate that the Speaker considered himself able to influence cause or outcome.Attribution (7), however, is coded ‘controllable’ because the outcome refers to a decision togive up rowing. Finally, in the eighth attribution, the Speaker implies that rowing providesa structure to his life that is likely to have an ongoing and important influence. Hence theattribution is coded ‘Stable’ and ‘Global’. It is also coded ‘Internal’ and ‘Personal’ because ofthe implication that the statement describes something that originates within him and isrelatively idiosyncratic. However, the ‘Uncertain’ coding is used for control, because, whilethere is evidence that the Speaker is attempting to influence the outcome, he has not as yetsucceeded.ANALYSIS ––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––Whilst there is no reason why an individual should not code their own attributions, researchersusing the LACS have generally employed independent, trained coders to extract and codeattributions. As such, emphasis is placed on the extent to which attributions convey a similarmeaning to different listeners. Thus, consistent with qualitative research involving contentanalysis of discourse material, inter-rater reliability is defined as the extent to which two ormore coders working independently code individual attributions in the same way.Achieving good levels of inter-rater reliability is particularly important if the researcher’saim is to undertake a statistical analysis of coded attributions (an approach that is morecompatible with a quantitative reductionist research paradigm). However the use of qualitativematerial of this type means that it is unlikely that the researcher will achieve levels of reliability