The interviews were mainly targeted for management level people and directors, including process owners. Interviewees´ relations to projects were differing. For exploring synergies and differences between different teams and product groups, and for identifying best practices, people from all three product groups operating in the target company were interviewed. The interviewees were invited to participate the research via email (Appendix 2) suggesting an interview about the organizational learning in project environment. In total, 20 interviews were conducted between July and September 2020. Detailed descriptions about the interviewees are in Results and analysis chapter.
Before an interview, all interviewees answered to a survey that was designed to learn about the extent in which the target company functions as a learning organization, to explore the relationship between the different factors affecting organizational learning, and to compare the current state of organizational learning to the longed optimal stage via multiple-choice questions. The survey questions were modified from a diagnostic tool introduced by Garvin and
Edmonson (2008) that is designed for measuring the extent of an organizational learning in an organization. The survey consisted of 55 questions and the interviewees were asked to assess how much they agree with the given sentences in a range from one to seven. “One” meant “I fully disagree” and number seven meant “I fully agree”. The survey was structured based on the research questions and theory focusing on the building blocks of organizational learning.
The goal of the survey was to get the interviewees acquainted with the concepts of organizational learning and think about organizational learning from their personal point of view before the interview. The data from the survey was not further analyzed. The survey questions can be found from the Appendix 3.
The interviews were performed as semi-structured interviews and they focused on discussing about the current and future state of project learning at the target company. And audio recordings were made of every interview. The interviews were designed in respect to the principles of qualitative research focusing on “what” and “how” questions instead of making questions prescriptive (Eriksson & Kovalainen 2008). The interview protocol consisted of four parts, which were distinguished from one another by their focus and structure. In the study of the systematic learning from experiences in a project environment, the initial first part of the interview consisted of a series of questions concerning the interviewees team, working environment and practices as well as relation to projects. This description works for the thesis because it describes the systematicity and collaboration emerging in the processes, including projects, without explicitly saying that the specific focus of our study is on systematic learning from experiences in project environment. Also, the purpose of the first questions were to lighten the shift from a formal interview to open conversation, by asking non-impending questions that encourage the interviewee to talk about people and issues of interest to them. This introductory part allowed an interviewee to set boundaries of privacy.
In the second part Systematic lessons learned knowledge (Syllk) model, visualizing the elements of project learning, was introduced and explained to the interviewees as a basis for the further discussion. Referring to the elements of Syllk model, the interviewees were invited to individually identify and elaborate the positive facilitators and negative barriers that impact on lessons learned procedures in project activities. If relevant, further questions were asked to collect experiences and stories about the research topic for identifying their interpretations to
systematic learning from experiences in project environment. Although Syllk model was introduced similarly to all interviewees, the following questions were less structured and planned than the first part of the interview, intending to excite a wide description of an event, instead of a specific information. When the interviewee brought up an example related to the research topic, they were asked to explain the situation or other factor in more detail. Following questions were to excite the full narrative of the event or other factor, finding out if it was unique or repeated, how people responded to it and whether an event, situation or other factory was defined as a problem or success. The interviewees were invited to elaborate the root causes behind different concepts as well as their effects on organizational learning. Interview protocols sought information that could be analyzed in terms of existing theories. Each interview could be considered an effort to document or challenge one or more theories about learning from experiences.
In the third part of the interview, a series of closed ended questions, linked to Syllk model, were asked for collecting information and allowing comparison with research literature, regarding interpretations and perceptions of the project learning. These questions focused on the current limiting factors of learning in projects and the future of project learning in the target company.
Up to this point, the topic of systematic learning from experience in project environment had been somewhat vague. The final questions invited to discuss the research topic directly. Since these direct questions were asked at the end of the interview, they could not affect the content of the previous responses and the nature of the told stories. On the other hand, this also allowed the respondents to clarify aspects of their narratives and add something that they felt was missing from the interview so far. This technique of telling the interviewees about the research project at the end cannot always be used. For example, if the study group is in a close network of colleagues, they may discuss about the topic together thus leading to collective ideas on the topic or may not be willing to share their personal insights. Since the interviewees were not close colleagues and the interviews were given anonymously, the disclosure of the exact research topic should not have a significant impact on the research validity. The research questions can be found from Appendix 4. The flow of the interviews depended on the knowledge, experiences, and positions of the interviewee.
During the research, more participants were added. Once the interviews were no longer generating significantly new findings for the data collection, the variety of results obtained were analyzed and a cogent description of the observed phenomenon, including its variations, become developed. Also, an account of the sources and patterns of variation, a theory or explanation of the phenomena, were derived. The sample size is not large enough to test the hypothesis, nor likely to include all counterfactual possibilities, However, it is possible to test the hypothesis with a survey on a larger sample size, using quantitative methods (Flick 2011, 24-25).
6 RESULTS AND ANALYSIS
This chapter is a continuum of the empirical section and it analyzes the data gathered in the semi-structured interviews. The chapter starts by a short overview of the interviewees after which the analysis is built around the Syllk model.