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

308 –––––––––– QUALITATIVE METHODS IN ORGANIZATION STUDIES ––––––––––––––––––management, and listing them. Not the least of the difficulties in this was identifyingconnections between the records from various sources, such as the Board Minutes and theBournville Works Magazine, in order to reconstruct events. The more the data is processed andinterpreted the less the final narrative will appear to be a mere chronicle, a purelychronological, day-by-day, year-by-year, ordering of data.Periodization in the history of a company can come in various forms. The approach I usedfor Cadbury entailed identifying the origins of a series of institutions that developed in relationto the management of labour (Rowlinson, 1987; summarized in Rowlinson and Hassard,1993: 310–14). My periodization emerged from examining the data for Cadbury rather thanexternal events in wider society, such as wars or changes in government. In other words I didnot assume that periods such as pre- or post-World War One would necessarily correspondto periodization within Cadbury. This meant that I collected a lot of data on the companyfrom before and after the period I decided to write about in order to identify the period itself.My focus on the period 1879 to 1919 starts with the move to a purpose-built factory on agreenfield site at Bournville in 1879; followed by the founding of the Bournville Village Trustin 1900 and the building of a ‘model village’; the development of welfare for employees, theintroduction of sophisticated personnel management techniques, and the formalization of arigid sexual division of labour during the 1900s; the introduction of significant elements ofscientific management from 1913; and finally the implementation of the Works Councilscheme in 1918. By 1919 the major labour management institutions associated with Cadburywere in place. As a result of my theoretical orientation I traced the sources of ideas for eachof these institutions to contemporary social movements rather than the inspiration ofindividual members of the Cadbury family.My approach to periodization, which could be called an institutional approach, can becontrasted with that of Charles Dellheim, who has studied Cadbury from a corporate cultureperspective. Dellheim’s account of the Cadbury corporate culture is bounded by symbolicevents:The period explored . . . begins in 1861, when George [1839–1922] and Richard[1835–1899] Cadbury took over the family business. It ends in 1931, when capitalistand worker celebrated the firm’s values at its centenary. A historical approach tocompany cultures begins with the guiding beliefs of the founders. (1987: 14)Dellheim attributes the development of the Cadbury corporate culture to the religious beliefsof the Cadbury family, namely their membership of the Religious Society of Friends(Quakers).Periodizing events through the use of company documentation tends to obscure theeveryday experience of organizational participants that is constituted by regularities which arenot recorded because they are taken for granted. Dellheim concedes that:The historian who examines a firm exclusively from the viewpoint of founder-owners ormanagers runs the risk of naively assuming that the official view they put forth isaccurate. Hence, it is also necessary to study company cultures from the perspectiveof workers....The major obstacle to understanding workers’ attitudes is the relativescarcity of source materials. (1986: 14)But the methodological problem of studying everyday life through company documentationdoes not merely arise from the hierarchical privileging of senior management records in the