3. METHODOLOGY
3.3 Data Collection
The data collection method is in-depth open interviews. The participants were answering the same questions about the theme. The questions were open-ended and focused on two categories: the organisational model and how the business runs in the organisation and the company's strategic decision-making, where the emphasis was on the latter part. I asked the participants to describe the decision-making process, the decision-makers, how the supporting information for strategic
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decisions is collected and why they think the decision-making happens in the described ways.
Furthermore, the participants described their opinions about the decision-making and how they think the decision-making could be improved. At the end of the interview, there was time for participants to comment on the topic and ask questions.
It is essential to point out that I am familiar with the case company for a long time and know it relatively well. I used to work in the company some years ago, although in a different business area than the scope of the data analysis is. Therefore, I was somewhat familiar with the company culture and the corporative aspects of the company. I have used this knowledge in the interview discussions as a guide, for example, if the participants asked the examples of strategic decisions.
However, I was careful not to reveal my preliminary thoughts. I ensured this to structure the interview questions so that the participants could speak first openly about their thoughts and opinions. Afterwards, there was space for open discussions.
The participants were not required to prepare themselves in advance. The participants were from both subsidiaries, and the headquarter to get an overall view of the strategic decision-making. The participants are individually chosen based on their position and understanding of the strategic questions, and the participation was voluntary. Therefore, the results are not necessarily presenting the general opinion of the company. The participants are managers on different levels of the organisation and in the different business units but mainly focus on sales or products. The interviews lasted approximately one hour each, and all of them have been done remotely. The interviews were done through Microsoft Teams. The participants could choose if they want to have the video on or not, but all of them had the video on at least briefly. The interviews were recorded for later observation. I prepared the possibility for field notes, in other words, the possibility of writing notes during the interview about the interesting or valid points raised on the interviews, but the use depended on the interview. However, I revised the field notes also in the moment of data analysis.
The data collection is focusing on one business area of the company. The limitation ensures that the research question is observed equally from both sides of the match: people who observe the situation and are located in the HQ and others who do not. The data collection consists of eight interviews, each with one participant. Three of the participants are located in Europe, and five of them are located in Finland. However, two of the participants located in Finland have recently
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worked for a longer time in the company's other locations. Therefore they observe the questions from both perspectives. Three of the participants are Finnish, and the rest of them are European.
All the participants are male. The language of the interview is either Finnish or English.
Participant A is a sales director working in the HQ, but he is not Finnish. However, he has been working relatively long in the company. Participant B is a sales and marketing director working in the subsidiary (business unit), acquired some years ago and today integrated into the company entirely. He is not Finnish. Participant C is a Finnish director who has been working in the company for a long time and was participating in the strategy creation of the business area. He works at the HQ. Participant D is a sales director who joined the company relatively recently. He is not Finnish nor working in the HQ. Participant E is a vice president in sales, he is Finnish and working in the HQ, he has been working in the company for a long time. Participant F is a vice president, Finnish, and working in the HQ, although he has recently worked at the company's other location. Participant G is a director working in the HQ. Although he has been working long in the other locations of the company, he is not Finnish. Participant H is a sales director. He has not been working long in the company, he is not Finnish, and he is not working at the HQ.
A B C D E F G H
Title Sales
Director Sales
Director Director Sales
Director VP
Sales VP Director Sales
Director
Finnish/Non-Finnish
Non-Finnish
Non-Finnish Finnish Non-Finnish Finnish Finnish Non-Finnish Non-Finnish
HQ/
International location
HQ International location
HQ International location
HQ HQ /
Former international
HQ/ Former international
International location
Table 1: The participants.
3.3.1 Secondary data
As the empirical data in this study is relatively narrow, only one company and six interviews are supported with secondary data. Eriksson and Kovalainen (2008) recommend using secondary data in the studies such as master’s thesis to get a thorough perspective. The secondary data solidates the primarily collected data, and it can present trends of the topic (Adams, 2007, 117-118). The
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secondary data of this research consists of two parts. The first one is the analysis of the website of the case company and the LinkedIn profiles of the participants. The other part of secondary data is the collection of articles and reports made by the biggest consulting companies in the world. All the sources are presented in table 2. The internet sources are so tightly linked with the primary data collection, so I analyse it together with the primary data. However, the articles are by nature so different data source that they are analysed separately.
To ensure the trustworthiness of the primary data and enrich data sources, the interviews are supported with the material found from the internet, such as the company website and the LinkedIn profiles of the participants and other key employees of the organisation. It gives a better background for the interviews, ensuring certain unclarities and being more efficient in the interviews, as the time was limited. Furthermore, the material from the internet supports reflections of the higher levels of the company, such as executive group and the corporate strategy primarily, as there was no possibility to reach them through the interviews. The analysis is done before the interviews and after to ensure the understanding or the scope of the interview.
Table 2 The secondary data resources.
Business consulting is a significant business. According to Kauppalehti Fakta (2021), in 2019, the turnover in Finland of the five biggest consulting companies that were specialised in business consulting was 146 M€. Strategy consulting is a substantial part of their business. The clients are
Internet sources Articles
Code 1 2 3
Website Company website
LinkedIn Authors De Smet, A.,
Lackey, G., Weiss, L. M.
McDowell, T. &
Mallon, D.
Blenko, M., W., Mankins, M., C., Rogers, P.
Motive The broader understanding of the
business
The
background of the participants in the company
Title “Untangling
your
organization’s decision making”
“Getting decision rights right”
“The decision-driven organization”
Held by The case company
The
participants
Organisation McKinsey &
Company
Deloitte Bain &
Company Publication
year
2017 2020 2010
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not only using the strategy consulting services for creating the strategy but also implementing it.
Therefore, strategy consulting companies one party that has a role in creating a decision-making process in strategic questions. In addition, the biggest consulting companies are highly international and working with MNEs.
The big international management consulting companies such as McKinsey & Company, Boston Consulting Group, Bain & Company, Deloitte, Accenture, and PwC publish their articles on their websites about the topics of management consulting and strategy consulting. The articles are published to attract potential customers and promote the work the consulting companies are doing.
Each company usually has a link in the article or next to it for their services related to the article's topic. The authors of the chosen articles are consultants in the companies publishing the articles, often partners or other seniors in the executive roles. Commonly, the authors are located in Anglo-Saxon countries, especially in the United States. The offering of the chosen companies match precisely with the topics: they do have management consulting services, especially in the organisational changes and design, overall management consulting and operational models. Each of the articles on the websites also includes the possibility of contacting the authors or, in general, the company.
I chose three articles from different companies discussing strategic decision-making in the MNE and reflected and compared the key findings of the articles to my primary data. The articles are only sources of secondary data and are not used, for example, in the literature review. The articles are published in the past 11 years to bring the current insights from the field for observation (see table 2). The first article, article number 1 (De Smet et al. 2017), was made at McKinsey &
Company in 2017. It describes different obstacles in strategic decision-making and how they could be improved. The second article (number 2) by McDowell & Mallon (2020) is published by Deloitte, and it focuses on the rights of making strategic decisions in large companies. The last, article number three, is made by Bain & Company, and the authors are working there. However, the article is also published in the Harvard Business Review (Blenko et al. 2010). The topic of the article is the decision-making process and its details in the MNE.
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