Boundary activities and readiness for ... - Projekti-Instituutti

Research methodology and data
main focus of this study is on the process of change, which thus receives the
greatest attention in the case descriptions.
The first phase of the analysis provided descriptions of how each case
program had emerged and proceeded during the early stages. Shortened
versions of these descriptions are presented in the beginning of chapter 4.
The aim of these accounts is to briefly depict the case organizations and
provide an overall view of the change programs and their progress.
3.5.2 The second phase of the analysis
While the first phase of the analysis was case-specific, during the second
phase the data from all three cases was merged and coded to identify
indicators of the investigated phenomena in the interview data. During the
coding process, the parts of the interview texts (typically, partial or full
sentences or small paragraphs) that discussed a similar theme were marked
and grouped. The coding process was guided by the initial research
framework (see section 2.5.2). In line with the research questions, the
coding focused on identifying and categorizing indicators of the program
boundary, boundary activities, readiness for change program
implementation, and possibly relevant contextual factors. These issues were
identified from the interview transcripts and coded with the help of the
Atlas.ti 6.0 software. Following the suggestion by Glaser and Strauss
(1999), memos were written actively during the coding process and linked
to the quotations or codes. These memos were utilized to describe and
record potentially relevant observations and ideas that had risen during the
coding process, such as indications of associations between the investigated
themes.
The analysis followed an iterative approach, and as the analysis
proceeded, new codes and more detailed categorizations were generated.
The coding methodology during the second analysis phase resembled that
of grounded theory studies (Glaser & Strauss, 1999), but was, following
Dubois and Gadde (2002), more heavily influenced by the existing theories
and conceptual categorizations than “pure” grounded theory studies. The
existing literature summarized in the literature review provided a starting
point for the analysis. To give an example, many candidates for boundary
activity types were found in previous studies. When an instance of
boundary activity was identified in the interview data, it was compared and
contrasted with these previously reported activity types to judge whether
the identified activity represented one of these types. If it did, the activity
was coded accordingly. If, however, it appeared to represent a novel type, a
new code with an appropriate title was created for that activity. The
iterative nature of the analysis required going back and forth in the data,
looking for similarities and using judgment on whether different parts of
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