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

––––––––––––––––––––– HISTORICAL ANALYSIS OF COMPANY DOCUMENTS –––––––––– 305it limited my ‘archive’ to manageable proportions. Second, in case access to the Cadburycollection was not extended beyond the duration of the research project, it seemed sensibleto make the most of the access I had been granted while it lasted.From the vast array of documents in the Cadbury Collection, I selected for consultationthose which appeared most likely to shed light on the management of labour. The procedureI followed, if it can be called that, was to take a volume of minutes, such as the Board Minutesor the Works Council Minutes, and to flick through the pages trying to spot any item ofinterest. For later volumes of the Board Minutes and some other committees there was anindex, and I could note any entries in the index that looked as if they might be of interest.For each item of interest I made notes on a five by eight inch record card. It was also possibleto photocopy particularly interesting documents. What I now refer to as my ‘data’ from theresearch on Cadbury consists of four boxes containing approximately 4,000 record cards andfour lever arch files full of photocopies which I can consult when writing about Cadburywithout revisiting the Cadbury Collection. The record cards contain all my hand writtennotes on the documents I consulted during the research. In addition to the board minutes Iexamined various volumes of minutes for other management committees, minutes for theseparate Men’s and Women’s Works Councils, from their inception in 1918, and the BournvilleWorks Magazine. Of course some of the cards have only a few lines, whereas others are filledwith verbatim notes of what appears in the documents. My most detailed notes are from theboard minutes. I have one full box of nearly 1,000 record cards in chronological order for allvolumes of the Board Minutes from 1899 to 1929. To take one year as an example, in 1916Board meetings were more or less weekly and over 800 minutes were taken. Out of these mydata consists of notes on 55 minutes from 35 meetings.As with other qualitative methods in organization studies only a small proportion of mydata is ever likely to be utilized in published outputs. However, the versatility of the enormousvolume of data I generated in the craft-like fashion of a historian, rather than a narrowlyprescribed procedure, means that I have been able to use the data to address a range ofhistoriographical debates of relevance to organization studies, namely: the early applicationof scientific management by Cadbury in 1913 (Rowlinson, 1988); the symbolism of theCadbury centenary celebrations in 1931 in the company’s corporate culture (Rowlinson andHassard, 1993); the relationship between the corporate culture and the adoption of amultidivisional structure by Cadbury in 1969 (Rowlinson, 1995); the nostalgic historiographyof Quaker firms (Rowlinson, 1998), and the heritage view of history presented by CadburyWorld, the firm’s visitor attraction that opened in 1990 (Rowlinson, 2002). I have also sharedmy data with other historians.Validity and reliability of company documentationFrom a business historian’s point of view interviews are seen as supplementary to documentaryresearch, since:Without extensive research in corporate records it is all too easy to accept one’sinformants’ statements at face value or to mistake an external façade for an internalreality. Documentary research provides an excellent means to test the accuracy ofdifferent images and perceptions of the organization and to compare espoused andactual values. It may also furnish an alternative to the official version of the firm’s history.(Dellheim, 1986: 20)