Dissertation_Paula Aleksandrowicz_12 ... - Jacobs University

updated in line with recent legislative changes, about the impact of which I interrogated my
respondents.
I carried out the interviews face-to-face at the company premises, with the exception of
the interviews with trade union representatives in Polish companies, whom I interviewed via
phone in spring 2006. In most cases, I tape-recorded the talk.
To my face-to-face interviews, I took a small questionnaire which gathered basic
information on the firm: year of establishment, legal form, headquarters, branch affiliation,
number of sites, investors, annual turnover and income (in the Polish questionnaire) and
statistical information on the workforce (Annex B). I was able to fill out some of the
information beforehand and let the interviewee complete it. However, this seemed to
overstrain some interviewees, and I was not very successful with collecting especially the
information on economic indicators. It is a thin line whether repeatedly asking the
interviewees to provide the desired information yields the desired results or whether the
interviewees are discouraged from further participation in the research. Therefore, I left out
those questions from the revised questionnaire for the second wave of interviews in German
enterprises. Another rationale for the omission of economic indicators is their limited
comparability across countries and across branches (there were even differences within a
branch in a country, as e.g. in Poland, some companies complete their balance sheet
according to US American law, and some to Polish law).
I will basically use two methods of data analysis and interpretation.
Qualitative content analysis is the most frequently used method of analysis of halfstructurised
interviews (e.g. Meuser/Nagel 2002; Mayer 2002; Mayring 2003). I will depict
the basic steps I will take in this process:
1) Interviews are transcribed or formulated in the form of minutes, then reread and
summarised. The interview transcript is completed with additional material assembled
during the case studies, including field notes and observations of the researcher.
2) Each interview transcript is arranged according to sub-themes.
3) An analysis guideline is drawn up.
The categories are partly adopted from the interview guideline, and partly derived
inductively from the collected data.
4) The interview material is coded.
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