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

244 –––––––––– QUALITATIVE METHODS IN ORGANIZATION STUDIES ––––––––––––––––––produced (Porter, 1996); and the universality of the traditional interpretation of individuallyexperienced stress in different organizational contexts has been questioned (Barley and Knight,1992; Meyerson, 1994).Therefore, in our case study, we attempted to shed more light on the theme of stressand coping by applying an organizational culture perspective. More specifically, weexamined the sources of collective stress in an organization and collective copingmechanisms that exist to alleviate such stress. We regard collective stress as a culturalartefact (Fineman, 1995) that results when members of a particular organizational cultureas a group perceive a certain event as stressful. Collective coping, then, consists of thelearned, uniform responses that members within the culture manifest when trying eitherto remove the stressor, to change the interpretation of the situation, or to alleviate theshared negative feelings it produces.Since we were interested in developing, instead of testing, hypotheses about collective stressand coping within the context of organizational culture, we chose an inductive approachapplying the grounded theory framework (see also Johnson, Chapter 14, this volume). Wecombined an ethnographic perspective, emphasizing the exploration of the nature of the socialphenomenon with unstructured data, with a clinical descriptive perspective, which stressesinterpretational aspects. Grounded theory methodology was justifiable, as the application ofthe above-mentioned perspectives often results in large amounts of unstructured data,accumulating in rather non-standard and unpredictable formats (Martin and Turner, 1986;Turner, 1981). Grounded theory provides a very systematic approach for the collection andanalysis of such data by specifying clear procedures and rules to be followed throughout theentire research process (Glaser and Strauss, 1967; Strauss and Corbin, 1990). By applying suchan approach we identified sources of collective stress and collective coping mechanisms in threedivisions of a large multinational company.Case descriptionThe target organizations were three economically independent divisions (A, B and C) forminga company within a multinational corporation (total n = 850). They operated in theengineering industry. Until 1995, one year before the start of this study, these divisions formedpart of the same Finnish subsidiary, after which they were separated and integrated into twodifferent subsidiaries. This, in turn, resulted, among other things, in a restructuring of theorganization. One work unit (X), originally forming part of Division B, was merged withDivision C. Although the multinational company formed a common context to all the targetorganizations, these rather independent organizational units operated in very different businessenvironments.Methods in phase 1FIELD DATA COLLECTIONTo help in understanding the collective sources of stress and coping mechanisms, we analysedthe organizational cultures of the three divisions by gathering descriptive data. The data werecollected in 1996 by individual thematic interviews and complemented with observations atthe work site, participant observations at meetings, and analysis of documents. A total of 63informants were interviewed over a period of three months. The informants represented all