Boundary activities and readiness for ... - Projekti-Instituutti
Boundary activities and readiness for ... - Projekti-Instituutti
Boundary activities and readiness for ... - Projekti-Instituutti
You also want an ePaper? Increase the reach of your titles
YUMPU automatically turns print PDFs into web optimized ePapers that Google loves.
Research methodology <strong>and</strong> data<br />
main focus of this study is on the process of change, which thus receives the<br />
greatest attention in the case descriptions.<br />
The first phase of the analysis provided descriptions of how each case<br />
program had emerged <strong>and</strong> proceeded during the early stages. Shortened<br />
versions of these descriptions are presented in the beginning of chapter 4.<br />
The aim of these accounts is to briefly depict the case organizations <strong>and</strong><br />
provide an overall view of the change programs <strong>and</strong> their progress.<br />
3.5.2 The second phase of the analysis<br />
While the first phase of the analysis was case-specific, during the second<br />
phase the data from all three cases was merged <strong>and</strong> coded to identify<br />
indicators of the investigated phenomena in the interview data. During the<br />
coding process, the parts of the interview texts (typically, partial or full<br />
sentences or small paragraphs) that discussed a similar theme were marked<br />
<strong>and</strong> grouped. The coding process was guided by the initial research<br />
framework (see section 2.5.2). In line with the research questions, the<br />
coding focused on identifying <strong>and</strong> categorizing indicators of the program<br />
boundary, boundary <strong>activities</strong>, <strong>readiness</strong> <strong>for</strong> change program<br />
implementation, <strong>and</strong> possibly relevant contextual factors. These issues were<br />
identified from the interview transcripts <strong>and</strong> coded with the help of the<br />
Atlas.ti 6.0 software. Following the suggestion by Glaser <strong>and</strong> Strauss<br />
(1999), memos were written actively during the coding process <strong>and</strong> linked<br />
to the quotations or codes. These memos were utilized to describe <strong>and</strong><br />
record potentially relevant observations <strong>and</strong> ideas that had risen during the<br />
coding process, such as indications of associations between the investigated<br />
themes.<br />
The analysis followed an iterative approach, <strong>and</strong> as the analysis<br />
proceeded, new codes <strong>and</strong> more detailed categorizations were generated.<br />
The coding methodology during the second analysis phase resembled that<br />
of grounded theory studies (Glaser & Strauss, 1999), but was, following<br />
Dubois <strong>and</strong> Gadde (2002), more heavily influenced by the existing theories<br />
<strong>and</strong> conceptual categorizations than “pure” grounded theory studies. The<br />
existing literature summarized in the literature review provided a starting<br />
point <strong>for</strong> the analysis. To give an example, many c<strong>and</strong>idates <strong>for</strong> boundary<br />
activity types were found in previous studies. When an instance of<br />
boundary activity was identified in the interview data, it was compared <strong>and</strong><br />
contrasted with these previously reported activity types to judge whether<br />
the identified activity represented one of these types. If it did, the activity<br />
was coded accordingly. If, however, it appeared to represent a novel type, a<br />
new code with an appropriate title was created <strong>for</strong> that activity. The<br />
iterative nature of the analysis required going back <strong>and</strong> <strong>for</strong>th in the data,<br />
looking <strong>for</strong> similarities <strong>and</strong> using judgment on whether different parts of<br />
92