“While studying people, why would we not use the advantage of letting the people tell about things that consider them personally?” – (Robson 1995, 227)
In this chapter the methodological decisions and solutions of the research are explained along with the gathering and processing of research material. Finally the narrative analysis of the research material is explained step by step.
4.1. Principals of qualitative research
Traditional research strategy of this paper is qualitative case study. Hirsijärvi, Remes and Sajavaara (2002) define it as detailed intensive knowledge about an individual case or small group of cases related to each other. Typical characteristics: a single case, situation or group of cases is chosen; individual, group or community is targeted; point of interest often lies in processes, individual cases are viewed in context with their natural environment (in natural situations);
material is often collected using scientific methods e.g. observing, interviews, and studying documents. The main objective of a qualitative case study is often a description of a phenomenon.
Term research strategy stands for the methodological entity of a research. Research method has to be divided from it as a more concise concept (Hirsijärvi et al. 2002). Robson (1995) describes the difference of these concepts with a river-crossing problem: the research strategy defines weather one walks across a bridge, flies over, sails, or swims across the river whereas the research method defines what type of plain, boat etc. is being used.
Narrative approach is chosen as the method of this study that enables the results to be presented in an easily adoptable form of a story. A narrative approach fits perfectly for the processing of the research question presented in the paper due to the ability of a narrative to present problems and perceptions in a concrete form.
4.2. Research material
The empirical material of this research was gathered from the case companies by interviewing the managers close to the HRM processes and reinforced by a specialist interview of Tuomo Kauppinen, a member of the board of Finnish Entrepreneurship Society. The case companies
Hydroline Ltd. and Junttan Ltd. are both Finnish hi-tech manufacturing companies who operate internationally and employ over 150 people. Shared industry, roughly similar size of the companies and presumably similar phase of the company life cycle creates ideal circumstances to compare the decisions the managers have made in their efforts to develop their companies HRM.
After thorough consideration, theme interview was selected as the research method. Theme interview is a form of interview in between a survey and an open interview. In a theme interview the questions are based on themes essential for the research problem, although the precise form and order of the questions may vary between the interviews. The objective of a theme interview is to allow the subjects of the interview to create their own description about each theme. Theme interview is used broadly in the research of pedagogics and social sciences as it matches well to many settings of qualitative research. However, theme interview is not exclusively a method of qualitative research. The material can be molded suitable for quantitative analysis inter alia by studying frequencies. (Hirsijärvi et al. 2002, 192-196; Vilkka 2005, 101-102.) One of the key advantages of a theme interview is in the flexibility of gathering the material. Direct verbal interaction with the interviewees enables the possibility to focus the data acquisition and influence to the course of the interview by presenting clarifying questions. It also creates a possibility to elicit some of the motives behind the answers, as the interview setting also allows the researcher to interpret expressions and gestures in addition to the actual answers. Also, the interviewees are often easy to contact afterwards if additional questions or a follow-up research is needed. Interview is often chosen as a research method inter alia when a person is emphasized in the research as a subject, who actively creates meaning or when there is a preliminary assumption that the topic may produce multilateral answers. Although interviews and especially the transcribing are time consuming tasks, they are often able to produce more in-depth information about the research problem than e.g. a survey or a poll. (Hirsijärvi et al. 2002, 192-196; Vilkka 101-105.)
In addition to the advantages, there are also several challenges regarding an interview to be considered. Hirsijärvi et al. (2002) state that an interview is like a two-sided coin. For instance, the interview is time consuming and demands thorough preparation. Additionally Hirsijärvi et al.
(2002) state that there are several sources of mistake that are originated from both the interview and the interviewee and from the situation itself. E.g. the interviewee may see the situation as stressful or even threatening in many ways. The reliability of the interview may be weakened by the fact that people tend to give socially acceptable answers. Interviewee may also be interested to discuss about matters irrelevant for the research, which may mislead the focus of the interview. Thus, the real experiences and opinions may not always be revealed, which may distort the interpretation of the
results of the research. Interview is also a contextual situation, this means that the interviewees may speak in a different manner than they normally would. Thus Hirsijärvi et al. (2002) instruct that the results should never be over generalized. (Hirsijärvi et al. 2002, 192-193.)
The managers were contacted via telephone prior to the interview on a preliminary planning session to map out the topics of conversation and outlines relevant to the subject. Kimmo Korhonen, the HR-manager of Hydroline stated that he would prefer to address the matters of the interview due to his relevantly short history in the company accompanied with their CEO Jukka Laakkonen who has the best overall picture about the company. Also Satu Ruotsalainen, the HR-manager of Junttan and Tuomo Kauppinen, the entrepreneur specialist agreed to the interview after a short briefing on the topic.
Hydroline is Finland’s largest designer and manufacturer hydraulic cylinders for demanding conditions. The company was founded in 1962 by Helge Laakkonen in Kuopio, and is owned by Laakkonen family. Their annual turnover is circa 30M€ and they currently employ 200 people in three countries; Finland, Poland and China. The interview of the managers at Hydroline was conducted at the company headquarters in Vuorela, eastern Finland in a single session. Questions were prepared for a semi-structured interview, but the discussion between the two managers started to flow so naturally after the introduction, that the situation needed very little directing. The location was probably able to set the mood into thorough presentation of the company processes and problematic. The managers of Hydroline were positively inclined to address the challenges and points of improvement in a very direct and versatile fashion. The managers had both had the chance to familiarize themselves with the research plan before the interview that probably made it easier for them to lay the groundwork for the topic. Both Laakkonen and Korhonen were actually so well prepared for the topic that very few questions needed to be presented after the introduction, and the interview advanced on its natural course as a discussion between the two managers.
Junttan is a company specialized in designing, manufacturing, selling and maintaining hydraulic piling equipment, such as pile drivers and drilling units. It was founded in 1976 by Pentti Heinonen, and owned by Heinonen family until 2010, when Ilkka Brotherus bought the majority of the company and attached Junttan to be a part of Sinituote group. Junttan’s production facilities are in Kuopio, Finland, where they employ 130 people. Junttan exports their products and services into over 40 different countries and 95% of their annual 38M€ turnover is generated by export. HR manager Satu Ruotsalainen was interviewed in the Junttan office in a single session. Ruotsalainen was both well prepared and professionally interested on the topic, which created beneficial circumstances for the interview.
The Federation of Finnish Enterprises (later FFE) has the largest membership of all business-related federations in Finland. Currently the organizations membership consists of 116 000 enterprises of all sizes, from all corners of the country, and encompasses the entire business spectrum. The membership structure provides a good reflection of the structure of Finnish business as a whole. Tuomo Kauppinen is a member of the board of FFE and has an entrepreneurial experience from 4 companies for circa 30 years time. Kauppinen was interviewed in the lounge of a local hotel in Kuopio, as he was passing through in one of his business trips. Kauppinen was able to contribute on the understanding of the state of Finnish enterprises, and to the frequency of the type of developments and decisions made in the case companies.
The interviews were recorded with two separate devices to ensure successful recording and preservation of the material. The idea proved to be really important, for the quality of the tape recorder was so poor, that the analog recording could not be used. The material from the digital recorder was then transferred into a computer, and mixed with sound processing software to suppress the background noise.
The interviews were conducted between 2013 and 2014 in Finnish, extracted from the recording by transcription, which stands for writing it down almost literally, and then translated into English.
Few expletive words e.g. “like”, “well” and “err” were omitted to improve the readability of the material. The recordings consisted of three hours of interviews (1 hour each) and the transcripts consisted of 44 pages of text all together.
4.3. Methods of Analysis
The analysis, interpretation and the conclusions are the most important goals of the research.
Hirsijärvi et al. (2002) state that it is imperative to choose the method of analysis that is best to describe the research problem. They argue that the superiority of the method is contextual and that the methods can be roughly divided into two categories by their goals:
-! Quantitative methods that pursue an explanation: often based on statistic analysis and conclusions
-! Methods that strive to an understanding: often based on qualitative analysis and conclusions These two types of methods may also be used in a research to support each other. This research material was analyzed using narrative as the method of analysis. In a narrative (also story) analysis the elements of the material is used to form a storyline that gathers the parts of the material together
and gives them a meaning. Hänninen (1999) states that narrative analysis is a research where the concept of story of narrative is being used as an instrument of understanding. Hyvärinen (1998) has also addressed narrative analysis by arguing that the researcher presents theoretical questions to the material, where one needs to be aware of the nature of the questions they are presenting and how they are being interpreted.
Previous research states that the goal of narrative analysis is to transmit the original story precisely as possible to enable the reader to evaluate the reliability of the interpretations made in the analysis (Hänninen 1999).
The interview material was analyzed by dividing the transcribed texts into themes categorized by the research question. Under the categories the interviews were further divided into subcategories regarding their topic, in order to enable narrative description of the research problem.
After the analysis, the results and conclusions of the empirical analysis are compared against the findings of the previous research.