Theme-based Interview as a Data Collection Method

Themes of the interviews are based on the diversity management paradigms.

As presented in chapter 3.3, Thomas and Ely’s and Dass and Parker’s diversity management paradigms used in the empirical part of this study are: resistance, discrimination-and-fairness, access-and-legitimacy and learning-and-effectiveness.

Interviews are a good way to reach the information when using a qualitative method. The data collection method of this thesis is focused interview. The direct translation of this Finnish concept is theme-based interview and it was developed by Hirsjärvi and Hurme (2008). The latter term is used in this study. Themes of the interview were formed on the basis of theory of diversity management and more detailed questions include the aspects of diversity management and intercultural communication.

According to the research plan, the objective was to gather data from several managers. On the basis of previous experiences it was assumed that it would be difficult to find managers who are willing to be interviewed concerning this topic. But still, it was assumed that enough different perspectives could be gathered. Luckily the situation had changed and it was possible to find enough interviewees. The final amount of interviewees is altogether 11. It can be said that saturation was reached. This study has been made in cooperation with the South Ostrobotnia Chamber of Commerce. With their help finding enough suitable interviewees for this research were found.

Contact details concerning organisations which employ multicultural workforce were also inquired from the University of Applied Sciences in Seinäjoki, the South Ostrobothnia Regional Council, people who are responsible of immigration issues in several cities and municipalities, the Finnish Construction Trade Union, friendship societies and all the interviewees. About 30 emails were sent to people in organisations in the private and public sectors in different branches. In some situations it was known that the organisation has multicultural workforce and in others it was assumed on the basis of the size and the image of the organisation. Still, some guesses were wrong, as some of the biggest organisations in South Ostrobothnia informed that they do not employ foreigners.

Next the list of interviewees will be presented. Permission to release detailed information of the interviewees and the organisations has been

asked for. One person wanted to stay totally anonymous and other ten interviewees gave a permission to use the name of their organisation. Eight people gave a permission to use their names. Howewer, in the end it was decided to protect the anonymity of the interviewees and only the title and branch are released. All interviewees were able to freely decide whether they want to participate in the study. The researcher promised to protect the anonymity of the respondents. In chapter seven, research results, anonymity is protected by not identifying which of the respondents interview the excerpt is taken.

The following managers of South Ostrobothnian organisations were interviewed:

 City in South Ostrobothnia, Service Manager of Cleaning

 Cultural Friendship Society, Chairman

 Finnish Service Corporation, Service Manager of Cleaning

 Finnish Service Corporation, Service Manager of Cleaning

 Finnish Service Corporation, Service Manager of Cleaning

 Furniture Manufacturing Company, General Manager

 Greenhouse Cultivation Company, General Manager

 Greenhouse Cultivation Company, Supervisor

 Higher Education Institution, Manager of International Affairs

 Hotel Chain, Service Manager of Cleaning

 Law Company, General Manager

For the Bachelor’s thesis only the manufacturing industry was the target group but for this thesis the target group was wider. Interviewed managers work in seven branches: cleaning industry, education, furniture manufacturing, law, public sector, friendship society and greenhouse cultivation. When the study was planned, it was decided that interviewees from different branches are to be found because that way the final research data includes many different perspectives concerning the research topic. The research data consists of theme-based interviews of 11 managers. One interview was a group interview with two participants. The interviewees work

in South Ostrobothnian organisations which have employed multicultural workforce at least more than one year. The size of organisations varies and organisations have different proportions of multicultural workforce. Some of the organisations have been multicultural more than 20 years and some of the organisations have employed their first foreign employees about one year ago.

Organisations employ 16 - 440 employees. 1 % - 50 % of the all employees are foreign. The previously reported number of employees is either the number of employees of the whole organisation or concerning only the interviewed managers’ subordinates, depending on the size of the organisation. The nationalities of the foreign workforce in the interviewed managers’

organisations’ are: Russian, Vietnamese, Swedish, Argentinian, Spanish, Canadian, German, Philippinese, Indonesian, Estonian, Myanmar, Ukranian, Lithuanian, Polish, Bulgaria and several African countries. The selection of the interviewees was made on a discretionary basis as is customary in qualitative research. According to Eskola and Suoranta (2005) discretionary sampling means that the researcher has been able to build strong theoretical foundations which will be critical in the acquisition of the material (p. 18). The industry and how long time organisations have employed foreign employees affected the choice of the interviewees.

Interviews were conducted during the Spring and Summer 2012 in South Ostrobothnia. Interviews were recorded with a Minidisc-recorder or a cell phone and they were transcribed. Interviews lasted mainly between one and two hours each. One interview lasted only half an hour. The structure of the interviews varied depending on the interviewee. Some interviewees wanted to answer strictly the questions the interviewer presented but some talked freely about the issues concerning the themes, so that all the themes were covered. Extra questions were presented whenever needed.

It seems that the interviewed people want to be part of the internationalisation of South Ostrobothnia and they want to share their experiences. Most of the interviews could have lasted for several hours because the interviewees had a lot of experiences they wanted to share. They are people who make the area international. It is very important to form good networks because with the social capital the work is easier and the right people to gather right kind of data can be found. Based on these interview experiences further

research concerning this research area in South Ostrobothnia could be conducted. During the interviews a lot of new questions rose from the discussions and also new themes were covered. The interviewees were asked to tell what they think about the questions. Some of them thought it was easy to answer the questions and talk about the themes and the others thought some questions were quite difficult. The interviewees were mainly able to talk about the issues the interviewer presented.

Good scientific practice and procedures are obeyed in this study.

According to Hirsjärvi and Hurme (2008) the reliability of the interview may be deteoriorated by the fact that the interviewees may have a tendency to gice socially accepted answers. Therefore, the interviewer should be able to interpret the responses in the light of cultural meanings and different significances of the world. (pp. 201-202) The reliability of the research is increased by using the stylized quotations in research results reporting. In the text, the quotations of the interviews are in English. In the Appendix 2 all of the quotations are presented in Finnish, which is the language which was used in the interviews.

The focused interview is a semi-structured interview method which is targeted at different themes. When using this method, there are no exact questions in the interviews, instead the interview structure is based on the themes. From the researcher’s point of view this releases the interview and brings the voices of the interviewees up. (Hirsjärvi & Hurme, 2008, pp. 47-48) The data acquisition method used is theme-based interview, because it allows a personal experience and in-depth access to information of people interviewed and brings their own perspective and the voice up. In the interviews, information concerning specific themes is collected but because the questions and answers may be submitted in any form and order, the interview situations are not too stiff, but conversational, laid back and comfortable.

The themes of the focused interview have been formed before the interviews and the themes have been edited among the interviews. More detailed questions have been asked during the interviews. The theme-based interview frame can be found in the end of the thesis. During the analysis phase of research, the research questions and the aim of the research were borne in mind. All the planned interviews were carried out because since the very first

interview until the last interview came up a number of interesting themes for research.