Data Collection and Variables

The decision not to record on tape the interviews was done based on the strict recommendation of Juho Seppälä (2006). He has extensive global experience on inter-company relationships covering all of the represented cultures and his view was that recording could easily create an atmosphere where sensitive matters will be omitted.

The interviews were about future-oriented strategic issues that are by nature sensitive and, therefore, only manual notes were done during the interviews.

In order to improve the quality of the collected material the most important findings were recorded separately and the interview notes verified and extended within one day after each interview.

If an interviewee did not have an opinion, he was not pressed for it, but instead the question was left unanswered. Permission was asked and received from each

interviewee to contact him afterwards in order to further clarify issues related this study, if required.

The interview questionnaire (Appendix 3) was composed of the following parts.

1. Introductions

2. Motivation: purpose of the research 3. Definition of the key concepts

4. Structure of the interview (explained) 5. General questions

6. Theory-based questions

7. Probability and strength estimation for each force

8. Closure

The investigator was leading the discussion through the first four parts and the eighth part of the questionnaire. During the substance of the interview, which is the fifth and sixth part, the interview followed the thinking of the interviewee. In practice, the investigator started with the first question (5a) after which the interviewee was allowed to freely elaborate on the issue until that theme was exhausted. After this, the interviewer continued with the next unanswered question.

The approach ensured two important goals. First, the interviewees’ thinking about the forces were recorded (fifth part) before he was exposed to the ideas related to the theoretical model (sixth part). Secondly, in the general part the approach was to ask first, what is happening in communications in general, and only after that discuss what it might mean for OSS. If the interviewee had an area of special interest or expertise, more time was spent with it.

The questionnaire was reviewed prior to the interviews by Professor Hannu Kuusela and Kari Loukola. During the first interview (Pesonen), it was noted that Network Management Outsourcing related questions (6x and 6y) were missing from the questionnaire. The matter was anyhow covered during the interview as it was also included to the template for probability and strength estimation (Appendix 3, Figure 23). These questions were added to the questionnaire after the interview and all the other interviews were then conducted with exactly the same questionnaire.

It should be noted, that Chairman Willetts was preparing himself for his key note speech in the TeleManagement World event in Dallas (Managing the Blue Ocean of Convergence licenses [homepage on the Internet] c2006. Available from:

http://www.tmforum.org/browse.aspx?catID=4010) one week after the interview and with him the interview approach was different. He was elaborating the state of the industry and playing with the different future scenarios and for most of the time the investigator was only making notes. Only a few questions were posed in order to pay attention to some of the areas that had not been covered. With the other interviewees the structure followed more the questionnaire format, although several questions were covered without a pause and the exact order of the questions was different with each interviewee.

In addition to the verbal descriptions, two variables were collected for each force: the probability of the impact of the force to the OSS industry and itsstrength in the case of impact. The following categories were used to quantify the probability.

0 Not Possible probability 0%

1 Low probability 1-33%

2 Medium probability 34-66%

3 High probability 67-99%

4 Definite probability 100%

During the interviews the disruptive and stabilizing forces were treated as separate, but with similar strength scales. For processing purposes their strengths are combined to one scale as follows.

3 Major disruptive force It will alone change the industry structure.

2 Medium disruptive force It has impact and can with other forces change the industry structure.

1 Minor disruptive force It has impact, but will not change the industry structure.

0 No strength It does not have impact on the industry structure.

-1 Minor stabilizing force It has impact, but will not maintain the industry structure.

-2 Medium stabilizing force It has impact and can with other forces maintain the industry structure.

-3 Major stabilizing force It will alone maintain the industry structure.

These scales are used in all the following probability and strength statistics.

A strength scale with 3 +/- levels worked well in the interviews and was sufficient for the subsequent analysis. A more detailed scale would have required remarkably more attention, probably even a separate second interview.

For probabilities, the upper limit between the scale categories of 3 and 4 could have been 95% instead of 99%. The idea of separating facts and highly probable events was good, but in a rapidly changing industry environment 95% probability, in reality, has to be already considered as a fact in the most decision making situations. Due to this, a few findings, that in practice are facts, are categorized with a high probability.

However, this does not impact the overall results of the study, because on a high level these categories are treated similarly.

The existence of a force could be treated as a third, binary variable. In order to avoid this, the results have been interpreted, so that if a force does not have probability or strength, it does not exist.