Fieldwork in Transforming Societies: Understanding Methodology from Experience

Fieldwork in Transforming Societies Understanding Methodology from Experience Edited by Ed Clark and Snejina Michailova...

Author: Ed Clark | Snejina Michailova

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Fieldwork in Transforming Societies Understanding Methodology from Experience

Edited by Ed Clark and Snejina Michailova

Fieldwork in Transforming Societies

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Fieldwork in Transforming Societies Understanding Methodology from Experience Edited by

Ed Clark and Snejina Michailova

Selection and editorial matter and Chapter 1 © Ed Clark and Snejina Michailova Individual chapters © Contributors 2004 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, 90 Tottenham Court Road, London W1T 4LP. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The authors have asserted their rights to be identified as the authors of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. First published 2004 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS and 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N. Y. 10010 Companies and representatives throughout the world PALGRAVE MACMILLAN is the global academic imprint of the Palgrave Macmillan division of St. Martin’s Press, LLC and of Palgrave Macmillan Ltd. Macmillan® is a registered trademark in the United States, United Kingdom and other countries. Palgrave is a registered trademark in the European Union and other countries. ISBN 1–4039–0428–6 hardback This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Fieldwork in transforming societies : understanding methodology from experience / edited by Ed Clark and Snejina Michailova. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 1–4039–0428–6 (cloth : alk paper) 1. Social sciences–Research–Europe, Eastern. 2. Social sciences–Research–Europe, Central. 3. Social sciences–Field work–Case studies. 4. Post-communism–Europe, Eastern–Case studies. 5. Post-communism–Europe, Central–Case studies. I. Clark, Ed (Edward David) II. Michailova, Snejina, 1965– H62.5.E82F53 2004 001.4′33–dc22 10 13

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Printed and bound in Great Britain by Antony Rowe Ltd, Chippenham and Eastbourne

Contents List of Tables and Figures

vi

Abbreviations

vii

Notes on the Contributors

viii

1 Doing Research in Transforming Contexts: Themes and Challenges Snejina Michailova and Ed Clark

1

2 Identities, Roles and Qualitative Research in Central and Eastern Europe Thomas Steger

19

3 Who is Observing Whom? Fieldwork Roles and Ambiguities in Organisational Case Study Research Anna Soulsby

39

4 Uncovering the Communist and Capitalist Shadow: Developing Relational Forms of Inquiry and Writing Katalin Illes and Bronwen Rees

57

5 Constructing Enterprise Level Knowledge: Exploratory Methods and Transforming Contexts Anne Lorentzen

78

6 Researching Organisations in Hungary: Practical Experience and Methodological Reflections Károly Balaton

97

7 Transformation Research in East Germany: Institutions, Knowledge and Power Ramona Alt and Rainhart Lang

114

8 Behind the Bamboo Curtain: Problems and Pitfalls in Researching Australian Expatriates in China Kate Hutchings

136

9 Fieldwork in a Low-Trust (Post-)Communist Society Matti Nojonen

157

Bibliography

177

Index

191 v

List of Tables and Figures Tables 2.1 Comparing the four role types 7.1 Double approach to the analysis of structure and action 7.2 Old and new rules of research

32 121 125

Figures 1.1 2.1 2.2 7.1

Field research in transforming societies The role triangle Typology of qualitative researcher roles Enabling and limiting relations between discourses, actors and disciplines 7.2 Disciplines, discourses, actors and actor relations 8.1 Insider status, expatriate type and researcher gender

vi

8 27 28 117 118 145

Abbreviations ACE CASS CEE CEO COMECON (or CMEA) DFG EU FDI GDR IHRM IJV JV KTV KSPW MNC NSB PRC SOE TQM WPFR

Action for Co-operation in Economics Chinese Academy of Social Science Central and Eastern Europe (particularly, the European post-socialist societies) Chief Executive Officer Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (Soviet bloc trading system) German Research Foundation European Union Foreign Direct Investment German Democratic Republic (former communist East Germany) International Human Resource Management international joint venture joint venture Karaoke Television Commission for Research into Social and Political Change in the New Federal States Multinational Corporation National Statistical Bureau (China) People’s Republic of China State-owned enterprise Total Quality Management World Press Freedom Review

vii

Notes on the Contributors Ramona Alt is Associate Professor at Chemnitz University of Technology, Germany. Her research areas include management practices and leadership in post-socialist East Germany, and more generally, in turbulent environments and under organisational transformation. She is also interested in organisational control and micro politics in organisations, and feminist organisation theories. She has been conducting research in transformational settings since 1989. Károly Balaton is Professor of Management at the Budapest University of Economic Sciences and Public Administration, Hungary. His research interests include organisational change, strategic management and organisational design. He has done extensive research on organisational changes during the transformation period from centrally planned to market economy in Hungary. Ed Clark is Reader in Organisation Studies at the School of Management, Royal Holloway, University of London, United Kingdom. He has conducted research in a variety of European post-socialist countries undergoing socio-economic transformation, but has specialised in the Czech Republic. The research has used intensive case study techniques and a longitudinal design to examine the processes of management and organisational change in former state owned enterprises, and, more recently, the impact of foreign direct investment on management practices. Kate Hutchings is Senior Lecturer in the School of Management, Queensland University of Technology, Australia. Her research areas include International HRM and cross-cultural management, and her principal research interests focus on Australian expatriates in Asia, and the impact of culture on HRM and management decisions in subsidiary operations. She was previously employed at the University of Queensland, Australia, has taught short courses in China, and Malaysia and has held visiting positions in the U.S. and Denmark. She has 10 years experience in conducting research in Asia. Katalin Illes is a senior lecturer, researcher and consultant in the Ashcroft International Business School, Anglia Polytechnic University, Cambridge, United Kingdom. Her research areas include International viii

Notes on the Contributors ix

HRM, intercultural communication and leadership. She is particularly passionate about and committed to management research that can add value and improve organisational life. She has worked with public and private sector organisations in Britain, Denmark and Hungary. She was previously employed at Heriot Watt University, Edinburgh, Scotland and has held visiting positions in Hungary and Denmark. She has 12 years experience in conducting research in organisational change. Rainhart Lang is Professor in Organisation Studies at Chemnitz University of Technology, Germany. His main fields of research are transformation theories and transformation studies, especially changes in values and leadership styles in East Germany and other CEE countries, cultural change and management transfer, as well as HRM systems in transitions. He has worked as a research social scientist and a manager before and after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. Anne Lorentzen is Associate Professor at the Department of Development and Planning, Aalborg University, Denmark. Her research interests include changes of technological innovation and learning in manufacturing enterprises, regional development and regional innovation systems. Her current geographical focus is Central and Eastern Europe. Snejina Michailova is Associate Professor at Copenhagen Business School, Denmark. Her research areas include management in postsocialist organisations, knowledge management in multinational firms, and cross-cultural management with a special focus on Russian companies with Western participation. She has 12 years of experience in conducting research primarily in Bulgaria and Russia. Matti Nojonen is Research Fellow in the Department of Management at the Helsinki School of Economics and Business Administration, Finland. He has been preoccupied with transitional societies since 1986, when he was working and studying in the Soviet Union. In 1990 he moved over to China studies. He lived and conducted ethnographic fieldwork in different Chinese and foreign organisations in China during the late 1990s. He has more general research interests in contemporary social, institutional and economic transformation in transitional societies, historical and contemporary regional development of China and Chinese military thought. Bronwen Rees is Senior Research Fellow and Director of the Centre for Communications and Ethics at the Ashcroft International Business

x Notes on the Contributors

School, Anglia Polytechnic University, Cambridge, United Kingdom. She has published widely in the areas of ethics, communication, gender, power and culture in international business. She is a founder member of Crucible Research, a team dedicated to researching into ways of introducing ethical inquiry into organisations using awareness techniques. She has been a Fellow at Cambridge University and the Open University, and was a Visiting Fellow for 3 three years at Cranfield University, U.K. where she completed her PhD. Anna Soulsby is Senior Lecturer in Organisational Behaviour at the University of Nottingham Business School, United Kingdom. She has conducted research in the transforming countries of Central and Eastern Europe since the early 1990s, specialising in the transformation of organisation and management in the Czech Republic. Her fieldwork has mostly involved the use of semi-structured interviewing to develop rich materials about the actors involved in processes of organisational change in order to construct longitudinal, qualitative case studies. More recently, she has become involved in researching the effects of multinational corporations on the transformation process. Thomas Steger is Assistant Professor of European Management at Chemnitz University of Technology, Germany. His research areas include corporate governance and industrial relations in Central and Eastern Europe as well as cognitive phenomena in management. Originating from Switzerland, he has ten years experience conducting mainly qualitative research, primarily in East Germany, but also in Hungary and the Czech Republic. Moreover, he has co-operated in university education projects in Russia, Poland, Bulgaria and Romania.

1 Doing Research in Transforming Contexts: Themes and Challenges Snejina Michailova and Ed Clark

Like all edited books, this is the result of collective efforts over a long period of time by a number of individuals. In our case, the book has taken over two years from initial decision to completion and has involved huge amounts of time and energy from twelve colleagues, located in a variety of countries across the world. In this introductory chapter we aim to help the reader understand why so many people committed themselves in this way, by exploring the rationales for, the contexts of and the arguments in the main body of this book. In brief, the current chapter is divided into three main sections. First, we aim to introduce and explain the background to and context of what is expressed in the chapters of this book. We look at how and why we engaged on this enterprise, and outline its main propositions, motivation and objectives, as well as its relationship and contribution to the methodology literature in organisational research. Our second purpose is to lay the foundations for the exploratory work conducted in this volume, by outlining its key themes and constructing a ‘map’ of how these themes can be integrated into a coherent message. Third, we introduce the authors and their contributions.

Background and context The book’s origins The book’s organisational parent is the European Group for Organization Studies (EGOS), under whose auspices most of the contributors have met regularly since the mid-1990s. Since 1999, however, EGOS has supported a Standing Work Group entitled ‘Organisational change in transforming societies’, which has convened workshops at the annual colloquium. These workshops have provided a forum and 1

2 Fieldwork in Transforming Societies

an impetus for critical theoretical and empirical discussions around different organisational themes and topics related to transition economies and transforming countries. Although relevant contexts have included other emerging and less developed economies – such as those in Africa, Asia and South America – much of our debate has revolved around changes in post-communist or reforming communist societies, particularly those of Central and Eastern Europe, the former Soviet Union and China. For many of us, the intellectual origins of the ideas expressed in this volume can be traced back to the beginning of the 1990s, though the need to develop our thoughts coherently became more urgent towards the end of that decade. The more we discussed our concrete empirical topics during workshop sessions, the more aware we were of the importance of giving voice to the methodological challenges to which we were exposing ourselves in our field research. We felt strongly that radically transforming societies such as those mentioned above provided distinctive research settings and that working (even surviving) in them highlighted the need for rather special skills and qualities. Looking back, we can now detect how we, as a group, shifted the focus of much of our discussion. Whereas initially we all were preoccupied with collecting empirical materials, writing our papers and presenting our research findings, by the mid-1990s we had identified the need to talk together explicitly and seriously about fieldwork problems. Some of these problems could be understood through methodological conventions, but many were personal and emotional, concerned, for example, with the frustrations that we were experiencing in the field and how these were influencing our analyses, interpretations and theoretical products. In presenting our papers, it was no longer sufficient to mention in a descriptive way that, for instance, the study was based on conducting 25 interviews in Hungary, or that the author acted as a participant observant for a particular period of time in two foreign-owned Polish companies. It became evident that methodology had to be made more human and approachable – and, as it happens, also more interesting to our audiences. We recognised this fact, but, because of the accepted conventions of management and organisational research, we had tactfully and tactically avoided it. Our discussions opened up personal issues: who were we; how did our background influence the way we thought about and did fieldwork; what mistakes were we making while generating our field data; how did we deal with all the surprises awaiting ‘out there’ in the field; on what basis and how did we make our practical

Snejina Michailova and Ed Clark 3

and ethical choices while collecting empirical data (and so on)? While these questions are not new, they are largely unexplored in relation to the transforming contexts in which we were working. Moreover, given the uncertainties and ambiguities associated with transforming societies (see below), we felt that our personal fieldwork experiences had stronger resonance and significance for research process and outcomes than in the ‘normal’ research settings of developed Western societies. Over the years, our methodological discussions became more and more intensive and, in Lyon in the summer of 2001, we took the decision to give voice to our methodological concerns. From this background comes this edited volume, in which we discuss methodological issues by placing our personal fieldwork experiences centre stage.

Propositions, motivation and objectives Our work on this volume has been motivated by the idea that there is a need for it. This view is underpinned by four guiding propositions, which define the basic themes and arguments in the book. First, we argue that transforming societies are very special research settings that require fieldwork researchers to develop special qualities. This argument, demonstrated throughout the book, suggests that the uncertainties, ambiguities and even dangers of working in transforming societies call for degrees of creativity and ingenuity that need further investigation. Second, we propose that existing methodological conventions in organisation and management studies tend to pay too much attention to research as a technical question and too little to the personal and social experiences of the researcher. We argue that researchers’ experiences can offer a significant inductive route into understanding and resolving methodological issues, thereby reversing the more traditional deductive reasoning – here are a set of logical, often disembodied principles that must be put into practice – that dominates methodological texts. Third, we propose that, in comparison with what we call ‘normal’ (i.e. stable) settings, working in transforming societies, is more likely to lead to personal and social difficulties and strains for the field researcher. Thus, above and beyond developing special skills to operate successfully, a field researcher has to learn ways of coping as a human being. We are quite sure that these essentially human problems can and do seriously affect the process and outcomes of field research, and we are troubled that they are rarely confronted. In general, field researchers either do not write about serious difficulties or mention


them without sustained reflection. If and when some of the problems are discussed, they tend to be dismissed with only a brief, detached explanation of why they did not weaken the findings. In research monographs, for example, this is often done in appendices, adopting the custom first introduced by Whyte (1955) and followed by Gans (1962). In our view, this creates a growing gap between theory and practice that needs addressing through greater reflexivity. Our fourth proposition follows from the first three, namely, that others can learn much from the experiences of those who conduct field research in transforming societies. On the one hand, this applies to field researchers working in institutionally stable settings. Stable institutional contexts are often not as predictable as they first appear, and while surprises might not happen so often or be so ‘nasty’, the ability to develop creative and flexible responses is a critical researcher quality. In a similar fashion, most research, wherever it takes place, involves some level of personal or social pain, which is usually ignored or covered up. We need to ‘out’ these often highly emotional questions – in whatever setting – if we and others are to have full confidence in our research. By openly discussing such issues, we hope in particular to encourage junior researchers and doctoral students to be reflective about their own work. On the other hand, other social groups can also benefit from the experiences described and analysed in this book. We believe that one such group, in particular, includes managers, business people and consultants who have to operate in foreign, often alien settings. Such ‘international practitioners’ share many characteristics with international researchers. They are brought up in one cultural context and are posted to another, which can have norms and customs that make the change of life a real challenge. From a professional stance, international practitioners have to get good quality information from, and communicate information and decisions to their host culture colleagues. From a personal perspective, living in a new and strange environment can be stressful and have a direct impact on a manager’s ability to operate professionally. While the contributions are primarily about the professional and personal effectiveness of the researcher, each chapter attempts to pull out some lessons for an audience of international practitioners. Our book joins a small number of methodology books that examine the conduct of fieldwork in transforming or developing societies (e.g. Thurston and Pasternak, 1983; Devereux and Hoddinott, 1992; De Soto and Dudwick, 2000). However, we address questions of the theory and


practice of methodology as they apply to field research, by reflecting on experiences in a transformational setting – a focus that complements rather than replicates these contributions. We start from the view that field research is a rich laboratory for personal learning and development (Van de Ven and Poole, 2002) and that voicing and debating fieldwork problems enhance both the quality of the research we conduct and our credibility as researchers. In sharing with readers those problems and challenges experienced in the field, the account of our research is appreciated as being more honest and realistic. General and sterilised statements about ideal-type processes of research often given the impression that ‘normal’ research is or can be problem free and that, if researchers are having personal problems, they are obviously not doing research ‘properly’. On the other hand, the actually normal personal and social experiences of fieldwork – in which researchers are subjects in their own project – are directly recognisable to researchers with any level of experience. Leaving this human dimension of research unexplored endangers our ability to appreciate how we as researchers interact with our respondents, materials and findings. In this volume, we identify and discuss problems that arise in doing fieldwork in transforming societies and share with readers both the different strategies we have applied to overcome the pitfalls and the lessons we have learned in this process. Instead of reporting success stories – or presenting problems as if they were inconsequential – we take a ‘critical distance’ (Mingers, 2000) from our own methodological approaches in relating our theoretical knowledge of methodology to our practical experiences. With great openness, the authors in this book tell stories of and describe personal experiences in management research, reflecting upon the personal and social problems they have encountered. They thus make a contribution to the literature by discussing methodological issues that are raised directly from the field.

What this book is (not) about This book is not about research findings. It is about research processes and, more specifically, methodology. The study of methodology aims to ‘…help us understand, in the broadest possible terms, not the products of scientific inquiry but the process itself’ (Kaplan, 1964: 23). Andersen et al. (1995: 13) point out that books on methodology are by nature normative, since they tell how research ought to be conducted and how concrete methodological problems ought to be solved. However, this embodies certain important weaknesses. First of all, the researcher is


depersonalised and research findings are often presented as if other researchers could replicate them. Most social scientists concede that no research is value-free and, therefore, researchers need to disclose their values and perspectives (Boyacigiller and Adler, 1991; Van Maanen, 1995; Calas and Smircich, 1999). Weick (1999: 802) recognises this need, arguing that there ‘…seem to be growing pressures on theorists to prolong and deepen those moments [of reflexivity] so that they will then see just how situated and constructed their universals are and how few voices their situated assertions incorporate. […There] is pressure to move toward greater accuracy in explanations, but it is directed at the explainer rather than the objects being explained’. Second, in the normative methodology literature, research processes are usually interpreted in terms of the norms of rationality that dominate Western societies. This book has been conceived to explore different ideas about fieldwork in transforming non-Western contexts. The chapters draw on a number of themes to contextualise the processes through which data are generated and analysed. Therefore, this volume does not constitute a recipe book. It is not a list of dos and don’ts, nor is it a textbook on ‘how to do’ qualitative research in transforming societies. Instead, it is meant to help readers in formulating wellinformed and sensible proposals for their own fieldwork research and in developing realistic expectations about what can be done in the field. This book focuses particularly on organisational fieldwork as a research process, by which we refer to particular forms of data collection as well as particular patterns of relationships involved in data collection. Field research involves the study of ongoing organisational life in its naturally occurring settings with first-hand observations from a particular subject’s frame of reference (Van Maanen, 1988). A number of books, most of them written by anthropologists, centre their attention on fieldwork experience (e.g. Bowen, 1954; Powdermaker, 1966; Wax, 1971; Johnson, 1975). More recent contributions include Shaffir and Stebbins (1991), Lareau and Schultz (1996), Moch and Gates (1999) and De Laine (2000). They provide valuable insights into fieldwork experience from a variety of angles. Whereas in most of these books authors use examples from field research to illustrate their prescriptions for doing things according to their recommended method, we have reversed this logic and tried to build methodological principles and practice from experiences and reality. Although the chapters in this book are devoted to different themes and take different countries (such as China, Czech Republic, Hungary,


Eastern Germany, and Poland) as their geographical context, the chapters are written around a number of coherent dimensions. First of all, the contributors all have a commitment to qualitative research strategies. It is beyond the purpose of this book to enter the debate about the relative merits and disadvantages of quantitative and qualitative methods. However, it is worth mentioning that, while the field of organisational studies has been heavily influenced by quantitative research, there is growing recognition of the importance of qualitative methods (Bryman, 1988). This is associated with the increasing awareness among organisational scientists that our research problems and issues a) mirror real-world organisational functioning, b) are becoming increasingly complex, and c) are getting harder to address (Lee, 1999: 2). A second, and probably the most important dimension that unites the various chapters, is the task of addressing the general issues of methodology (e.g. generalisibility, rigour, anecdotalism, personal involvement and subjectivity of researchers, reliability of respondents) through grounding discussion in personal research experiences. The single chapters, seen together, present a mosaic of connected themes and discussions rather than a ‘kaleidoscope’ of isolated representations of fieldwork experiences. In each case, the authors draw on stories about personal experiences to develop relevance in three ways. They address questions of methodology such as gaining access or controlling personal involvement; they consider the conduct of researchers in the field, for example, how to deal with problems of emotional distress and interpersonal conflict; and they infer more general lessons for international non-academic practitioners who need to operate successfully in difficult environments. Third, the authors have written in the first person and shared their personal learning experiences in conducting fieldwork and research. According to Burgess (1992: ix), each setting in which the fieldworker is located offers a learning experience in several senses. First, there is an opportunity to learn about a particular culture. Second, there is an opportunity to learn about research methodology and the use of particular research techniques. Third, there is a possibility to learn about oneself, as personal experience is a crucial element in the conduct of fieldwork. These different kinds of learning are reflected in each of the chapters, along with the most general kind of learning – learning from mistakes! Moreover, the authors share with the readers how they made sense of what they have been experiencing in the field. As such, the chapters provide a realistic account of research rather than generalised, wooden and impersonal descriptions and prescriptions.


Field research in a transforming context: key themes across the chapters In outlining and reflecting on their field experiences, the authors reveal a wide variety of issues that provide important clues about personal conduct and social structures within the transforming research setting. In writing this section, we have tried to construct a framework – or better, a map – in which many of these fieldwork ideas are pulled together in a coherent way to help readers get an overview of the methodological issues raised (see Figure 1.1). We explore the main contours of this framework by discussing the four main sets of factors: the transformational context of research; the researcher(s) as subjective agent; the respondents as social actors in the research setting; and what we refer to as ‘third party’ agents in the field.

The contextual nature of field research Without context, there is no meaning (Bateson, 1978). In this introductory chapter and throughout the book, we advocate the importance of contextualising fieldwork. According to Devereux and Hoddinott (1992), the context within which fieldwork is conducted is absolutely integral to the research process. They argue that ‘contextual’ and ‘methodological’ considerations should be considered jointly, not as two distinct categories in which the first obstructs the pursuit of the second. Michailova (2004) goes a step further and argues that it is more

Researcher

Respondent

Researcher

Respondent

Roles, identities, subjectivity, relationship, skills, power, connections, involvement, insider-outsider status, bricolage

The Transforming Context: international, cultural, historical, institutional, organisational dimensions

Internal informants, informal informants, network members, political motives, differing orientations

Third party agents

Third party agents Language translators, cultural interpreters, cultural tutors, external contacts

Figure 1.1

Field research in transforming societies

Rapid change, uncertainty, ambiguity, strangeness, hostility, danger


rewarding to treat contextualisation as an explicit methodological issue in its own right than to assume implicitly that context is inherent in fieldwork. Such a view implies that context is not an external construct within which fieldwork takes place, but rather it is internalised and constitutes the very nature of fieldwork. This is illustrated by the pecked lines surrounding the three circles in Figure 1.1. One immediate implication of such an approach is that subjectivity is something not to be criticised, avoided, excused or overcome, but to be taken seriously, valued and learned from. As argued earlier, the contributions in this book recognise that the features of a transforming context make it different from a ‘normal’ Western research setting. These characteristics, including strangeness, uncertainty, ambiguity, and sometimes hostility and danger, may lead to the coexistence of contradictory or conflicting perspectives on research in terms of the research philosophies, practices and institutions which themselves undergo change (see Alt and Lang’s chapter, for example). They may also lead to an antagonism towards imported or externally imposed ideas (Illes and Rees in Chapter 4). Some of the more extreme characteristics (such as the personal dangers) are graphically described in Nojonen’s chapter on doing fieldwork in China. The culture of fear that persists in many post-socialist countries continues to affect research settings in sometimes subtle and imperceptible ways (see Soulsby’s argument in Chapter 3). Lack of transparency – common to all transforming contexts – is also more extreme in China. Since their recent histories make these countries ‘high-context’ societies (Child, 2000), the researcher needs to probe deeply to dig out local, tacit knowledge and information in order to operate, let alone understand. The cultural distance that remains after 40 (or more) years of state socialism has made these contexts difficult to penetrate as a Western outsider. So how can a researcher begin to operate effectively in such a research setting? Getting to know how to operate in such a context – gaining access, becoming an ‘insider’ or an acceptable practitioner – requires knowledge, sensitivity and usually a lot of help (see below). Most contributors agree that, in a transforming society, conventional testing of hypotheses and models is inadequate. They use a variety of terms to call for sensitising, inductive, bottom-up or exploratory methods to be able to grasp with any accuracy the emergent and ambiguous nature of organisation and management. What kinds of lessons can normal mainstream researchers learn from research experiences in a transforming context? Does ‘doing’


such research and ‘being’ such a researcher hone special skills, develop a more sceptical and deeply questioning mentality, evolve an extra ability to cope, be flexible, think on your feet, and be sensitive to subtle and hidden qualities of the field? Many would argue that these are essential characteristics of an ‘inductive’ theorist. Is there a greater need to construct theory in order to explore and explain the emergent and ambiguous, rather than resort to and test known models and frameworks that were built under very different conditions in the West? Are these apparently ‘special’ researching skills and qualities actually those that are ‘normal’, but which have become blunt or underused in the less challenging conditions of a ‘normal’ context? These and similar questions are addressed in the chapters that follow.

The researcher’s role The social, cultural, historical and institutional uncertainties and ambiguities of the transforming context frame and shape the researchers’ experiences, providing challenges in their pursuit of knowledge. But the researcher is not alone in the field, performing as an impartial, detached observer of events, their causes and effects. The personal experiences recounted by the contributors help us to understand the wider picture of the research process in a transforming context. From their different angles, the contributors to this book agree that the objective of the field researcher is to develop Verstehen, to understand how participants in the setting give meaning to or make sense of the world around them. The chapters are sometimes rich accounts of the obstacles that their authors faced in their fieldwork and, more positively, of the imaginative ways they dealt with these problems. These accounts especially refer to the personal, social and cultural resources they were able to mobilise in order to evolve constructive explanations of the structure and process of the research setting. Starting from the status of outsider, most authors make some reference to strategies to increase their insider status. Developing networks or guanxi is especially central to the two chapters on China (Chapters 8 and 9), but this theme also runs through Steger’s contribution (Chapter 2). If you cannot become an insider – for example, because of language barriers – then it is crucial to develop third party contacts who can do so for you (e.g. Soulsby in Chapter 3). Having an inside track (directly or by proxy) is especially important for smoothing organisational access. On the other hand, being an outsider – even a ‘naïve outsider’ (see Soulsby chapter) – is certainly not without its benefits. This is a


personal resource that field workers can use to acquire an image of neutrality (Nojonen) or to be able to ask questions that a native would simply not think of, or would refuse to ask for fear of appearing stupid or gauche (Soulsby). A number of chapters address the relative merits and problems associated with degrees of researcher involvement, including the ultimate dilemma of ‘going native’ (e.g. Steger). Levels of involvement are one way of delineating the ways in which the researcher role can be played and the importance of the identity that the researcher brings to the research setting. The role of researcher is central to all discussion in this book, though this is conceived in a variety of ways. Most believe that effective fieldwork in transforming societies requires flexibility, creativity, open-endedness, spontaneity – all of which we could refer broadly to as ‘craft’ (see especially Lorentzen, Soulsby, Nojonen). In Chapters 2 and 9, Steger and Nojonen respectively see the researcher as (potentially) playing multiple roles, with the ability to shift between them according the field circumstances in order to collect materials. Several chapters put forward strong arguments about the researcher’s identity, or subjectivity, as a critical resource in the process of achieving Verstehen (e.g. Chapters 2, 4, 5, 8 and 9). Another important feature of these contributors’ honest explorations of personal experience is the stress, anxiety and even fear that researchers can feel when in a transforming setting. These emotions can be a direct reflection of the nature of the wider context – being in a different culture in which language is strange, customs are impenetrable and rules lack transparency. But they can also loom large when access is denied, interviews are cancelled, respondents are unhelpful or rude, and there is little semblance to an outsider of social order (see Chapters 3, 4, 8 and 9). Whether dealing with research tasks or personal frustrations, researchers need to develop social and psychological coping strategies – an area of preparation that is especially poorly dealt with for international researchers. It is in looking for such solutions that working in a research team or partnership is especially important. Soulsby (Chapter 3) and Illes and Rees (Chapter 4) make a strong case for having research colleagues, whom you trust and with whom you can have both taskrelated and socio-emotional discussions. However, as Alt and Lang (Chapter 7) make clear, working in research teams – especially those that are culturally mixed – can also have dysfunctional consequences. In summary, the role of the field researcher is complex in itself, but in its relationship to a transformation setting, can turn into a very


negative experience with direct implications for the research process and the quality of outcomes. While the authors in this book do not underestimate the obstacles, they also demonstrate how the researcher as bricoleur can use available resources – including her/his own identity – to get the job done.

Respondents as active members of the field One of the biggest mistakes that a field researcher can make is to think that s/he has – or can get – control over the research setting. It is one of the myths of positivist methodologies that the social or organisational world behaves like a mechanistic view of the natural world, and the first thing a researcher entering the field learns is that it is full of surprises. Where the context is a transforming society, this is even more so. As a result, it is essential to realise that the field setting is a negotiated order, where respondents (and other third party actors) have power that comes from being permanent insiders. As mentioned above, respondents can play a crucial role in helping researchers gain insider status, or at least in allowing access to their networks as a means of facilitating access. Similarly, most authors point out the role of respondents as internal informants, who are able to keep the outsider in the know, make introductions and arrange interviews. These respondents can play an important informal mediating role, even becoming part of the access strategy (Hutchings; Nojonen), though Soulsby (Chapter 3) reminds us that, as organisational members, they can have hidden political interests in taking care of researchers. Hutchings (Chapter 8) distinguishes between three types of expatriate respondent and demonstrates the direct influence that each type has on the quality of the research process. She also shows how these types interacted differently with her as a researcher, and this respondent-researcher relationship was another notable factor in understanding the research process and its outcomes. Underlying this discussion is the clear reminder to us as field researchers that respondents are active participants in the field (see Lorentzen, in Chapter 5), and that the field has an internal social structure, of which, as outsiders, we are unaware. Soulsby, in Chapter 3, demonstrates what, with some reflection, is obvious – that respondents in the research setting are participants in an ongoing social and political process. Far from being putty in our hands, they can use us as social resources in their own organisational games.


Third party actors in the research field The final set of roles that we can infer from the accounts related in the chapters is loosely called ‘third parties’. This is perhaps the most shadowy and least well understood set of roles, but refer to those people who play a role in the research, but are neither researchers nor respondents. Thus, they are usually external to the research setting being studied (e.g. not a member of the organisation), but internal to the transforming society itself. Soulsby (Chapter 3) thus identifies translators, or interpreters, and external informants as significant examples. In practice, an interpreter can also be a fellow researcher (see Illes and Rees, Chapter 4, for example), or external informants may also play an insider role, but this simply underscores the interconnectedness of the social roles that appear in Figure 1.1. The interpreter is itself a variable role in field research, being at one pole a ‘mere’ translator of language while at the other performing the role of a significant cultural guide and decoder of symbols. Although not having the same political stake in the research setting as an internal informant, over-dependence on interpreters can lead the field researcher to losing control over collecting materials. External informants are often the first contacts that a researcher has with the context, and can act as connections to key networks and facilitate access (see Soulsby, Hutchings and Nojonen chapters). Figure 1.1 summarises these observations and arguments, and offers the reader a simple map to which to turn in order to make sense of the rich and complex stories told in the remainder of the book. The diagram conceptualises fieldwork as contextualised and socially structured, in which research is a complex social process involving actors with varying degrees of proximity to the researcher and the setting. The quality of the research process (design, preparation, access, materials collection and interpretation) and research outcomes (nature of materials/data, findings, reports, knowledge) are affected in many direct and subtle ways by these field relationships and by the personal and social experiences that researchers have as a consequence of them.

Introducing the authors and their contributions The chapters that follow elaborate the ideas and themes touched upon in this introductory piece. It is our pleasure as editors to introduce the authors and their contributions to this volume. The authors are a group of international scholars from Central and Eastern Europe, Western Europe, and Australia. Their disciplinary backgrounds vary


across organisation studies, international management, human resources management, sociology and sinology, but they all share a strong interest in qualitative methodology. Contributors include wellknown authorities in transitional research, as well as representatives of the younger generation of researchers who are at the forefront of recent developments in the field. Each author has conducted fieldwork (e.g. observation, interviewing or ethnography) in the socially difficult conditions of a ‘transforming society’ from Central and Eastern Europe and China. It has been our privilege as editors to follow and contribute to the process of shaping the single chapters and orchestrating them so that they ‘play’ together. We highly appreciate, but, given the experiences they describe in their chapters, are not surprised by the authors’ hard work and tenacity in improving their manuscripts, culminating in this volume. The book starts proper in Chapter 2. In ‘The Qualitative Researcher in Central and Eastern Europe’, Thomas Steger develops the argument that the researcher’s identity and behaviour are crucial influences in qualitative research, but especially so in the transforming societies of post-socialist Europe. As the complexity of the research setting increases, he continues, more attention needs to be dedicated to the researcher’s self-reflexivity. Steger proposes a typology of different membership roles, which helps to unravel the different ways in which the researcher relates to, or becomes a member of, the research setting. He distinguishes between four role types on the basis of two dimensions – time orientation of the research project and intended level of involvement in the research site – and discusses the implications of these role types for the strategy adopted by the researcher. This chapter ends by offering some concrete guidelines for developing the first, often critical, phase of a research project. Anna Soulsby’s chapter is entitled ‘Who is Observing Whom? Fieldwork Roles and Ambiguities in Organisational Case Study Research’. As the title indicates, this chapter considers the significance of relationships between the researcher and other key actors, who are part of the social process of constructing case study materials. She draws on examples from her fieldwork in the Czech Republic to illustrate some important methodological issues that often go unexplored in the conventional methodological literature. These issues, she argues, can take on an extreme form in post-communist societies, because of the particular degree and nature of change. This chapter considers in some depth the often under-appreciated role of informants and respondents in the man-


agement of the research project after gaining access, including their attempts to exert control over the research project and its outcomes. Soulsby shows that informants and respondents are not passive subjects waiting to reveal their information and insights, but active interpreters of the situation, with their own political agendas and concerns that may well be invisible to the researcher from the outside. The author identifies a particular role set of actors who, as participants, make different contributions: the external gatekeeper, the interpreter as external cultural informant and the internal cultural informant and other internal respondents. In this sense, the organisational setting has its own social structure, populated and enacted by the motivated human agents, with whom the researcher must engage creatively and subjectively in order to gather her/his research materials. Katalin Illes and Bronwen Rees’ chapter, ‘Uncovering the Communist and Capitalist Shadow: Developing Relational Forms of Inquiry and Writing’, is motivated by a number of difficulties experienced by the two authors, both individually and jointly. Coming from different cultural backgrounds and disciplines, they both found the positivist conventions of management research methodology problematic. They argue that these conventions encourage levels of abstraction, which tend to deny the relevance of personal experience to social science understanding, and have become institutionalised within the structures of domination that control the organisation and practices of management studies. In studying transition processes in Hungary and the impact of Western managerial knowledge on Hungarian managers, Illes and Rees draw on psychological and social theories to propose and alternative evaluation of the role of experience and relationship in unravelling transformation processes. The two authors tell with unusual frankness the story of their personal friendship and reflect upon how the way they explored their own relationship – and thereby each other’s cultures – opened up rich insights into and links between Hungarian and British cultural environments. Moreover, their engagement in fieldwork in Hungary induced a high level of uncertainty and even fears, which they experienced differently, but were able to confront through the strength of their personal and professional relationship. Anne Lorentzen’s chapter, ‘Constructing Knowledge of Enterprise Level Innovation in Central and Eastern Europe’, is a plea for the use of greater flexibility, exploration and intuition in the study of radically transforming contexts. Her interest in processes of innovation in former socialist countries leads her to review the existing literature,


which is revealed as lacking an understanding of local contexts and practices. Her argument adds further levels of criticism to the use of detached positivistic methodology to this context, which, in her view, leads to a systematic underestimation of the processes and outcomes of innovation in post-socialist organisations. Lorentzen argues that it is not sufficient to employ Western concepts and theories directly and apply Western measures uncritically, because innovation has local meanings that need investigating and understanding. She advocates theory construction through the use of ‘exploratory’ methods and qualitative research, because this is the only approach that allows the full empirical possibilities of the transformation context to emerge – rather than being artificially limited by imposed categories imported from Western science. Károly Balaton picks up the theme of the relationships between the researcher and the researched in his chapter, ‘Researching Organisations in Hungary: Practical Experience and Methodological Reflections’. He draws lessons from conducting research projects in Hungary before the start of the transformation in the late 1980s and takes these as a basis for understanding organisational research problems in a transformation context. Balaton further emphasises, from a researcher’s point of view, some of the challenges in studying foreignowned companies in Hungary. He shares his experiences in doing both quantitative and qualitative studies and, like some others in this collection, advocates a strategy of triangulation that combines the Verstehen benefits of qualitative fieldwork with the ability to generalise statistically from quantitative surveys. In ‘Transformation Research in East Germany: Institutions, Knowledge and Power’, Ramona Alt and Rainhart Lang examine the ways in which the production of knowledge about the East German transformation has been influenced by the re-shaping of the institutions of science and scientific knowledge following German reunification. This chapter explores the structural and political contextualisation of scientific knowledge by looking at the impact of institutional rules, power and control on research processes and outcomes. Alt and Lang discuss how Western scholars and researchers have exercised dominance over the emergent body of transformation knowledge through their control of research means, research groups, and research dissemination channels. Drawing on institutional and structural analysis, the chapter looks specifically at the operation of mixed East-West German research groups, which were set up through the application of selection practices and rules based on values, norms, procedures, and local


discourses dominated by West German institutions. They analyse the resultant tensions and conflicts in such research teams in terms of power and domination dynamics. Their analytical framework offers opportunities for application in a more general context, but, for transformation studies, it encourages greater awareness of the influence of less visible structural factors on the production of scientific knowledge. The authors go one step further to propose rules and techniques for putting together and operating mixed groups of researchers – insiders and outsiders, strangers and indigenous researchers, Easterners and Westerners. They suggest that it is possible to get the benefits of mixed groups while avoiding the partial ‘blindness’, mistakes, and misinterpretations, which have, in their view, resulted from structures of domination in the German transformation process. Kate Hutchings’s chapter ‘Behind the Bamboo Curtain: Problems and Pitfalls in Doing Research in China’ is another powerful illustration of the advantages of utilising unconventional techniques to overcome some of the obstacles to conducting fieldwork in China. From her experiences of studying Australian expatriates in China, she explores the relationship between the researcher and the field participants by examining three key themes. First, she argues that her respondents vary systematically in their work and social orientations, making it necessary to adjust research style and conduct. Each respondent type had implications for both the process of fieldwork and its outcomes. Second, she examines the importance of the researcher achieving insider status in the respondent group and shares her experiences of working in a team with an insider and learning to utilise personal connections to improve her own insider status. In turn, this has led her to sources of information and data, which would otherwise have remained inaccessible to her. The third theme relates to the issue of gender in the process of generating field data. Specifically, Hutchings reflects upon how different expatriate types responded to her as a female researcher, and derives from this some potential problems for female researchers while collecting data in non-interview settings. In the final chapter, ‘Fieldwork in a Low-Trust (Post)Communist Society’, Matti Nojonen discusses the challenges involved in conducting non-authorised fieldwork in Chinese organisations and illustrates how his fieldwork was affected by China’s regulatory framework, lowtrust climate and lack of tradition in politically free sociology. He argues that these dramatically different circumstances require that the field researcher create, refine and use subtle arts and techniques, and he explores learning by doing, learning from mistakes, using intuition


and self-criticism. Nojonen particularly analyses interview situations and the ‘life cycle’ of the interview through different stages. He emphasises the importance of the interplay of various researcher roles and tactics during these stages and describes the creative techniques he developed in interviewing Chinese respondents. As the most ethnographic of the book’s contributors, Nojonen highlights the value of being able to socialise with field participants in informal settings. He shares with the reader how he was able to open up his respondents while collecting his data in this often hostile context. Through these chapters, our contributing authors share their personal experiences of research in transforming societies, while at the same time offering substantial insights into problems treated by conventional methodology books. We hope that doctoral students and junior researchers in particular will take hope and inspiration from the clever and creative approaches adopted by these scholars as they have adjusted to the difficulties and complexities of operating as researchers and surviving as individuals in strange and challenging contexts. We also believe strongly that international practitioners from the world of business, management and consultancy will find in the writing important messages that can point them towards better strategies of information collection and communication, as well as personal adjustment on their own international assignments.

2 Identities, Roles and Qualitative Research in Central and Eastern Europe Thomas Steger

In my early research into changes in corporate culture in East German manufacturing enterprises, several questions about the role and impact of researcher identity continued to concern me. How should I get closer to people in the research setting? As a Swiss German and hence easily identifiable as a ‘stranger’ in the enterprise and in the region, how should I behave and present myself? In my behaviour qua researcher, how should I compensate for my deficiencies in never having personally experienced everyday life in a socialist society? At the centre of this chapter is the argument that the researcher’s identity and behaviour are crucial in any qualitative research, but especially in transforming societies, such as those in post-socialist Central and Eastern Europe (CEE). Qualitative fieldwork has been widely debated during the last few decades, both in general (e.g. Denzin and Lincoln, 1994; Van Maanen, 1979) and with special reference to the researcher’s position (e.g. Adler and Adler, 1987; Geertz, 1979; Hughes, 1971). However, the special problems associated with fieldwork in transforming societies have remained underdeveloped and have attracted little methodological reflection. This is especially true with respect to the researcher and his/her relationship to the particularities of a CEE research setting. In this chapter, I draw on critical personal reflections of my own research experiences in CEE to help to fill this methodological gap. The focus is on those questions and problems that arise before the start or during the first steps of a research project. To understand the nature of the knowledge constructed, it is crucially important to reflect upon and evaluate the researcher-as-self. As the researcher holds a key position in the research process, what he/she does must be carefully examined and understood. This chapter explores some of the implications of this 19


observation. My argument is that, as the complexity of the research setting increases, more attention must be dedicated to how we introduce and progress our research work and especially to how we behave and develop as researchers. In the end, this means that we must reflect upon ourselves as researchers. It is obvious that the situation of researchers in CEE is not exactly the same as the situation of business practitioners, although there are considerable similarities, especially with regard to the topic discussed here. So, any practitioners among our readers are invited to reflect upon the diverse points mentioned and may find some helpful insights and advice for their work as well. After a short discussion about the nature of research work in CEE and the particularities of the transformational research setting (section 1), I address some basic problems of doing research in CEE (2). I then propose and elaborate a typology of membership roles, which helps to unravel the different ways in which the researcher relates to, or becomes a member of, the research setting (3). Before drawing some conclusions, I offer some concrete advice for developing the first phase of a research project (4). Throughout the chapter, I offer anecdotes from my research to illustrate the argument.

Qualitative research in CEE: what’s so special about this field? By asking this basic question about qualitative fieldwork in CEE, we face a classic dilemma. On the one hand, CEE constitutes a highly complex framework, a veritable ‘minefield’ (Holden, 1998) for any qualitative researcher. In the CEE countries, it is often difficult to know the right subject to study and the real problems to focus on. Foreigners from Western countries in particular have to deal with different languages and alien mentalities, based on a complex history (much longer than the 40 years of communism), which is not easily deciphered and understood. Moreover, the legacy of the traditional antagonism between socialist and liberal market systems makes knowledge transfers of any kind very difficult (Lang and Steger, 2002). All in all, any doubts about starting this kind of work seem to be well founded. On the other hand, despite these difficulties, it is clear that, without qualitative fieldwork, attempts to describe and understand the social and economic reality of CEE would lack richness and detail. Surveys alone, especially when directed by researchers from outside the country, tend to deliver rather narrow-minded views (e.g. Welsh et al., 1993) and ‘native’ stories from indigenous authors seldom overcome

Thomas Steger 21

In the framework of an European Union (EU) project aimed at improving educational structures in CEE in the early 90s, I visited a prominent Russian university. During our discussions, my (German) colleague and I were regularly surprised by our Russian partners’ reactions. They seemed to be quite antagonistic towards the Western Masters programme to be introduced and kept emphasising the high quality of their education and the high reputation of their institution. After some reflection, we realised that nobody in our project had ever considered whether our Russian partners would be eager to introduce Western educational structures. In fact, this was not the case and, during our next meetings, we became aware that these Western ideas would impact heavily on their sense of confidence and national pride. So, in the end we had to abandon our ‘great’ transfer plans.

the blind spots of reporting from within a culture (e.g. Lang, 1996). Since the time when academic ‘pioneers’ of all countries poured into the region seems to be over now, CEE is a fairly promising setting for ambitious and serious researchers with well prepared research concepts in hand (Lang et al., 1998). In sum, high quality qualitative fieldwork in CEE is urgently needed, despite all the problems and pitfalls discussed in this book. Against this background, we have to ask how rather than whether research work can be done. In this regard, I would mention four particular points.

Transformation situation The transformation process, which has been taking place in the former socialist countries in CEE, must be considered a unique context for any research in this region, creating processes that are poorly understood and less well theorised. It has affected all aspects of life and can by no means yet be perceived as finished (Steger, 2000). So, whatever researchers may observe in CEE countries, they are at the very least well advised to reflect on how the transformation process impinges on their research.

Ideological heritage The forty years (or seventy in the case of Russia) of division between East and West meant that there existed at first a sharp ideological separation. East-West competition was an everyday fact on both sides during the years of the cold war, be it in weapon development, industrial production, sports or academic research (see Alt and Lang chapter in this book). Today the legacy of this ideological power play continues to resonate in the form of stereotypes and commonplace views of each


other (e.g. ‘capitalists are blood-suckers’, ‘communists never learned to work hard’ – cf. Kuznetsov and Kuznetsova, 1998). Especially when unilateral superiority was claimed for one side, these conflicts could easily be re-activated (Alt, 1996; Holden et al., 1998).

For our research project about the elites in the former German Democratic Republic (GDR) industrial combines, we tried to find one interviewee from each combine. Already when contacting them by phone, some reacted angrily e.g. ‘I received your letter and I perceive our communication as finished. Good bye!’ Contemporary newspaper articles had been enough to convince them that we had only negative images of the GDR. So, we had to proceed with great care to explain that our objectives were only academic and that we would be very interested to learn about their views and interpretations of the past.

Methodological background The way in which science and research are perceived and treated varies widely between East and West – not least because of different academic traditions (Illes and Rees, 2001). This is true with respect to not only research colleagues but also respondents and interviewees (see Hutchings chapter in this book) in organisations who have grown up and graduated from within these different traditions. ‘Soft’ qualitative tools and methods may provoke suspicion or misunderstandings because of the harder positivist traditions that framed normal social science in former socialist countries. Here again, feelings of or claims to superiority often worsen the situation.

Education system Even when taking into account the massive economic developments in CEE countries in recent years, the economic state of the education system in general and of universities in particular is still highly precarious (Holden et al., 1998). This becomes obvious when, for example, a CEE research partner has to withdraw from research activities in favour of other administrative or political tasks for his/her faculty or university. The financial situation of most CEE universities is critical. Without money from foundation grants, research is often impossible. Moreover, past experience of practitioners with academic research and the image they hold of the education system provide further obstacles (Michailova, 1997) e.g. in Russia, it is not rare to have to pay respondents for interviews.

Thomas Steger 23

Stories of faith and truth: basic problems of qualitative fieldwork in CEE Qualitative methodologists have long debated whether and how far researchers should be ‘informed’, ‘preconditioned’ or even ‘biased’ in their relationship with their subjects (Denzin, 1983; Glaser and Strauss, 1967; Guba and Lincoln, 1994). There is no doubt that the idea of ‘the researcher as a blank sheet’ is an illusion and only makes sense in the mindset of a quantitative, positivist methodology (Strauss and Corbin, 1990). However, there is a wide spectrum of possible alternatives, each of which raises a broad range of fundamental, often ethical, issues – relevant for both researchers and practitioners.

The problem of truth Qualitative research in general rejects the existence of some ‘absolute truth’ (Guba and Lincoln, 1994), ‘out there’ waiting to be discovered. Where research involves the kind of knowledge transfer mentioned above, this is especially important in the CEE context. With their experiences of the former socialist system in mind, people in CEE may react with suspicion on the interpersonal level against new Western ‘prophets’ (Tóth, 1996). The person who is deemed to hold the ‘truth’, or who is ‘truer’ than the other, is often assumed to be in a powerful position, and this attitude can hinder the raising of important questions and the gaining of new insights of a complex topic (Kleinman and Copp, 1993). As the qualitative researcher’s main aim is to get interesting data by reconstructing the ‘native’s point of view’ (Malinowski, 1922: 25), he/she must accept the existence of different worldviews and constructions of reality (Bartunek, 1994; Filstead, 1970; see Illes and Rees chapter in this book). This is so even within the same group or organisation, such as between managers and employees (Heintz, 2002).

In one of the companies I have observed, the CEO told me that I would surely find out that his employees’ main problem was their low wage levels. However, in my shop floor interviews, it turned out that the employees had a much broader understanding of compensation. They criticised the CEO’s poor recognition of their work efforts or complained about the cut of longservice bonuses (as the symbolic recognition of their commitment with the company). Had I accepted the CEO’s perspective, I might never have found that the real picture was far more complex.


Therefore, the researcher needs to refrain from practices like commenting, evaluating and consulting; or at least keep them in the background (Schwartzman, 1993). A second important aspect of truth is connected with interpretive work. Outsiders in a strange research setting often risk mistaking appearance for reality and story-telling for real action (Alt, 1996; see Soulsby chapter in this book). A good interpretive researcher knows his/her boundaries and carefully handles the data with which he/she works.

The problem of value Each researcher in an intercultural framework will sooner or later be confronted with questions about values. The larger the distance between home and host culture, the more ‘bizarre’ practices and customs in the field often seem. But, parallel to what has been said about ‘absolute truth’, there is no general ‘value standard’ in qualitative research. Knowledge about the social context, including awareness of background expectancies (Garfinkel, 1967), as well as respect for other social groups and their norms and values, are prerequisites for good qualitative research. Such an attitude minimises the chances of researchers uncritically imposing external value judgements on the research setting (Turner, 1982) and helps to keep focus on delivering thick descriptions (Geertz, 1973) instead of leaping to explanations and conclusions. I was faced with such a narrow-minded attitude when applying for a research grant to observe corporate governance in different CEE countries, among which was Albania. Reviewers asked me ‘How and where do you want to research this topic in Albania?’ and asserted that ‘In fact, there is no corporate governance in Albania…’

Words and ideas that seem to be similar in dictionary terms are often connected and understood in different ways in different settings. Moreover, it sometimes turns out that concrete local practices are better suited to the specific conditions of the CEE context than any global ‘best practices’ (Hocevar et al., 1999; Lungwitz and Preusche, 2000). Thus the lack of ‘corporate governance’ in a Western sense does not mean an absence of corporate governance in the local conditions.

The problem of expectations Even as a stranger in the field, the researcher always holds some assumptions about it, such as ‘East German managers’ attitudes are

Thomas Steger 25

deeply rooted in the socialist value system of the former GDR’. These assumptions are not necessarily a problem if they have been made visible at the start (Strauss and Corbin, 1990; see also Alt and Lang chapter in this book). Making assumptions explicit can further help the researcher to reflect upon and control his/her own attitude and behaviour during the research process and reduce the probability of introducing bias into the results (Michailova, 1997; Steger, 2000). Before starting my interviews in a project about cultural change, I wrote a short note about my personal expectations of the research site e.g. about the existence of conflicts between certain groups, such as white collar versus blue collar workers, or the impact of the transformation process on daily situations in the firm. When analysing the data several months later, I checked this note again to make sure that my interpretations were not just affirmations of my prior expectations.

Nevertheless, clearly negative assumptions about the research site and especially stereotypes about the subjects in the field (e.g. ‘as a result of their socialist heritage, Russian managers can neither show initiative nor act innovatively!’) can make it difficult to establish a fruitful communication process and should be questioned and discussed before the start (Kuznetsov and Kuznetsova, 1998). Here again, the principle of qualitative research should be remembered – concentrate on developing instead of testing theoretical propositions (Glaser and Strauss, 1967; Henwood and Pidgeon, 1992).

The problem of influence The relationship between the researcher and the research setting is central to qualitative methodology (Girtler, 1992; Honer, 1993). Controlling the research site is not a feature of qualitative research and is anyway nearly impossible within a highly complex and unstable transforming context. Moreover, in preparing for fieldwork, the researcher ought to be aware of and think in advance about potential influences of the field on the researcher as well as vice versa. Both can heavily affect research outcomes. In the end, ‘all human knowledge is fundamentally influenced by the subjective character of the human being who collects and interprets it’ (Adler and Adler, 1987: 31; cf. Feyerabend, 1972).

The problem of development Research sites are seldom stable over time, but in the radically transforming CEE context, researchers are often shocked by the degree of


change when they return to the research site after some time away. Organisations may have downsized, restructured, or even ceased to exist (Steger, 2000). Research concepts therefore have to be as adaptable and flexible as the researcher himself/herself. In fact, it is exactly these kinds of ‘event’ that makes research in this field so fascinating (Puffer et al., 2000). Moreover, and as a logical consequence of what was said in the previous point, the researcher also undergoes several changes during the research process (Junker, 1960; Michailova, 1997), with respect not only to the roles he/she takes but also to his/her attitudes and perspectives on the research setting (see Soulsby chapter in this book). This last point leads us directly back to the central question about the role and position of the researcher in the research site.

Presenting oneself in the field: qualitative researcher roles The role triangle Of special interest to our topic are the roles that the qualitative researcher can (or should) take in the field. Researchers are not stage actors and should not try to become like them. Theatre actors behave as if they were in reality, but researchers are part of their studied reality. The area of conflict they are faced with can be described with the help of a role triangle (see Figure 2.1). The first pole is the researcher’s self-identity as a ‘normal human being’. The second is the emotional labour he/she has to perform in the research setting, caused by cultural norms or structural/professional pressures e.g. to suppress his/her real feelings of anger, stress or happiness (Hochschild, 1983; Morris and Feldman, 1996). The third pole is real acting that takes place when the researcher tries to perform as somebody else, such as during participant observation (Wallraff, 1986). Some important points have to be mentioned here. First, since the researcher is continuously moving between the poles while working in the research setting, it is not easy at any one moment to identify his/her current position in the role triangle. Second, one should not consider this triangle as static, but as a highly dynamic process. The emotional labour expended or the acting undertaken depends on the current interaction situation, and even the researcher’s self-identity may develop over time. Third, the researcher is well advised to reflect regularly upon his/her position in the triangle, since continuous inconsistency between his/her feelings, thoughts, accounts and behaviour

Thomas Steger 27

Self-identity

Emotional labour Figure 2.1

Acting as someone else

The role triangle

can endanger the whole research project. Fourth, researchers should consider how the people in the research setting perceive them and how respondents react to different kinds of account and behaviour.

Types of qualitative researcher role After these general introductory remarks, I distinguish between four ‘ideal types’ (Weber, 1920) of role, or relationship between the researcher and the field setting. I differentiate between two dimensions – the time orientation of the research project and intended level of involvement in the research site (see Figure 2.2). Each type has different implications for research strategy.

The hunter-gatherer If the researcher neither adopts a long time perspective nor can adapt closely to the research site, we can speak of the hunter-gatherer approach. In this role, the researcher tries to get as much information as possible in a short period of time. This approach requires much care in a number of respects. First, a researcher who does not have any kind of organisational insider membership status must behave tactfully within the research site, since offending people (e.g. by breaking unknown rules) can quickly lead to exclusion. Second, the researcher is well advised to be cautious when


Long-term

Ethnographer

Time-orientation

Gulliver

Huntergatherer

Roman

Short-term Low Figure 2.2

Level of involvement

High

Typology of qualitative researcher roles

Before starting my first interview, I was fairly nervous about whether I would behave in the right way, ask the precise questions etc. In the end I just tried to present myself as an interested amateur in the field. Most of my respondents at that time appreciated that their task was ‘to tell this Swiss guy about what happened around here in GDR times and during the transformation process’. So, I was able to gather a large diversity of fascinating data – not in spite of but exactly because of my projected lack of expertise.

analysing the data afterwards, because superficial involvement may lead to misunderstanding and misinterpreting them. For a larger research project, this role is highly questionable, as several negative cases in the CEE context have demonstrated (e.g. Gunzenhauser, 1995; Neimanis, 1997; Welsh et al., 1993). The hunter-gatherer role most often stands at the beginning of a researcher’s career in the research setting. In time and with an increasing base of knowledge and experience of the field, he/she may manage

Thomas Steger 29

to proceed to a ‘higher’ role. Opting for higher involvement, he/she may proceed in the direction of the Roman type, while enlarging the time perspective shifts the role towards the Gulliver type. If both dimensions develop, which is not unusual since involvement and time perspective are somewhat interrelated, the role develops in the vertical direction (Figure 2.2) – though reaching ethnographer status is definitely not a realistic target.

The Roman ‘When in Rome, do as the Romans!’ is the underlying principle of this role type. Although (or because) the time perspective is not long enough to infiltrate the research site fully, during the research period, the researcher can try to adapt as much as possible to the organisational reality of the insiders he/she is studying. So, the researcher may even start as a Roman in the field – just like Tacitus on his trip to Germany. Usually, it is not a comprehensive adaptation, but it is more ‘learning by doing’. Meals can be important cultural events for the Roman style (compare Nojonen’s account in Chapter 9).

During my first stay in Romania, my partner took me to a traditional restaurant for lunch. He asked me what I’d like to drink – ‘Whisky or Vodka?’ – and invited me to taste the typical Romanian offal soup. Although I am really not used to drinking spirits (from water glasses!) at that time of the day and offal is not my favourite meat, I realised that my host would feel offended if I declined. It did not taste bad and my partner was happy about my good appetite – and generously tolerated my limited attention during the afternoon session. Since people in CEE countries take national pride in their traditions, partaking of them can be a significant step towards acceptance in the field, with benefits that last for years.

If such participation is done with honesty, rather than to ridicule ‘strange’ customs, such role-taking can lead to high levels of acceptance by native people, who may then more openly provide the researcher with interesting (and maybe even insider) information about habits or rules. On the other hand, the researcher in this role is well advised not to rely solely on being comfortably naïve, for the longer the exchange process lasts, the less likely the local respondents are to grant him/her the role of the quaint but uninformed stranger. The Roman, in fact, has a short-term orientation, but if the researcher wants to continue


the research process, he/she can concentrate on grounding his/her knowledge with the intention to move in the direction of the ethnographer type. Or, if a long-term involvement seems inappropriate, e.g. because of cultural, societal or language barriers, he/she may better shift in the direction of the Gulliver type.

The Gulliver type The philosophy of the Gulliver role type is to accept the fact of being and remaining a stranger. In Jonathan Swift’s famous tale, Gulliver knew this perfectly well because extreme objective differences made membership impossible. Nevertheless, he managed to coexist well with the people from Lilliput, so that each party could profit from the other. Good examples of this researcher role are provided by researchers who have studied minority groups – even extreme minorities (e.g. Jahoda et al., 1975; Whyte, 1955) – where full membership is virtually impossible. In this kind of research, it can be dangerous to try to adapt more closely, because insiders could perceive it as ‘invasion’. Nevertheless, researchers performing this role in a friendly manner most probably find a certain level of openness from respondents. A good opportunity to overcome this strangeness barrier without invading the community in the research setting is to make use of tools for in-depth analysis.

I experienced such a situation when I tried to interpret an interview with a former leading executive of a large East German company. Since his responses seemed to me to be rather strange and emotional, I felt that it was not appropriate to meet him again. Instead I decided to use metaphor analysis (see Steger, 2001) to understand the deeper meaning of this interview and found a quite convincing explanation. Some time later I met, by chance, a friend and former colleague of that interviewee and asked him to comment on my interpretation. Although the content was fairly critical towards his friend’s attitude and behaviour, he broadly agreed with my interpretation.

In fact, this kind of tool is fairly typical for the Gulliver role, as the researcher can get a lot of intimate data, but these are often difficult to decipher – exactly because of the enduring stranger status of the researcher. This also often prevents the researcher from a considerable shift towards the ethnographer type, while other moves seem less promising e.g. a shift in direction of the Roman type would include a limitation of the time perspective.

Thomas Steger 31

The ethnographer The ethnographic role constitutes the highest level of the art of qualitative research, but is also the most ambitious and complicated, since the researcher tries to become a full member of the research site, of the ‘tribe’ that he/she is observing. Obviously, this is only possible with an advanced, long-term and deep relationship with the people observed and includes learning the language, and assimilating local customs, attitudes and even values. Ethnographers have provided some fascinating examples of this research approach (Geertz, 1973; Malinowski, 1922; Van Maanen, 1982), which is also reflected in such films as ‘A Man Called Horse’. It allows the researcher to gain access to deep and hidden information and reveals some real insights. In the end the researcher may manage to become ‘multicultural’ after having crossed and recrossed cultural boundaries ‘in order to occupy a position of real understanding beyond those boundaries’ (Shanahan, 1996: 318). Some time after having finished our research project about the elites of former GDR combines, I discussed the matter with two personal friends. Originating from East Germany, they both had a fairly distinctive view on this topic based on their own rich experiences. So, we had a very lively debate about it. As my friends offered different opinions, I tried to mediate between them and, to my own surprise, was quite successful. Both friends acknowledged: ‘You seem to have understood a lot of what happened!’ Far from being a real native, I realised through this reflective discussion that I had managed to gain a certain level of closeness to this (formerly strange) culture surrounding me.

However, on the other hand, the researcher may also risk exchanging the blind spot of his/her traditional culture with that of the research site – in ‘going native’. Since this role type can be considered to be the ‘highest’ level of qualitative research practice, moves to other role types hold little scope for improvement. But each research project comes to an end one day, and the ‘way back’ will definitely be most complicated for the ethnographer, who must try to re-adapt to his/her old culture (similar to an expatriate manager). So, he/she must prepare for repatriation carefully and maybe even to rely on the help of a mentor or supervisor. The four role types are compared and contrasted in Table 2.1. Several points may be highlighted. First, each role type has its particular strengths and weaknesses, threats and opportunities, so no one role is generally superior to the others. Second, the roles described above are ideal types and the ‘real’ role that any researcher takes is not

32

Table 2.1

Comparing the four role types Role

Attributes

Hunter-Gatherer

Roman

Gulliver

Ethnographer

Level of involvement

Low

High

Low

High

Time perspective

Short

Short

Long

Long

Examples

The beginner in the field

Tacitus in Germany

‘Street Corner Society’

‘A Man Called Horse’

Strengths

Low costs

Low cost, high acceptance

Close contacts, privileged position

Intimate contact, going native

Weaknesses

Lack of real contact

Superficiality, only for limited period

No real membership, time consuming

Time consuming, costly

Threats

Offending people, misinterpretations

Perceived as invader by natives

Re-adaptation to own culture

Possible role shifts (requirements)

Roman (will to stronger involvement), Gulliver (longer time perspective)

Offending people, action without knowledge Gulliver (longer time perspective), Ethnographer (longer time perspective, grounded knowledge)

Ethnographer (although often blocked)

–

Thomas Steger 33

fully congruent with one of them but rather stands between them. Figure 2.2 represents this reality by leaving five cells blank. Moreover, even role combinations are possible. Third, the possible shifts remind us that we should conceive of the researcher roles as dynamic. ‘Every active membership role has a natural history or career’ (Adler and Adler, 1987: 59). This development process is highly dependent on the time spent within the research setting – be it episodic or continuous – and, therefore, on the researcher’s growing knowledge of the topic in general and of the research site in particular (Michailova, 1997). Each effort, each experience of success or failure is a milestone on the researcher’s way and may even constitute a new specific position and role (see Nojonen chapter in this book). Fourth, it becomes clear that on the one hand the research project framework (e.g. financial resources, time horizon) and on the other hand the researcher’s personal attributes (e.g. grounded knowledge, adaptability) have a major impact on the role-taking. So, the researcher is well advised to consider carefully which role fits best with his/her aims and resources. Finally, a few words should be said about the specific situation of native researchers originating from the country or the region where the project takes place. They are, of course, advantaged in many respects, such as in their knowledge of the culture, the language and being gatekeepers of the research setting. However, there are also a few caveats (see also Illes and Rees chapter in this book). Based on their higher information level, they risk neglecting their own blind spots and taking a déjà vu mentality, which keeps them from asking critical questions and from being curious enough to probe for new data and phenomena. Sometimes they even overestimate their knowledge and position, since, in many specific research settings, they remain relative strangers despite their cultural and linguistic familiarity. Moreover, a particular kind of suspicion can arise in the setting, when, after years abroad, expatriates return to conduct research in their native country – similar to problems encountered by former monarchs aiming for a political career or business people starting up a firm.

Tactics for starting qualitative fieldwork in CEE Finally, on the tactical level, I make a few proposals, which may be of value to scholars who intend to do fieldwork in CEE. These suggestions have direct implications for international business practitioners starting an overseas posting.


Entry problem Entry into the research setting often turns out to be a problem that requires much patience and understanding. Access to a CEE (or other transitional) research site may be particularly difficult, especially for researchers coming from abroad. In these circumstances, mediators (e.g. local academic colleagues) can play an important role in finding the right contacts to be approached at the right moment (see Soulsby chapter in this book). Researchers need to show great sensitivity in a number of respects. First, care should be taken if considering entry at the top or middle level of the company. Taking into account the often large power distance in CEE countries (Kuznetsov and Kuznetsova, 1998; Lang, 1998), top management may feel offended by foreigners who have bypassed them in gaining access. Moreover, while personnel managers may be much more sensitive towards the researcher’s topic, top management might in the first place even feel bored (see Hutchings chapter in this book). In one of the companies I studied, my introduction letter was answered by the personnel manager. So, we closely co-operated during the process and I had several interviews with people from all levels and departments of the firm. Some time later, on the advice of the personnel manager, I wrote a personally addressed letter to the CEO asking him for an interview. He agreed but at the same time harshly criticised the personnel manager for not having informed him about the research project going on in his firm.

Second, managers in companies facing complicated or uncertain situations often consider external researchers to be useless or even disruptive. As a result, it is extremely important to find a topic of common interest. So, researchers may offer a ‘hard’ topic useful for the company to be analysed in the foreground (e.g. staff qualification profile), while at the same time observing the ‘soft’ topic in the background, like organisational culture (see Barabasz and Belz, 2002; Steger, 2000). Third, in order to achieve some level of confidence, the researcher must be willing to be fully transparent about his/her aims, ideas and plans (Schwartzman, 1993).

Language As one of the main vehicles of culture, language problems must not be underestimated, especially given the background of CEE countries. If

Thomas Steger 35

the researcher is not able to speak the national language, he/she can take advantage of different types of help. Working with a translator can produce a high level of dependency on this person and requires a lot of confidence. Moreover, this is unlikely to remove the language barriers effectively – particularly with regard to informal communication and tacit knowledge transfer (Macdonald and Williams, 1992; Marschan-Piekkari et al., 1999; see also Hutchings chapter in this book). Just relying on interviewees with sufficient knowledge of English (or German) restricts severely the number of potential contact persons to those who tend to be younger, well educated and higher managerial. It is more promising to find some native academic colleagues in the respective countries, although this kind of cross-cultural co-operation is not free of conflict either (Marschan et al., 1997; see Alt and Lang chapter in this book). In a common research project with some Hungarian colleagues, I definitely relied on their language skills in their home country. However, a few months after the beginning, I realised that it was in fact a research assistant who had been doing the whole job on their side, while the professors were just involved as ‘benevolent supervisors’. This raised important questions. Might I have given the wrong impression in the past that I was only interested in their language skills? Were they really interested in common research or did they just feel obliged out of friendship?

In general, researchers should take care to involve the respondents in evaluating interpretations (Bartunek, 1994) and to adopt practices of reflexivity to understand the context and derivation of an interpretation (Geertz, 1973) and thus to validate findings (but see Balaton’s observations in Chapter 6).

Cross-cultural research team Probably the best guarantee of gaining close insights into the reality of CEE is to form a cross-cultural research team (Puffer et al., 2000; Schreiber et al., 2002; see also Alt and Lang in Chapter 7). This not only provides a broad range of opportunities for utilising native researchers’ knowledge and networks, but it also opens up fascinating new perspectives on the research topic. However, this kind of cooperation can turn out to be highly ambitious and conflictful (as in many joint ventures), as a result of political problems and divergent (methodological) conceptions of research (Easterby-Smith and Malina, 1999).


In recent years, I have participated in several multinational research bids, which included partners from CEE. Because of the sharp differences in our financial situations, in several cases I suspected that they considered me first of all as an excellent money provider. At the moment when our application was rejected, the partners’ interest in the topic quickly disappeared. Some of them even gave us some seemingly benevolent advice: ‘You should try to develop another application and try it once more…’ which increased my negative feelings. To prevent this kind of situation or misunderstanding, I decided to focus on research activities with low levels of funding (at the beginning) and no great financial promises to the partners. Their response, of course, was not so enthusiastic as before, but partners now may be more realistic and inherently interested.

It is worth repeating that co-operation with colleagues from CEE can easily degenerate into a dysfunctional teacher-pupil relationship (e.g. Eckhardstein et al., 1990), if the external researcher does not handle it with great sensitivity (Lang and Steger, 2002). Flexibility, creativity as well as the readiness for shared learning processes are indispensable to high quality co-operative research (Teagarden et al., 1995; see Balaton chapter). Moreover, special attention should be given to the (different) needs and targets that each partner associates with the research project.

Research and analysis tools The qualitative research literature provides us with a broad variety of research tools to choose from, but as in many other research settings, interviews are the most often used qualitative instrument in CEE. Although participant observation may in principle be helpful, people are often not used to, or are suspicious of being observed. This seems to be more often the case in former socialist enterprises than in West European organisations, so researchers need to be very flexible in both their conduct and their choice of method (see Nojonen’s chapter in this book). Moreover, with the high complexity of CEE research sites in mind, a broader variability of tools (Michailova, 1997), even combining qualitative and quantitative methods, may well enhance both the research process and data analysis (Schreiber et al., 2002; also Balaton in this book). The concept of triangulation (Denzin, 1970) is central here. Even new, alternative tools (e.g. use of media, language analysis) can be helpful, as long as they are carefully adapted to the situation. Finally, what has been said about reflexivity remains especially valid for the development of any research tool and concept.

Thomas Steger 37

The metaphor analysis already mentioned above is a typical example of this. In fact, it was pure chance. Since qualitative research generally encourages researchers to develop their own well-adapted tools, I was just curious about what use I could make of the work with metaphors in my data. At first, this required a lot of basic literature work. The first results were not exciting and I felt more like a pea counter. But then, I found my first metaphor that provided me – after considerable analysis – with interesting data.

Conclusions This chapter has focused on the specific ways in which the researcher’s identity and behaviour interact with the CEE research setting and, therefore, on the need for the researcher to consider carefully and reflect on how he/she behaves and presents himself/herself. In concluding, I rehearse the main points of my argument. The transformation process in CEE countries presents a research context that is highly complex and dynamic and must be considered profoundly before entering the field – it is best not to think of CEE as just any research setting. This chapter – and the rest of the book – underscores the importance of this point. The virtues of qualitative researchers as mentioned in the respective literature turn out to be decisive in the CEE context, namely openness, modesty, reflexivity and flexibility. They have regularly featured at different points in this chapter and they are perfect companions to the qualitative researcher in the research setting. There is not a ‘one-best-way’ when entering a research setting such as CEE and, therefore, my arguments do not claim universality. There are, in fact, several different research strategies associated with several different roles to be performed in this field. What I have rather argued is to care about consistency – of the role in itself and of the relationship between role and strategy – and about the adequacy of role and strategy for the concrete research setting. When reflecting on my research experience in transformational research settings of CEE over the last few years, of course, I have overcome many of the anxieties and problems that I encountered at the beginning. But, since then, I have confronted several other problems, which have often been even more complex. And of course, I did not do everything right and regularly failed in what I had intended to do. However, to stand up after having fallen down and to reflect about and to learn from my own mistakes have provided me with invaluable insights about how things work in the field. With increasing experience


in the field, my self-confidence in doing good research has also increased. As possibly the most important consequence of this, I would encourage the reader personally to gain access to the CEE research field and to develop his/her own experiences, which, in the end, are the fundamental and indispensable basis of our work.

Suggested further readings Adler, P.A. and Adler, P. (1987) Membership Roles in Field Research (Newbury Park, CA: Sage). Easterby-Smith, M. and Malina, D. (1999) ‘Cross-cultural collaborative research: toward reflexivity’, Academy of Management Journal, 42(1), 76–86. Geertz, C. (1979) ‘From the native’s point of view: On the nature of anthropological understanding’ in Rabinow, P. and Sullivan, W.M. (eds) Interpretive Social Science (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press), pp. 225–41. Lang, R. and Steger, T. (2002) ‘The odyssey of management knowledge to transforming societies: a critical review of a theoretical alternative’, Human Resource Development International, 5(3), 279–94. Strauss, A.L. and Corbin, J. (1990) Basics of Qualitative Research: Grounded Theory Procedures and Techniques (Newbury Park, CA: Sage).

3 Who is Observing Whom? Fieldwork Roles and Ambiguities in Organisational Case Study Research Anna Soulsby

Introduction This chapter considers the interactive relationships between the researcher and other key actors in qualitative fieldwork who are part of the social process of constructing case study materials. Although I have conducted field research in a number of post-communist societies, examples from fieldwork research conducted in the Czech Republic are used to illustrate some important methodological issues that often go unexplored in the conventional methodological literature. These issues can take on an extreme form in post-communist societies, because of the particular degree and nature of change. The aim of the chapter is to develop the awareness of the researcher within the bounds of a non-covert research strategy. In this context, the researcher is an outsider, as visible within an organisation as an elephant on the wall, and, therefore, is both observed and the subject of insider conjecture. It is clear from this perspective that informants and respondents are not passive ‘subjects’ waiting to reveal their information and insights, but active interpreters of the situation, who have their own political agendas and concerns that may well be invisible to the researcher from the outside. In short, the researcher enters an organisational setting that has its own social structure, populated and enacted by the motivated human agents, with whom the researcher must engage in order to gather her/his research materials. The ideas discussed in the chapter may also be of use to a manager entering a new organisational environment. Before becoming acculturated into an alien organisation, s/he also has to cultivate new contacts in order to make sense of the new social setting. The chapter starts by outlining some details about the research project that forms the experiential basis of the argument, and leads to 39


an examination of methodological issues that arise from the case study method, fieldwork and gaining access. I then consider the often underappreciated importance of fieldwork roles – such as informants and respondents – in the management of the research project after gaining access, including their attempts to control the research project. The chapter goes on to identify a particular role set of actors who make different contributions: the external gatekeeper, the interpreter as external cultural informant, the internal cultural informant and other internal respondents. The chapter concludes by considering some ethical issues that arise from the discussion.

The research project The background I first visited the then Czechoslovakia in 1991, two years before it was divided into the Czech and Slovak Republics, as part of a staff development programme for Czech academics at a technical university. These academics arranged visits to two local engineering companies, one of which was a new small company and the other an enormous stateowned enterprise. My colleague and I were fascinated by the challenges and problems that faced the managers of these organisations, as they tried to survive and change under conditions of radical societal transformation. Our colleagues drew on their networks of contacts to arrange more extensive research access to an enterprise and, in early 1992, we returned to Czechoslovakia to carry out fieldwork for two weeks in a large state-owned enterprise. From this initial research visit, we developed a unique longitudinal study of Czech organisations using a comparative method to examine the ‘processes of change in context’ (Pettigrew, 1990: 271). The focus of the project was to follow the changes in organisation structure and management practices since the Velvet Revolution in 1989 (Clark and Soulsby, 1996; 1999a; Soulsby and Clark, 1996a; 1996b). The fieldwork for the project has taken place in a city and three towns in Moravia – the eastern half of the Czech Republic – the last interviews taking place in September 2003. The following section gives some details about the enterprises.

The companies The actual research sites are five mechanical engineering companies, all former state-owned enterprises privatised in the 1990s. The first

Anna Soulsby 41

enterprise we visited, Vols (the names of the companies and their locations have been anonymised to preserve confidentiality), manufactures rolling mills and presses. Vols was the sole major employer in the small remote town of Volna. The communist party established the enterprise in early 1950s to provide much needed employment for the district. It had been an influential enterprise before the Revolution and consequently the town had benefited from major investment in social and welfare facilities (Clark and Soulsby, 1998; Soulsby and Clark, 1995). Before 1989, there had been over 5,000 employees directly working for the enterprise and by 2003, this number was down to 3,000. We returned to Czechoslovakia in the autumn of 1992 to conduct fieldwork in our second enterprise, Montázê Jesenice, which is located in the town of Jesenice. The organisation, established in 1953, has approximately 1,000 employees. It had been absorbed into another larger engineering enterprise, Jesenické Strojírny (see below) from 1958 until 1990, when it regained its independence as an enterprise before privatisation. Montázê Jesenice carried out the assembly, repair, and maintenance of heavy plant and machinery not only in countries of the former Soviet bloc but also in the Far East and Latin America. This meant that most of the workers were used to working away from home for long periods. We revisited Jesenice in 1993 to conduct research in our third enterprise, Jesenické Strojírny. The enterprise was formed in 1948 from the amalgamation of a number of engineering companies. It was one of the four major employers in the town of Jesenice. Before 1989, the enterprise had employed over 7,000 people and had been a prominent provider of social and welfare facilities for the town. In 1993, the company was restructured into a number of subsidiary companies (Clark and Soulsby, 1999b). These companies have not been successful and, by 2003, the holding company and all but two of the subsidiary companies were in liquidation. In 1994, we visited Agstroj for the first time. Unlike our other enterprises, it is located in the major city of Stromesto. Agstroj manufactures agricultural machinery and before 1989 was an important earner of hard currency for Czechoslovakia. It had a very good reputation for quality in both the East and the West and used to employ over 10,000 people before the Revolution. Although it was privatised in the 1990s, it had been operating at a loss and had to be subsidised by the Czech government. In 2003, despite the company being a shadow of its former self, Agstroj had managed to make a return to profit.


In May 2002, we had the chance to carry out fieldwork in a fifth enterprise, Autodil, which is located in the small town of Vysoky´. This came about because of contacts we made during fieldwork visits to the town in June and September 2001 (see below). Autodil, first established in 1946, had been privatised by a management buy-out in the mid1990s. It produces engine parts for the automotive industry and, at the time of our first visit, still had over 5,000 employees.

The research process In each case, the research process has started with two weeks of intensive fieldwork and continued through a programme of re-visits that occur at least every two years, in order to update our materials. The deliberate intention has been to develop a close relationship with members of the enterprises, so that we could build up rich, detailed organisational cases studies, trace the key events in the change process and try to understand the role and contribution of particular managers and directors (Soulsby and Clark 1998; Soulsby, 2001). We have interviewed over two hundred directors and managers, often reinterviewing them over the period of the research. In addition, we have collected extensive secondary materials in the form of organisation charts, company reports, photographs, and other organisational artefacts. Despite all our formal preparation, after our first enterprise visit in 1992, we became uncomfortably aware of the extent of our naïveté about the key events of Czech(oslovak) history, so we decided to collect local pre-1948, 1968 and 1989 maps and histories of the enterprises and their towns to give a wider contextual framework for our research. As the project has evolved over time, the collection of these secondary materials has become a very important element of our research, enabling us to develop deeper insight into the consequences of historical events for the respondents, the enterprises, and the local communities. Moreover, we wanted to understand more about the social and historical embeddedness of the enterprises within the local communities (Clark and Soulsby, 1998). This evolution in our approach was reflected in the research strategy we used during our time in Vysoky´, which, before the Second World War, had a large ethnically German population who had been forcibly cleared from the town. We visited Vysoky´ on three occasions from June 2001 to May 2002 for a total of six weeks. Our research project was designed to produce empirical materials about the economic restructuring of Vysoky´ and its region, in such a way as to complement

Anna Soulsby 43

our fieldwork in Volna and Jesenice. In June and September 2001, we interviewed local political, administrative, and industrial figures, took field notes, visited local companies, collected maps and local histories, and took extensive notes during visits to the local state archives and libraries. We studied the development of the town, the role of the Communist Party, identified key actors from before and after 1989, and examined the corporate histories of prominent state-owned enterprises and their local, national and international socio-economic roles.

Being a qualitative researcher in transforming contexts The attraction of conducting intensive case study research in transforming societies is that it offers the opportunity to study organisations in depth under conditions of societal transience: The detailed observations entailed in the case study method enable us to study many different aspects, examine them in relation to each other, view the process within its total environment and also utilise the researcher’s capacity for ‘Verstehen’. Consequently, case study research provides us with a greater opportunity than other available methods to obtain a holistic view of a specific research project (Valdelin, 1974: 47). The pace of change in these societies offers an exceptional and exciting challenge, even for the experienced fieldworker who wants to start a new research project. However, the experienced researcher is also aware that conducting research in the field always has its negative aspects. As Shaffir and Stebbins (1991: 1) note: Fieldwork must certainly rank with the more disagreeable activities that humanity has fashioned for itself. It is usually inconvenient, to say the least, sometimes physically uncomfortable, frequently embarrassing, and to a degree, always tense. For most researchers, these difficulties are exacerbated when conducting fieldwork in a transforming society, especially when they are cultural and societal outsiders. However, overcoming these personal challenges can be a curiously liberating experience too. Sometimes, when I reflect upon my own behaviour as a researcher, I flinch with embarrassment at my relentless determination to arrange interviews and pursue research themes (see below). Being away from one’s usual societal context seems


to give a form of self-confidence that acts as both a shield and a driver to behave in a way that one usually would not. An intense concentration is required to undertake the process of investigating a new organisation. Finding out about its history, gathering the information, interpreting the materials, developing themes and constructing the case studies are highly exhausting and stressful because ‘being in the field is never static’ (Lofland and Lofland, 1995: 46). Whenever starting a new case study project, we have tried to go into the field as well prepared as possible, but the research site is always full of surprises and the process never goes quite as we have planned. One has to be prepared to cope with the long periods of sitting around in foyers and offices waiting for people to telephone back or confirm the next set of interviews. Sometimes doing fieldwork in organisation seems to be very like working on a film set, boring and tense periods of inaction followed by brief periods of frantic activity. The uncertainty and the constant need to stay flexible and focused on seizing any opportunity that comes up can be very stressful. It can take its toll on both one’s self-confidence and confidence in the project itself. Doubts creep in as you begin to wonder if you will ever be able to get inside someone’s office and get a ‘real’ interview. As researchers, we quickly learned the importance of flexibility, always concealing our disappointments with a polite and cheerful smile and venting our frustrations in private later. Yin (1989: 75) notes that when it comes to case study fieldwork ‘because you do not know what to expect, the best preparation is to have the resources to be prepared’. One needs to take more than the technical resources such as equipment and materials. It is crucial to think in advance about psychological strategies to cope with the emotional highs and lows that come from living with unforeseen events and disappointments. These feelings are a natural consequence of the challenge of carrying out fieldwork in a new environment and developing a mental picture of what has happened and is happening. One has to be realistic and be prepared to accept that on some days things will go wrong. For example, respondents will suddenly have other matters to attend to in the organisation but, from the researcher’s perspective, the whole day is lost. For all of these reasons, there are definite advantages to working in a team with someone you can trust. One is not alone in an alien environment and it is possible to draw on emotional support to maintain a professional and calm front in the research setting. When working as a team, it is possible to talk through the ‘disasters’ of the day and, through de-briefing

Anna Soulsby 45

and the sharing of experiences, keep some emotional perspective on and distance from events, while looking for some positive aspects. One important strategy is to build in some periods of social ‘downtime’ within the research schedule, so one can ‘leave’ the project mentally and think about other things. Overwork is a route to stress as well as loss of scientific perspective, which will detrimentally affect the quality of the research, including the process of analysis and relationships with informants and respondents. The intensity of fieldwork is such that it is very easy to become over-absorbed in – or even obsessed with – the project. As Hammersley and Atkinson (1983: 102) argue: There can be no question of total commitment, ‘surrender’, or becoming. There must always remain some part held back, some social and intellectual ‘distance’. For it is in the ‘space’ created by this distance that the analytic work of the ethnographer gets done. Without that distance, without such analytic space, the ethnography can be little more than the autobiographical account…. There must be enough mental and emotional energy and space to be able to carry out not just the daily task of collecting materials but also the processes of analysing and writing the materials as they are generated in the field (see Kleinman and Copp, 1993: 20–22). However, despite all the stresses and strains discussed above, the adventure of immersion in a new research setting and the central processes of discovery and sense making are fascinating and intoxicating. As Pratt (1986: 32) notes: ‘Fieldwork produces a kind of authority that is anchored to large extent in subjective, sensuous experience…’. The feeling of excitement is vitally important as it allows the researcher to sustain the intense level of concentration needed to absorb new information, search for organisational clues and identify recurring themes in the field. When working in a context undergoing radical transformation and trying to come to terms with the associated environmental ambiguities, the researcher’s experiences and emotions are magnified in intensity so there is a feeling of somehow being ‘extra alive’.

Fieldwork roles in ambiguous research contexts Gaining physical and mental access Organising physical access is a basic condition for fieldwork research. Especially where change processes are the topic, this means not only


establishing initial access but also maintaining continued access to the research site (Gummerson, 2000: 32). In addition, one has to remember that as a researcher, you are the one that is intruding into the existing social world of the respondents and therefore you must have a flexible research schedule and availability (Yin, 1989). The researcher is often dependent on the goodwill of gatekeepers, who have the power to control access to the research site and may have their own views about the purpose and outcomes of the research (Whitley, 1984: 375). Clarifying these expectations can be a crucial part of the process of negotiating access (see Nojonen in this book). Moreover, these expectations may change over time if the gatekeepers try to draw the researcher into becoming more involved in the organisation (see Adler and Adler, 1987: 12–20). As a ‘stranger in a strange land’, or a manager on her/his first international assignment, the fieldworker in a transforming society is more dependent on the help of third party agents or gatekeepers than is usual (see also Steger in this book). Even with third party assistance, gaining access to an enterprise in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) can take a lot of determination, persistence and patient negotiation. Since there is still a residue of secrecy and suspicion about the motives of researchers, the challenges of operating in a post-socialist context are beyond those normally faced by business and management researchers (Alvesson and Deetz, 2000; Easterby-Smith et al., 1991). It can be difficult to persuade managers, many of who grew up or started their managerial careers in a police state, that research can be done from a disinterested perspective and that the results may have benefits for them. Moreover, because of the particular histories of these societies, respondents may have personal reasons for not wishing to divulge too much about their pasts, for example, their membership of Communist Party organs such as militias. Pollert (1999: 7) has argued that access has become increasingly difficult for Western researchers who want to conduct interviews with managers and workers in CEE countries, especially in the Czech Republic. Before 1989, the Communist Party had tightly controlled the society so there was little experience or tradition of Westerners doing fieldwork at an organisational level. The post-1989 environment and the largely completed privatisation programmes have made managers very defensive about letting outsiders into their companies, in case sensitive corporate or market information is revealed, or key employees poached. Even her Czech academic colleagues, who had good contacts before 1989, found that access was becoming more difficult. As many

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companies have realised that organisations such as the World Bank are prepared to pay for corporate information and interviews, the nature of their relationship with researchers has begun to alter (Pollert, 1999: 7). In the case of our research project, we were very fortunate because the third party agents were Czech academic colleagues, with whom we had taught. They had been friends of the company directors since their university days, so we were able to draw second-hand on the existing network of trust relationships, thereby overcoming many problems of access. The personal introduction from our colleagues virtually guaranteed initial access (see Hutchings in this book), a meeting with the General Director, or someone else at directorate level, and an opportunity to explain our research project. Obtaining such face-to-face contact was an essential part of the negotiation process in persuading the directors to let us in to do the research project. Politically, this was very important because other managers could see that we had senior management support for the research. The directors were our initial internal ‘gatekeepers’ and, because of their power, we had carte blanche to visit the organisation every day and set up interviews. Our strategy was based on persistency. We would turn up every day at the factory gatehouse and seek to become ‘normal’ as the ‘familiar visitors’, visible within the organisation as the ‘quaint English academics’ who asked naïve questions about the history of the enterprises. In fact, we found that once we were inside an organisation the directors and managers would usually be very open and helpful to us. After gaining physical access, the next stage in the research process is ‘mental access’ (Gummerson, 2000: 32). How could we meaningfully explore and develop an understanding of what was happening in the research setting? Stebbins (2001: 6) argues that to explore effectively researchers should approach the setting with two mental orientations: Flexibility in looking for the data and open-mindedness about where to find them. Oriented thus, the first step is to proceed according to Max Weber’s model to acquire an intimate, firsthand understanding (Verstehen) of the human acts being observed. However, as researchers from Western Europe we recognised that we came to the organisations with different preconceptions and assumptions. As outsiders, we were sufficiently distant from the research site to be able to ask questions, but we lacked the closeness that is necessary for understanding the setting the way that respondents do


(Lofland and Lofland, 1995: 61). As an outsider in a post-communist society, the Western researcher has the additional task and pressure of decoding and interpreting an alien institutional context in which coexist two sets of often contradictory symbols, those from the past and those of the present. The organisations reflected this confusing maze of symbols and signals, to which the researcher had to become sensitised. Some of the symbols looked superficially familiar to the outsider, yet signified different things internally. Some symbols were apparently unimportant, but significant to insiders; others looked important but were in fact new and not (yet) deeply embedded within the organisation’s culture; yet others were decaying remnants that were the washed-up detritus of change, empty of the frightening power and meaning with which they had once been imbued.

The role of the interpreter as external cultural informant It is vital for the quality of the research that the researcher is able, as far as possible, to interpret the significance of what s/he learns about the organisation. Any misreading of the environment results in gathering and constructing poor case study materials. In these cultural circumstances, we would argue that ‘orientation’ (Stebbins, 2001) is not enough. In fact, it is essential that the outsider has an intermediary, a ‘cultural informant’, who can act as an interpreter of the symbols in the environment. In this research project, the translators acted as our external cultural informants, being not only translators of language but also interpreters of the environment and, to some degree, of respondents’ behaviour. Our approach was to spend a lot of time before the visits working closely with the translators, so that they were involved in the project and understood the aims and intentions of the research. They were usually Czech business and management postgraduate students, however, two were mature doctoral students from Africa and India who had come to Czechoslovakia before the Revolution and spoke fluent Czech. They were invaluable because they could act as cultural bridges to the pre-1989 period. We became painfully aware very early on of how easy it is for a cultural outsider to misread a social environment. The following experience illustrates the dangers of forgetting the importance of historical legacies. During our interviews at Jesenické Strojírny, some senior managers had the radio speakers on, still playing music. Although slightly irritated by this, we commented to our translator on how nice it was that this was possible: to us, it seemed to be a pleasant symbol of informal-

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ity in the workplace. Then it was explained to the naïve outsiders that there was a less innocent reason. The presence of speakers everywhere in management offices and having them turned on were part of the communist legacy, since, before the Revolution, managers were almost paranoid that they might miss important government announcements that could be vital to their managerial and political well-being. The habit of keeping the speakers on in the background had been unconsciously retained, but its symbolic meaning had been lost. Whilst there were obvious disadvantages to being an outsider and not being fluent in the Czech language, we found that there were some distinct methodological benefits. Although we understand some Czech, the process of translating questions back and forth actually gave us the opportunity to observe the respondents’ reactions to the questions and the time to record additional information about the process of the interview and the setting. This additional information was invaluable because it not only enriched the contextual materials but also allowed us to detect emerging research questions and themes that we could explore and develop in later interviews. On the other hand, we had to be very careful that the translators did not take over control of the interviews or give shortened or edited translations of the responses – a constant temptation if they had heard the same information in previous interviews In the social role of ‘naïve outsiders’, my co-researcher and I found we were able to ask quite difficult and potentially indiscreet questions via the translators. It was awkward for respondents to avoid or ‘blank’ the line of questioning, because they were not sure of the appropriate social response to a non-Czech who had not experienced the communist period or possibly knew little about Czech history. We have deliberately continued to draw tactically on the resource of naïve outsider status even though we have accumulated many years of experience as fieldworkers in the Czech Republic.

The role of internal informants and respondents The role of the cultural informant – whoever plays it – is essential in this type of qualitative research. However, in addition to the external informants, it is important to have key internal informants, such as managers who can ‘provide valuable information and smooth the way’ (Gummerson, 2000: 32) to meeting others in the organisation. Although there can be problems for the naïve outsider who unquestioningly accepts the help of internal informants, they are critical


as ‘guides to insider understandings’ (Lofland and Lofland, 1995: 61), who can help make sense of the research setting: The understandings of these helpers, may of course be erroneous or misleading, and the wise investigator is never too gullible. As a general rule, reliance on multiple informants (as is always the case in intensive interviewing) is probably preferable to reliance on one. Whatever the potential dangers in their use, however, it is highly unlikely that many richly empirical and deeply understanding studies could have been achieved by outside researchers without the assistance of articulate, wise, knowledgeable and helpful informants. If you are an outside researcher, then the cultivation of informants is virtually imperative (Lofland and Lofland, 1995: 61).

The scientist observed and managed Researchers cannot have complete control over the research process because the research site is not a passive environment. The overt researcher, as part of a social process, is the object of observation and interpretation by the respondents, who construct their own interpretations of the situation from their personal and social positions. As Mitchell (1993: 12) observes: Qualitative investigators […] may seek to present themselves in one manner or another […] but subjects can and usually do reinterpret, transform, or sometimes altogether forget these presentations in favor of their own During the course of our first research visit, my co-researcher and I became increasingly aware that we were not the only ones doing the observing and theorising. We had tried to manage our ‘presentation of self’ and project ourselves in a sort of ‘value free’, neutral way so as to minimise organisational intrusiveness, but a number of incidents revealed the degree of our, at best, naïveté and at worst, hubris. Not only did we become the objects of curiosity and discussion within the organisations, we also realised that in some cases we were being managed and tested by the internal informants and respondents. The following vignettes from our research in the Czech Republic illustrate these points perfectly.

The demise of shadowing As part of the preparations for our first enterprise visit in 1992, we had designed a detailed research protocol (cf. Yin, 1994: 70, see also Yin,

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2003: 67). We decided that we would not only interview senior managers and directors but shadow them, in order to understand their approach to the management and organisation of their tasks. We had discussed our research design with the directors and thought that they had a clear understanding of its principles. But, of course, no matter how much you think you are in control before you start, the real research process is never straightforward. We were fortunate that our key informant in the enterprise, who had been given the responsibility for taking care of us, was a manager coming up to retirement and was held in high regard by the other members of the organisation. He was excellent at contacting managers and persuading them to let us interview them. Everyday we would walk through the enterprise canteen with him to go for lunch in the directors’ restaurant. During the course of the first week, we gradually became aware that we were being watched and discussed by the other managers. When we asked when we could start the shadowing part of the research, our informant relayed to us that there was a problem. It seemed that the directors had changed their minds. While they did not want to disappoint us, having agreed in advance to let us do the research, once we were in the organisation, they realised the implications of the shadowing technique. They did not want us following them around. Therefore, they decided to indulge us by suggesting a compromise that they had discussed and agreed among themselves. Our informant told us that they would simulate a typical senior management meeting, so that we could see them acting out their roles. Since this proposal was clearly the only arrangement on offer and shadowing in any methodologically meaningful way was off the agenda, we decided it was better to be flexible and gracefully retreat. We dropped that element of the research design rather than run the risk of alienating our respondents and compromising the rest of the project.

Controlling information Internal informants can act as facilitators during the research visit, but they can also hold back information because they themselves have something to hide. An example of this occurred during a visit to Montázê Jesenice. It was our first visit and we had started the usual process of interviewing managers across different functions and tracking the changes in organisational personnel and structure. In analysing the changes since the Revolution, it appeared that the General Director had promoted two women into senior management. They held the


positions of the heads of finance and informatics, replacing the now demoted male holders, one of whom was our internal informant. We arranged to interview the two new heads of department because it was unusual to find women in senior positions in engineering companies. The interviews were intriguing, the respondents were co-operative, and it soon became apparent that something was not quite right about the situation. The women held the formal title, but in reality, they were subordinate to the supposedly demoted previous post-holders, who still took the important decisions. The General Director had made the changes and everyone in the organisation knew what the real situation was. The ‘job swaps’ were, we were told, a ‘public secret’. While the reasons for the job swaps were not immediately clear to us, this did explain why our informant was so powerful within the organisation. Through slow detection work, it emerged that the General Director had made these changes because he needed to protect the two managers in the immediate post-1989 situation. They had been active members of the Communist Party and appointed to nomenklatura positions, but the political climate and changes to the law made it impossible for them to stay in senior positions in what was still then a state-owned enterprise. The intention was to keep them in their middle management positions until the enterprise was privatised, when it would be legal and safe for them to resume formally their former senior positions. The women in the job swaps knew that this is what would happen, and the next time we visited the newly privatised enterprise, everyone had returned to their previous posts.

Who is managing the interview? The interview is an emergent social process and respondents are active participants whose actions give the interview its shape (see Fontana and Frey, 2000: 663). As such, they can try to take control of the interview or use it indirectly to achieve their aims. We found that some respondents tried to manage the interview process by deliberately testing our integrity – for example, by feeding us information and then seeing if we leaked it in another interview. Another strategy was, in response to a probe for information, to say, ‘but you already know this from your interview with Mr. X.’, clearly intending to indicate that the managers had discussed us, and at the same time watching our reactions. In fact, as we wrote our notes and started to develop research themes, this behaviour offered concrete evidence of identifiable social networks and cliques, which had their origins before 1989 and were still being maintained through social activities.

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Some middle managers gave us information in their interviews with the deliberate intention of using us as conduits to transmit their concerns or worries to senior management or to advance a particular idea. From their perspective, our entry into the organisation’s social process changed, albeit temporarily, the social structure of the field and provided another resource, or instrument, through which they could try to lobby senior management. Their attempts to manage the interview process were evidence enough of how arrogant, if not methodologically dangerous, it is to assume that respondents are passive and that field researchers are detached and unobtrusive. One experience in particular reinforced our consciousness of the interactive nature of fieldwork and of our visibility as outsiders. It was also a salutary lesson not to take ourselves too seriously. In 1992, at the end of a two-week field visit, our internal informant asked us to prepare a report with our initial observations about the company, its strengths and weaknesses. At a meeting, we presented our views, emphasising the academic purposes of our work and its confidential nature. Although the gathering of the research materials for the case study had been very tiring, we felt satisfied that we had enough to write our case study. After our presentation, there was a silence and we wondered if we had made some terrible error. The senior managers complimented us on finding out so much in such a short time and developing a good understanding of the organisation. However, in fact, they showed little interest in our report. Then one of the managers got out a piece of paper. She said that they had noticed that we were vegetarians and asked, quite seriously, how we ‘survived’ on such a diet. How did we stay so fresh looking after doing the research? Did we have any vegetarian recipes? Then she went on, did we vote Labour? Why did we want to do fieldwork in such a small company in such a small town? We were stunned to find that we had clearly been the objects of so much curiosity – so much for our vanity, our attempts to try to present ourselves in a neutral, unobtrusive light.

The research-aware respondent and the importance of ethics Despite attempts to brief respondents about the project, it is inevitable that: All research is secret in some ways and to some degree – we never tell the subjects ‘everything’ […]. So long as there exists a separation of role between the researchers and those researched upon, the


gathering of information will inevitably have some hidden aspects even if one is an openly declared informer (Roth, 1970: 278). Nonetheless, once fieldwork has started in an organisation, various aspects of the research design are gradually revealed and potential respondents start to build up a picture of research process. In our research, the informal communication system moved rapidly into action as soon as we had conducted our first interviews. The respondents then had a chance to discuss what had taken place and develop their views about the purpose of our research. On occasion, respondents would deliberately signal to us that they knew what the next area of questioning would be, because they were aware of the interview structure. They expected, for example, that we would ask some potentially sensitive questions about their pre-1989 career experiences and were often nervous about this line of questioning, from which we could infer something about their former political activities and affiliations. However, for us, the purpose of the research was not to pass moral judgement about their pasts but to develop a sociological understanding of how and why events happened as they did. As part of the interview process, we were always careful to reassure respondents about the confidentiality of our work and our intention of only using the materials for academic purposes. In potentially sensitive research of this type, the actual and perceived ethical stance of the fieldworker is central to the integrity of the research process and the validity of its outcomes (see Plummer, 2001: 222 ff.). Although our research did not carry the potential risks for participants that Nojonen (in this book) discusses in his account of his research in China, we had a responsibility and duty of care to the respondents. After all, they had trusted us with intimate details about their feelings and their activities before and after the Revolution in 1989. As a researcher in the field, one should always aim to leave the field without having caused harm to its members and making sure that all sources are protected. Stake (2003: 154) argues forcefully that: The value of the best research is not likely to outweigh injury to a person exposed. Qualitative researchers are guests in the private spaces of the world…. Along with much qualitative work, case study research shares an intense interest in personal views and circumstances. Those whose lives and expressions are portrayed risk exposure and embarrassment, as well as loss of standing, employment and self-esteem.

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Without mutual trust, good quality research materials cannot be developed, and managers would withdraw co-operation and participation in the study. In our case, this would have prevented the longitudinal dimension of our study and possibly damaged the chances of other researchers being able to work in those organisations in the future.

Conclusion The purpose of this chapter has been to draw out some of the methodological issues that can arise when a researcher is conducting fieldwork in a transforming context, particularly focusing on the methodological effects of a socially structured field. It has examined the ways in which various social roles in and around the research site – e.g. the informant and respondent – can affect the research process. Many of the pressures that a researcher faces in a typical Western environment are exacerbated by working in a society in a state of transience. The institutional context is not stable but emergent because it consists of elements of the past as well the present and organisations reflect this wider societal institutional ambiguity. This poses interesting but difficult challenges for a researcher – a cultural outsider – investigating organisational processes and changes. The starting point for fieldwork research is gaining access and, as discussed above, this can be a particularly difficult process for a researcher in a post-communist, transforming society. A researcher has to be prepared to be persistent and willing to utilise contacts in order to gain physical access to organisation. Careful pre-departure design, planning and preparation are essential if the project is to have a chance of success, but researchers must enter the field with a flexible mind-set and the expectation that there will be disappointments. In addition, researchers, especially those who work on their own, should give some thought to emotional preparation and develop personal and social strategies for coping with the stresses and strains of being away in a field that is full of uncertainty, opaqueness and ambiguity. In this type of research, internal informants take on an important role in the development of the investigation. They can smooth access and make life much easier for the investigators, but one needs to be realistic, wary, and careful not to take everything that they offer at face value. As the stories in the chapter have illustrated, internal informants are insiders with their own organisational history, cliques and networks, their own careers, and may not always act from disinterested motives.


Once in the organisation and gathering data, researchers should always remember that they are the visible ‘outsiders’ and as such the objects of organisational curiosity and surmise. Through informal communication channels, members of the organisation discuss researchers, find out quite a lot about the research design and attempt to deduce the purpose of the project. The researcher needs to be constantly aware that informants and respondents can influence the unfolding of the research project in many ways. Respondents can withhold information, lead researchers down the wrong line of argument, or use them as part of their own political strategy. A researcher should have a clear ethical position before they go into the field and decide how they are going to cope with pressures to give information. In principle, one should always aim to leave the research setting untainted, without having caused harm to respondents by breaking confidentiality, or having become a significant actor or pawn in the organisation’s political system. It is important for the researcher to retain a sense of respect and humility, accepting that s/he is only a transient player in the existing social structures of the research site and therefore not in control of it. The crucial objective of a qualitative approach is to secure the willing co-operation and patience of informants and respondents, without which there is no chance to develop the rich materials that are the foundation of good case study research.

Suggested further readings Dyer, W. and Wilkins, A. (1991) ‘Better stories, not better constructs, to generate better theory: a rejoinder to Eisenhardt’, Academy of Management Review, 16(3), 613–19. Edwards, V. and Lawrence, P. (2000) Management in Eastern Europe (Basingstoke: Palgrave). Eisenhardt, K.M. (1989) ‘Building theories from case study research’ Academy of Management Review, 14(4), 532–50. Gabriel, Y. (2000) Storytelling in Organizations: Facts, Fictions, and Fantasies (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Kelemen, M. and Kostera, M. (2002) Critical Management Research in Eastern Europe: Managing the Transition (Basingstoke: Palgrave). Yin, R.K. (2003) Applications of Case Study Research (3rd edition) (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage).

4 Uncovering the Communist and Capitalist Shadow: Developing Relational Forms of Inquiry and Writing Katalin Illes and Bronwen Rees ‘The social sciences are concerned with humans and their relations with themselves and their environments, and, as such, the social sciences are founded on the study of experience…’ (Clandinin and Connelly, 1994: 414).

Introduction What model of enquiry is most appropriate for the rapidly changing countries of Central and Eastern Europe (CEE)? This chapter seeks to set out pointers towards developing innovative methods for carrying out research in these countries. We feel that techniques devolved from the scientific method cannot capture this complexity, and we offer some examples of a different type of research, based on the researcher’s reflexivity, and most importantly on documenting the researcher’s experience in relationship to the research situation. This paper is an exploration of a method and of experience. We draw on our individual and joint experiences in order to offer a shared perception of methodological issues that we have encountered in our exploration of the historical and transitional context of Hungary and Britain. We are from different cultural backgrounds and have different educational experiences. However, for the past five years, we have been carrying out joint research into the transition of Hungary, and the impact of Western managerial knowledge on the culture of Hungary. We have drawn on historical, psychological and social theories to inform our work (e.g. Illes and Rees, 2001), focusing on human resource management, and management education in particular. Our story reflects the different filters of our national cultures and academic backgrounds, and shows how we can take these filters into 57


account in mapping out methodological issues. There are benefits in taking seriously the subjective aspects of research, as well as attempting to objectify and codify perceptions, as is the aim of scientific method. We argue that this can enrich our understanding of culture and historical process. This chapter recounts the development of our personal relationship, and how this personal exploration of each other’s cultures can bring rich insights into both environments and help build meaningful links between the two cultures. The story can be read first, on a personal level in the form of a friendship and, second, on a broader level between and across cultures. It is also a history of a relationship to forms of scientific inquiry. It offers some new perspectives on the stories that make up our collective existence. It stands somewhat in the face of the conventional methods of scientific inquiry, and looks at how we experience, how we relate to that experience, and how to relate that experience – thereby drawing on the pioneering work of Dewey (1938). We explain our difficulties in relating to the abstractions of conventional research approaches, which deny personal experience but are built into the hegemonies of social organisation and structure, such as the University or management teaching. We tell of our different experiences in carrying out research, both separately and together. Being from different cultures, we have experienced different, often unarticulated obstacles to understanding and explaining the phenomenon in which we are interested. This has appeared as a lack, an abstraction and an inability to find a voice that represented our individual and joint experience. Our theoretical and empirical explorations have led us to the metaphor of ‘shadow’ to help articulate the dilemma. Having used this metaphor already to understand the transition, we find it equally useful to help describe our own relationship to method. It is from this shared discomfort, in the face of unarticulated ‘shadowy’ obstacles, that this chapter has arisen. We first explore the possible origins of this discomfort, and then see how we can locate and amend it methodologically.

Towards a theory of narrative The source of our discomfort lies in how knowledge constructs, and is constructed by, our collective representation of reality. To understand this further, we draw on Foucault’s understanding of disciplinary power. Disciplinary power draws attention to the fundamental role

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that knowledge plays in making aspects of existence thinkable and calculable and therefore the object of conscious action. ‘Power and knowledge directly imply each other; … there is no power relation without the correlative constitution of a field of knowledge, nor any knowledge that does not presuppose and constitute at the same time power relations’ (Foucault, 1977: 27). We move away from the power/knowledge construction, which is so readily apparent in most social science research, and take the risk of working with and representing experience. Recognising that the power/knowledge construct underpins the scientific method, we wondered whether we could find ways of moving away from this, yet still retain methodological validity. To do so, we need to explore the psychological processes through which the power/knowledge construct operates. Power, in a Foucauldian sense, is constructed through conditioning. As stories and theories become part of the collective, their repetition in well-organised ways becomes ingrained in our habitual patterns of thinking and relating. What if, however, we take a more lateral view and look for other ways of perceiving and representing the world? For example, the discipline of cognitive psychology has discovered different ways of looking at the world. Bruner (1986; 1990) identified two modes of cognition, which he termed ‘paradigmatic’ and ‘narrative’. In the paradigmatic mode, cognition is viewed as an informationprocessing phenomenon in which concepts are coded in memory and manipulated by cognitive operators. Situations are represented as concepts to be ‘solved’ by rational analytic thinking procedures, making computations, comparisons and substitutions in a form of scientific reasoning. This model dominates cognitive psychology, as it dominates other cognitive sciences and the other social sciences, and indeed our everyday understanding of cognition (Boland and Schultze, 1996). Despite contributing to the establishment of this mode in his own discipline of cognitive psychology, Bruner (1986; 1990) has suggested that this has suppressed the recognition of another, more powerful and universal mode of cognition: the narrative mode. Here, events are selectively isolated in experience, events populated with actors with their own histories and motivation and stories are told by setting the actors and events in a meaningful sequence. Bruner argues that, as a means of making sense of ourselves and the world we live in, this mode is ubiquitous but consistently ignored. However, ‘…[the paradigmatic view] synonymous with an abstract theoretical view of the world is taken to be the mode of cognition not only in science and


technology, but in all forms of human reasoning’ (Bruner, 1990: 9, italics in original). The predominance of the paradigmatic mode of cognition probably lies in the actual interrelationship of the two modes. For Lyotard (1984), scientific practice does not recognise narrative knowledge as valid, even though the paradigmatic mode itself relies on the narrative mode to legitimise its claims. Being a meaningful reconstruction of the world, the narrative mode cannot be proved by analytic or cumulative logic. According to science, ‘narratives are fables, myths, legends, fit only for women and children’ (Lyotard, 1984: 27). It is only when the ‘masculine bias’ in accepted psychological categories such as ‘identity’ and ‘morality’ came to be recognised that important concepts such as relationships and intimacy began to emerge in the discipline of cognitive psychology. For example, Lyons (1990: 42) shows how adolescent girls, rather than using an abstract conceptualisation such as justice for analysing a situation, may resolve a moral problem by stepping into – not back from – the situation and by acting to restore relationships or to address needs. She puts forward a dual model for making decisions based on a care/justice dichotomy, which may well reflect the paradigmatic/narrative dichotomy. In this way, important concepts come to be excluded from the agenda, and this is perhaps one way in which the power/knowledge construct comes to operate. While Lyons (1990) does not suggest that girls and boys use different models exclusively, the fact that the recognition of the narrative mode has emerged following on from this earlier research might suggest that girls and women are more likely to use the narrative mode more frequently. It certainly could be inferred from the ways in which girls and women perceive themselves, and also from Chodorow’s (1978) theory about the reproduction of mothering. The distancing process that boys go through when disidentifying from the mother is more likely to lead to the paradigmatic self ‘…characterized by separation from others, segmentation and calculation’ (Boland and Schultze, 1996). The narrative self, acting out situations, taking into account relationships with others, building beginnings, middle and ends, does bear a greater resemblance to women’s psychological development as explored above. These possibilities raised several questions for us methodologically. What if women find it difficult or uncomfortable to work within paradigmatic frameworks? What could be learned working from the more narrative style? Most importantly, for this chapter, if there are these


differences in cognition, what are the differences likely to be in crosscultural working? Language itself is not enough to convey experience. Scientific frameworks themselves may well inhibit the research process. This was beginning to point to the more subtle internalised pathways through which power relations exert themselves.

A commitment to engage with and represent experience In order to address these issues, we introduced ideas from Dewey’s theory of experience (1938) into our own investigations in Hungary and the UK and looked for ways of justifying our approach to enhance the current methodological status of cross-cultural work. For Dewey, ‘intentionality’ is the key to exploring, representing and communicating experience. The researcher’s intentionality defines the starting and stopping points. A common lament of those engaged in reclaiming the study of experience is that it cannot see the wood for the trees – in the study of messy complexity, the individual trees hide the forest and so it is impossible to arrive at closure. In the language of the scientific method, it is impossible to find generalisability and reliability. Rather than looking for generalisability and reliability as benchmarks of our research, we seek to justify our approach by engaging more closely with our intent and hence engage with the politics of method (Eisner, 1988). Let us be clear about our intent here. We wish to reflect on the coming together of cultures, of the West and the East, as the benefits and problems of the Western consumer society have impacted on Hungary. We are not concerned with ‘proving’ or ‘objectifying’ our findings. We are using our growing friendship, our reflections on that, and our form of writing as a method of inquiry. Readers can assess for themselves the validity of our methods. For us, the importance of our inquiry resides in whether our discussion could have an impact on the community – communities of business in both Hungary and the UK. One strength of personal experience methods is that their connection goes beyond theories, researchers and practitioners to the life community within which we all relate. Thus, we claim that personal experience research as a form of public inquiry goes beyond the specialities of research, and connects with fundamentally human qualities of human experience. These are human methods. For Dewey, an individual’s experience has internal and existential conditions. A person does not have social experience: an individual is social; no sociality, no person. This is a crucial methodological understanding, and one of great importance in transition economies. The


stories that are lived are those of the coming together of cultures, of different peoples, and a clash of their worldviews. Experience methods give us a way of overcoming the inevitable assumptions of ‘knowledge transfer’ that have dogged much cross-cultural research to date. The important issue is that the research reflects the conditioning and experience of people of both cultures. If not, we would question the validity of research undertaken by those of a different culture, if their intent is one of improving those relations. In other words, experience methods provide both a process of inquiry and a means of change. Finally, questions of voice and signature are crucial in the study of experience (Richardson, 1994). Who is being heard, and who not being heard? What is being said and what not being said? What is missing from the story? Questions revolve too around the researcher’s voice. The researcher is partially naked and open to criticism. How much can we reveal? Are our jobs as researchers on the line if we go too far down the personal? When we have lifted the veil of silence that scientific voices often bring, how do we represent that voice? What is our signature? There are multiple ways of being in the text, as well as being in the field. How lively should that signature be? Too much, and we obscure the voices of the participants. Too little, and we fail to represent their story in a different way. This text, then, is an experiment, as we write it. What will our joint signature look like? At this moment of writing we have no idea. But we feel increasingly passionate about the way in which we can learn from experience and carry out change through opening ourselves up to the possibilities of experience, and learning how to communicate to academic, business, and national communities. Ours is a story about a coming together of cultures in the form of two human beings, who carry the collective experience of those cultures. It tells two stories of research, as two small rivulets that flowed together and found the courage to stand in the face of scientific inquiry and to recount tales from the field directly through the personal. Writing and relationship are our mode of inquiry. The writing is our form, and the relationship is the story of the emergence of that form. We are concerned not with one country, but with the coming together of cultures, in the sense of the personal, the academic and the organisational. Our aim is to open up our own experience and offer that in relation to the events of the transition, to ourselves and to our friendship as a lens. To approach this chapter in this way is partly a matter of participating in the politics of method by reclaiming the study of experience from its abstractions in the scientific method.


All inquiry can be seen as interaction between experiences of field participants and those of researchers as they come to that field. When we begin having the experience, we need to be sensitive to the stories already being lived, told, relived and retold. However, when we come together, we begin to live and tell a new story of our collaborative work. We tell a story as researchers and try to represent the research project, but a major part of that telling is our own experience, relived and retold, in relationship to academic frameworks to the subject, to ourselves and to one another. Our intent is to communicate something about how cultures can work together and learn from each other, in a mutual exploration and sharing of experience. Our method is to use the narrative of our lives and our relationship to provide pointers as to how reality is differently experienced, and what the implications of that might be for the way in which some of us conduct research. Our intent is consciously political, derived from critical management research, which calls for an approach that is at once interpretive, open, language sensitive, identity conscious, historical, political, local, non-authoritative and which has a textually aware understanding of research (Alvesson and Deetz, 2002). Along with Alvesson and Willmott (1992: 9), we argue that ‘… in the present context of developing management studies there is less point in stressing theoretical rigour and orthodoxy than in welcoming a broad inspiration from a variety of theories and ideas that share “enough” affinities to advance or enrich critical studies of management.’ However, we do not eschew theory, or fall into the irony of post-modernism. ‘To argue that because knowledge is not absolute or final there is no knowledge, only interpretations… undermines what I still think is one of the most vital contributions of theory: it can offer a deeper understanding of what is at stake in political and social conflicts that have a very real external existence; it provides an opportunity to become what might be called “better citizens”, more aware and with a deeper understanding of what is going on around us. If it does not provide answers to problems, it enables a better understanding of their complexity and difficulty’ (Craib, 1992: 249–50). We are building up a joint ‘interpretive repertoire’ and engaging with not only the conditioning that has led us to it, but also the emotional frameworks that have created our own individual ‘interpretive repertoires’. Our approach to experience methods sees theory as intertwined within the method, and drawn upon when useful. In the following


section, we offer up a highly selected narrative of our journeys towards this method.

Theoretical and methodological journeys Katalin’s reflections I was living and working in Budapest until the end of 1989. I can vividly remember the surprise, disbelief and joy that followed the fall of the Berlin Wall. It was difficult to believe because, although the country had experienced a loosening of the Russian leash, those who had first-hand experience of the retaliation that followed the revolution in 1956 retained (and still retain) a psychological and even bodily memory of that violent period. This surfaced the trauma and fear that have existed in the collective psyche of Hungarians for more than 500 years. It did not seem possible that freedom could just appear on the doorstep without bloodshed and suffering. Despite the fall of the Wall, I was prompted to follow through my decade-long plan to relocate to the United Kingdom. As with all radical relocations of this kind, this too was experienced with difficulty. In meeting the culture shock, despite a fistful of qualifications, I needed to retrain in the UK academic system, drawing on all my inherited qualities of survival. From a PhD in world literature and my dream world of poetry, emotions and personal reflection, I moved into the world of business and the underpinning of social sciences. Within two years of leaving Hungary, I started to find new ground under my feet. I gained a position at Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh in 1992 and was appointed project manager on the Know-How project aimed at providing an accounting framework for the developing market economy. Managing this project allowed me to learn about British organisational culture, systems, structures and mentality. I was the only nonBritish member of the team. However, the strongest emotion that I felt at the time was that I needed to prove myself – that I was as good and as competent as the British team members. In Edinburgh, I felt more and more often that I was accepted and when people made comments like ‘you do not talk like a Hungarian’, ‘you think very much like us British’, I took them as compliments. Life was more difficult when I was in Hungary or with Hungarian project members in the UK. They automatically expected loyalty and favourable treatment from me. After all, I was one of them by birth, and the fact that I had the good


fortune to get to this position brought the unspoken responsibility of representing them and their interests. I did not want to be disloyal to my roots. In fact, I felt that I needed to do my utmost to support the changes in Hungary. On the other hand, I started to see the other side of the coin, the British perspective, and I did not want to be disloyal to my newly chosen home either. It led to an almost impossible position when I tried to please everybody and tried to represent the interests of both sides equally. It gave me lots of headaches, heartaches and sleepless nights. It took me a while to find my own voice and gain acceptance and respect, not as a ‘pleaser’, but as a bilingual, competent manager who set out to build bridges between two different cultures. Reflecting on these experiences, I acted as if I were the teacher to both sides, whereas, in reality, I was a student on an intensive, double degree course having to study many subjects in depth on both British and Hungarian sides. In a short span of time, I had changed countries, disciplines and life styles. Research in literature allowed considerable room for subjective ideas, unusual approaches being highly appreciated. In social science, as I quickly discovered, the rules were rather different and I was expected to use the scientific method and to learn to justify every statement. British colleagues had the scientific rigour, in-depth knowledge of the methodological frameworks and they knew how to present the findings in an appropriate academic manner. Initially, I was fascinated by the precision, logic and systematic approach of scientific inquiry. As I had not studied this approach in Hungary, I made the personal association that feelings and subjectivity were to do with my past and factual, rational thinking was my way to success in the present and future. I shared the excitement of my British colleagues, who were keen to support the changes required in Hungary. We all felt that by sharing the well-established British accounting education system with the Hungarian profession we would make a good contribution to the country’s efforts to move towards market economy. I felt that I was making a difference and this was exciting and heroic. However numerous difficulties and limitations of methods quickly eroded my naïve enthusiasm, leading to intense frustration. While a native speaker of Hungarian, I had only learned accountancy in Britain, and had very little idea of appropriate Hungarian accounting terminology. A literal translation did not always convey the meaning because dictionaries at the time reflected the old, centralised accounting system in Hungary. In fact, the use of dictionaries proved to be misleading a number of times. Indeed, the joint efforts of the British and the Hungarian accounting academics I was consulting led


to the first accountancy and finance dictionary to be published for professionals in Hungary. Despite my sense of achievement as project manager, as researcher, doing everything as advised by those well versed in the scientific method led to a frustrating and incomplete experience. There was a reality gap in the work that was published in a well-respected international journal (Illes et al., 1996). This reality gap was also present in the qualitative interviews. As I interviewed both British and Hungarian participants in different collaborative academic projects, participants’ body language suggested that they were actually less than happy with their liaison with the partner institute, though they were too ‘polite’ to discuss it. There was no room in the research to examine and explain these subtle cultural differences. Whilst the research pointed out the difficulties of crosscultural working, the structure of the research projects themselves allowed merely observation. When talking to people in Hungary, fears of the unknown and of the globalising partner were expressed in terms of the rhetoric of change, rather than its reality as I experienced it. However, given that I was learning new scientific methods, I did not feel in a position to voice this in research reports. In all cases, the results of the research reflected the problems in the method itself. Only a fraction of the experience could be arranged into neat boxes and bullet points. The complexity and the uniqueness of each case were related to the interviewee’s personality, individual and national history, organisational position and his/her underlying motives for being involved in the project. The framework of enquiry did not provide an opportunity to report on individual circumstances and feelings. While there were some common features, it was impossible to force the findings into the scientific framework without losing a whole human dimension of emotion and experience. My initial intent, to help bridge cultures, could not be met within the confines of the research projects as they had been set up.

Bronwen’s reflections I ended up in the field of organisation science through default. Since my first degree was in French, my formative years were illuminated by French thinking patterns – that is, an eclectic, free-flowing approach that does not resemble the utilitarian underpinnings of British empiricism. This was followed by many years working as a freelance editor and writer in the area of business, including editing a management journal which is what took me into the world of the social sciences. I undertook a PhD at Cranfield University rather by chance. Wanting to write


and research my own work rather than editing that of others, I found myself in receipt of a scholarship, ready to undertake a project into the position of women managers in the UK, France and the Netherlands. This started with a monumental struggle with the underlying positivism that characterised much of the women in management literature. I searched through sociology and psychology for an alternative, until a social scientist at Cranfield introduced me to Foucault. This began a completely new stream of inquiry that has lasted for over ten years and embraces critical theory, feminism, the labour process debate and its Marxist orientation, and post-modernism. This relationship with different theoretical orientations and their methodological underpinnings is ongoing and concerned primarily with highlighting the abstractions of method, which often tend to misrepresent experience. Whilst these methods are useful, I found the unquestioned assumption that the findings represent the ‘truth’ both frustrating and limiting. Despite the avowed calls for new interdisciplinary methods, I experienced great difficulty in finding journals that would take the risk of publishing novel methods. Questions at management conferences were sometimes underpinned by an assumption that my work was based in the scientific method, and tended to detract from the perspective that I was offering. For example, one academic spent over ten minutes questioning a particular statistic used to represent the numbers of women in management – how it had been collected – when the focus of the paper was on underlying processes of discrimination (see Rees and Garnsey, 2003). The frustrations of exploring issues of women at work, and their difficulties in the workplace, reflected my personal circumstances, as I was working full-time and a single parent of two. I became aware that the choice of methodology is not necessarily determined solely by empirical or theoretical considerations. I was led to my choices partially through my circumstances and through the experience that my voice not being represented. This is an honest acknowledgement that our ‘theories’ of the world are shaped by our experience, and not necessarily extracted in a linear way from mental reasoning, however elegant that argument may be. Theory does not represent emotions, feelings, sensations, or even perceptions – but has emerged from a combination of all these. It would have been safe for me to ‘hide’ behind a positivist methodology, but not meaningful. Three hours into my doctoral viva, I mentioned to an examiner that I wished I had done a more traditional PhD, to which he replied that I would not then have been the same person. We are, as human beings, an intrinsic part


of our research. All methods are useful provided they help to realise the ‘intent’ of the research. Arguments about methodology and theory, without reference to practice, are at best tautological, at worst debilitating and closed. In this field, writing a personal account in the first person is rather like appearing naked in public. However, it is important that the field of (particularly cross-cultural) management studies questions its own epistemologies, otherwise cross-cultural communication can only lead to conflict and pain. At the same time as this work was being carried out, Katalin and I met at a conference in Leuven.

Crossroads: developing joint inquiry and finding the independent witness Up to this point, our struggles had been completely different, and yet very similar. We had both felt the intransigence of the scientific method, Katalin through conditioned fear and Bronwen through the rigidity of the establishment. We were both still struggling to find alternative ‘legitimate’ ways of expressing our research, but, in the field of business, there were few empirical examples of how this might work. The constrained voice of the objective narrator was still ever present. Even in the best of critical theory thinking, which brought structure and process together (Rees, 2003), the narrator him/herself tended to stand outside the work. We needed to develop a new style of research that would bring to life some of the real stories, while retaining the possibility of generalising to organisational level and shedding light on the cultural differences and commonalities that bind us together as human beings. We began to research in Hungary. We began by examining our intent. How could we carry out research that would remain true to our intent? For both of us, there was fear, brought about by our mutual conditioning. For Bronwen, it was fear of a new culture, of not understanding and not being understood. For Katalin, it was fear of the past, of the years under the Soviets. For Katalin, having a British person with whom to converse outside of ‘being Hungarian’ and outside of ‘being scientific’ meant that she could retain the witness sensibility that is important in seeking to understand someone else’s reality. For Bronwen, it was invaluable to witness and discuss Katalin’s response to the changes, as she struggled with the dual identity that she had acquired. Having a ‘native’ present, and beginning to know that native well, meant that Bronwen was far


more sensitised to the subtleties of exchanges that would not have been possible with only one researcher, or with someone seeking only a paradigmatic response (compare Alt and Lang’s discussion of mixed research teams, in this book). Katalin learned through Bronwen the importance of being well versed in the scientific method, of knowing how to ‘move on’ yet still embed new work in this tradition. In the Hungarian tradition, there is far more individuality in carrying out research, a greater tendency to build up personal systems, and more freedom to express personal emotions about a phenomenon without reference to the collective body of knowledge. This approach does not work in Britain, and Bronwen had been seeking a legitimate way of introducing a more individualistic approach into well-established frameworks.

Bringing cultures together in relationship: the interplay of personas and shadows We began to realise that the power of our collaboration rested in the way in which we built our relationship. This process was pleasurable (though sometimes conflictual), but also, in it lay the roots of deepening the understanding of different cultures. In our research, we began to find some interesting metaphors that could be used to increase understanding of the cultures. One of these was Jung’s ‘shadow’. For Jung (1933), the ‘shadow’ stands for the processes by which the persona grows out of a need to adapt to the expectations of parents, teachers and society in the course of growing up. In this process the child learns that some qualities are regarded as desirable while others are not. Those that are not are hidden from view, and form a psychological complex that Jung called the shadow – and the archetypal core of this is the ‘enemy’. This is a matter of survival for societies, but later in life, if the shadow aspect is not given conscious expression, it is manifested in unintegrated ways such as passive/aggressive behaviour, or outbursts of anger. The task of the individual later in life is to acknowledge and surface these hidden aspects into a full expression of the autonomous individual, thereby eliminating the negative behaviours and giving positive elements (such as creativity) more focused expression (Illes and Rees 2001). However, such shadows develop and intertwine at both an individual and a societal level. ‘The structures of the human psyche, the structures of human society and the structures of human history are indissolubly complementary and can only be studied in conjunction with each other’ (Elias, 1991). Jung himself


interpreted the shadow at a collective level and argued that communism and capitalism represented each other’s shadow. Slowly, we realised that the history of our working together reflected the process as described by Elias, elucidated in another way by Dewey, hinted at by Jung, and explored in greater depth by the Jungian scholar, Neumann (1973). When we started to work together, four characters emerged. The socialist persona and the capitalist persona and the socialist shadow and the capitalist shadow began to challenge and get to know each other. The persona had to look into the mirror held by the opposite shadow, and this regular confrontation meant that the shadows could no longer hide. An interesting dialogue developed that moved away from the extreme and the judgemental and towards the complex, complementary and human. It felt like looking at a two-dimensional picture and slowly developing eyes to see third and fourth dimensions. When we talked about history, we started to identify the national characteristics of our ancestors in each other and the many roots of our different social conditioning. In our work in Hungary, our joint efforts allowed us to tap into qualities of the change process that went way beyond statistics and into the intangible depths of the individual’s and nation’s psyche. We began to develop a two-way learning process where we both had the benefit of understanding our roots and chosen cultures. Working with another researcher of a different culture is particularly important in carrying out crosscultural research, since normally our own culturally conditioned lenses blind us. This process may not necessarily be harmonious, since often there is a struggle for the contents of the shadow to emerge, but with shared intent, more clarity will ensue. Rather than objectifying knowledge into a common framework – the aim of the scientific method – our approach acknowledges subjectivity, but uses relationship as a means of releasing the ‘blind spots’ that are part of being human. To summarise, we acted as each other’s mirror, providing the ‘reflexivity’ in a spirit of joint inquiry that did much to enhance our perspectives (see Soulsby in this book). At a psychological level, within the context of Britain and Hungary, we provided a lens to see what each other’s conditioning had banished into the shadow. Perhaps we were both humbled in the experience as we increasingly realised how little we knew about one another, and, therefore, about our participants. What follows are a few selected illustrations of the insights that may emerge from this way of working.


Using relationship as method Bronwen’s experience Our working relationship has been on a long journey. We have visited Hungary several times, sometimes together, sometimes alone. Each journey has been different, and, each time, learning has taken place. In these journeys, both Katalin and I have changed, and so has the country. I noticed the fear and even dread that Katalin needs to work through in a country where she has experienced much oppression. I notice the great strength that she needs to summon up in order to return, having made her ‘escape’ in 1989. At the same time, I have noticed my own responses change. Let us imagine sitting in the Vice-Chancellor’s office at the University of Veszprem. We had walked up the marble steps of the Soviet building, and here I was in an enormous room, some 100-feet long, the former office of a Soviet official. Now Hungarian flags dominated the room, but these were also at half-mast, because of the premature death of the deputy vice-chancellor, aged 48, apparently from overwork. I understood no Hungarian, and yet was attempting to communicate through Katalin as interpreter. Was she interpreting me correctly? I tend to think more about my speech and wonder about the influence of what I perceived as the ‘florid’ language of the Hungarians. It also seems that a few sentences take many more minutes in Hungarian. I had to rely entirely on Katalin’s integrity for this (compare Soulsby’s discussion of interpreters). I wondered what I was doing there, in the middle of Europe – what had I to offer? Despite this, I was also experiencing a great sense of mental space. I had no social conditioning to fall back on, so I was able to observe things, to which I would normally not attend. The delightful politeness and respect of these high officials… an open heart… a wounded heart perhaps… maybe that was why it was open. I felt a great privilege to be in this room where so much history, outside of my personal or collective experience, had taken place. It felt that we had transcended time and space. The woman, who had introduced us to the chancellor, was a philosopher, and had also taught the Vice-Chancellor as an undergraduate. Roles and responsibilities fell into relief as a rare level of communication as human beings took place. Research in this instance was not that of counting. It was more an understanding of how being able to drop our traditional filters, of being aware of the lens through which we are looking, could enhance the sense of the possibilities of cross-cultural


communication – a sense that was not possible within the traditional scientific frameworks, since certain assumptions are already encoded in their methods. Later that year, at a conference, I was invited to deliver a paper on human resource management. I did not use the usual ‘jargon’ but attempted to show the dangers of rhetoric – to highlight what was not being said in these potential frameworks of control (Rees, 2003). Again, Katalin stood by my side, this time simultaneously interpreting. Again, I wondered what was being said. But there was full concentration. I had thought that I would bring the fruits of my thinking to this venue at the beautiful Lake Balaton. But as the evening wore on, and we visited the wine cellars of the regions, as the Hungarians broke out into the most wonderful rhythmic singing, I realised how much there was for me to bring back to the UK. After ten years of capitalist culture, the Hungarians have already grown wise to the dangers of consumerism. Some have taken advantage, others choose more carefully. And again, having had to live with oppressors, Hungarians learn to take what they need, and some of the rest goes back into the shadow. And it is at the shadow’s edge that our mutual exploration of culture and our relationship has taken place.

Katalin’s experience My research over the past 12 years has felt like dealing with two personas and two shadows. When I came to Britain, I brought my Hungarian persona and my Hungarian shadow. My persona manifested itself in the form of a competent, confident, cosmopolitan professional who glides through cultures with ease. My shadow was suppressed in the depth of the psyche, as I was busy acting out my ‘superwoman’ persona. However, the shadow erupted in the most unexpected situations, particularly when I went back to Hungary. I felt the pain of change, the fear of uncertainty and of the unknown that had been so deeply engraved into my psyche during my upbringing. It made me very sad to see beggars and homeless people, who were not part of my heritage but the outcome of the changes from socialism to capitalism, an almost inevitable by-product of the transition that I found difficult dealing with. The more pain I felt emotionally, the more rational I tried to be in my research work, desperately trying to believe that the benefits were far greater than the costs. Sometimes I wore reading glasses and became very critical; other times I wore glasses that helped my long distance vision. I made great efforts to comply with the scientific method of enquiry and experienced the frustration of having


to leave out the personal, the emotional and unquantifiable aspects from my report. When I visited Hungary with Bronwen for the first time we had a long conversation about my perception of the changes in Hungary. This was the first time that I allowed my emotions to emerge and shared many of my pains and fears of the past and my uncertainties about the present state of Hungary. I trusted Bronwen and I knew that she would not judge me or use my openness against me. After jointly interviewing people in Hungary I found it very useful to spend time together reflecting on our perceptions of the day. Sometimes, Bronwen’s account made me realise that there was a perfectly appropriate but alternative interpretation of the same situation. The search for clarification always came back to our conditioning. When people talked about the fear of changing regimes, rules and regulations, they triggered fears from my past life in Hungary. When I had Bronwen there as a witness I felt safe. I could dive deep into my fears and look them straight in the eye, knowing that I would not drown. Bronwen would throw me a life belt and I can swim out of the experience feeling richer. Working together in Hungary gave me an opportunity to relate to the past from my present reality. It enabled me to bring aspects of my personal and collective shadow into consciousness. It felt as if my personal growth and my development as a researcher were closely related and intertwined. This personal and professional relationship offered me a protective place to develop my own voice. This voice has tried to bring together the objective with the subjective, the rational with the intuitive, the Hungarian with the British, and the masculine with the feminine side. This voice is stronger, clearer and more educated than the one I had when I tried to put the world into clear categories.

Uncovering issues: potential sources of cross-cultural conflict In what follows, we provide brief reflective accounts based on field experiences in Hungary and Britain. In line with Dewey (1938), an account moves back from the inward to the outward, forwards and backwards, rather than in linear fashion. Embedded and entwined within the field accounts there may well be observations, issues and concepts (e.g. shadow) that anyone thinking of conducting business in either Hungary or Britain might find useful. These issues have emerged not as ‘findings’ in the field, but from our observations and discussions with one another. These differences have emerged as a result of our


collaborative friendship, rather than from scientific observation. They raise interesting issues that can be addressed at the level of both research and work in cross-cultural settings.

Attitudes to systems and procedures In the West, we traditionally associate Soviet-run countries with vast bureaucracies, but our collaboration has brought a rather contradictory picture to the surface, that is, the intense reliance in Britain on systems. For example, in British education, as long as learning outcomes match learning objectives, what goes on in the classroom is immaterial. So while lip service is paid to creativity, the systems and procedures predominate. Katalin has experienced great difficulty in the UK finding her way around these systems, suggesting that they have been institutionalised over a long period of time, and therefore that they have become part of the paradigmatic furniture. These systems, no doubt, are taken into the host culture as unquestioned ‘assumptions’. One way in which this happens is through the predominant use in both cultures of the scientific method, which removes diversity of experience from the agenda. Some of these observations have arisen from the answers that we have been given from people in Hungary and Britain. When interviewing people in Hungary, we observed that the interviewees responded by being personal and offering a rich and complex case history. There was no definite distinction between the public and private, and everything appeared to be related to everything else. In the UK, interviewees often gave objective, factual answers to the same questions. They had an objective, rational view about the issues, which in their turn perpetuated an objective rational account. Even when the interviewer tried to push for more personal views, the response was often a puzzled silence or a side step away from the personal. One reason for this relative lack of an internalised system in Britain is that Hungarians actually talk far more than they write. This observation was a real surprise to Bronwen, particularly as it only emerged some three years into our collaboration. Educationally, this is manifested in Hungarians’ emphasis on oral examination, but it actually suggests a far greater cultural difference. Bronwen has sometimes experienced frustration at Hungarian conferences and meetings, where an oratorical style predominates. Time then seems inexorable and one sentence seems to take five in translation. Sometimes, when presenting a joint paper, Katalin appears to be flitting from one subject to another and not keeping to the point of the written paper. At a cross-cultural


level, this emphasis on talk may be one way in which Hungarians have maintained their individuality and are not ‘subjected’ in the same way as others in the power/knowledge continuum. Seen in a different light, the process itself carries meaning, which a researcher needs to understand rather than become irritated with. This would not be obvious to a non-native, and perhaps not even to a native, but is revealed through applying our joint perspectives. Such frustration arising from oral custom and practice also arises in business, and this is a problem that needs more exploration, calling for mutual communication to bring assumptions to the surface before decisions can be made. We do not provide any answers here, raising these issues may encourage deeper engagement with them. Based on these observations, one of us has set up a research team to help organisations build ‘awareness’ techniques into their cross-cultural training. These techniques develop a ‘reflexive ground’ for individuals and teams to mirror their own emotions, feelings and anxieties, and also to express their own ‘intent’ (Rees and Wilson, 2003).

Learning and inquiry Modes of enquiry differ significantly. Hungarians do not have the forms to question or debate in the same manner as the British. At an institutional level, this is represented in Parliament by challenge and (apparent) conflict. Working with Hungarians, Bronwen has often found that feedback needs to be delivered very ‘tactfully’. For example, we can recall a time when Hungarian and British academics were sitting around the table discussing the content and structure of distance learning materials prepared by the Hungarians. Distance learning was a novel method in Hungary, introduced as part of the growing exchange of ideas between two academic institutions. The British academics, acting as expert advisers, offered a detailed critique, in response to which the Hungarians became defensive and were unable to really ‘hear’ the advice. Perceiving the ‘detached’ British criticism as a personal ‘attack’, the Hungarian ‘defence’ could have led to unnecessary conflict and misunderstanding. However, we believe that greater understanding and relationship between the cultures, brought about by constructing honest relationships, could enhance working teams. Our experience together shows that there is a difference between the more ‘objective’ world of the British, and the more ‘subjective’ world of the Hungarian. Neither is right or wrong. The borders between the external and the internal world of the individual seem to differ culturally and can lead to apparently defensive behaviours. We need to be


aware of our own filters and interpretations when asking questions, and we also need to try and make sense of the filters through which the ‘other’ is answering the questions. By acting as witnesses to each other, we can reinforce this awareness, so that both perspectives are kept at the forefront of our perceptions. The oral nature of Hungarian culture is represented at conferences in the adoption of a declamatory style. Even at business conferences, Bronwen has seen Hungarians broaden the discussion to their philosophy on life. While interesting and passionate, this would not pass muster in a British environment, where there is burden of proof at every stage. This has implications for management teaching and business practice. The pragmatic British manager may view this approach as a ‘waste of time’ or ‘woolliness’, but – and this requires further exploration – it may represent the process by which Hungarians understand and make decisions within business situations.

Conclusions: developing witness The relationship we have developed over the years allows us to reflect back our differences. In this way, we work at the edges of our experiences and act as each other’s ‘witness’. We each provide for the other a safe container in which we can push the boundaries of our own experience and open up experiences that would be impossible for a sole researcher. The position of ‘witness’ is one that is well-known in psychotherapy – where the therapist can provide a ‘holding’ for the client to face up to an experience that is locked in memory. When a culture is re-viewed through this experience, significant differences may emerge. In a time of transition with significant and sometimes painful change, we suggest that a relational method of inquiry is far more likely to meet our initial intent, to build significant bridges between two cultures without imposing an ‘imperialist’ view from one culture to another. Together, we have written and published a paper on the shadow of Hungarian history (Illes and Rees, 2001). This emerged from engaging with each other and with our own fears and shadows. Only by exposing the richness and darkness in this shadow can we truly achieve a fruitful interaction. As Bronwen has witnessed Katalin and her relationship to this truly beautiful country, so she has witnessed its history – its need for survival, the throbbing heart, just below the surface. In so doing it has helped to open her heart, and with it her understanding. As Bronwen gets to know Katalin better, she can see the frisson more


quickly, and pick up on the fear almost before it arises. She can feel more acutely the meaning in comments made. These have implications for understanding stories in the workplace and for delivering courses. Bronwen now has a better sense of what may or may not work – for what will be taken on consciously or driven back into the shadow. Working in her own shadows in Hungary, she becomes more aware of her own conditioning, and what has happened in her own place of work. These are issues of human conditioning, suffering and joy. They raise questions of ethics and values. Working together both in the UK and Hungary enabled us to look at a more complex level of intercultural communication. How can we aim to decode our meaning from our conditioning and send transparent messages? How can we learn to appreciate and comprehend the intricate coding of another culture? How can we learn to communicate at a more open and profound human level? These questions have led us towards exploring issues of ethics and values in more depth, and finding out in practice how two cultures may meet. This is not to deny the importance of traditional methods, but is rather a call for the use of more imaginative approaches. The complexity of transition and cross-cultural work needs other metaphors than the collective one of the scientific method. To some degree, our exploration has been through the relational aspect of our research. Great store is set on the value of collaborative research, but rarely is attention drawn to the nature of that collaboration, and the processes that render it valuable. Through this, we can open the doors to the richness in both our shadows, and act as each other’s witness to penetrate into these depths. Through this, we can truly begin to explore our research through narrative rather than paradigm and leave others to help create paradigms from our narratives.

Suggested further readings Alvesson, M. and Deetz, S. (2000) Doing Critical Management Research (London: Sage). Clandinin, D.J. and Connelly, F.M. (1994) ‘Personal experience methods’, in Denzin, N.K and Lincoln, Y.S. (eds) Handbook of Qualitative Research (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage) pp. 413–17. Neumann, E. (1973) Depth Psychology and a New Ethic (New York: Harper Torchbooks). Richardson, L. (1994) ‘Writing: a method of inquiry’, in Denzin, N.K and Lincoln, Y.S. (eds) Handbook of Qualitative Research (Thosand Oaks, CA: Sage) pp. 923–48.

5 Constructing Enterprise Level Knowledge: Exploratory Methods and Transforming Contexts Anne Lorentzen

Introduction One research field that has turned to the study of Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) is that of innovation studies and my research has been part of this trend. I started to research industrial and technological development in Hungary at the beginning of the 1990s and later in Poland. For obvious reasons, theories and frameworks in innovation research were at the outset based on Western experiences. The research field in general is characterised by a tradition of macro-level and quantitative statistical approaches (Nelson, 1993; Lundvall, 1992; Kim and Nelson, 2000), which have also been followed when dealing with innovation in CEE (Fritsch and Brezinski, 1999; Hirschhausen and Bitzer, 2000). This chapter argues that the construction of knowledge of innovation in CEE requires open, flexible and exploratory research methods as well as highly critical use of existing theory. It requires the creation of knowledge of the micro-level, where decisions on innovation are taken. More focus should be put on the development of new insights than on the replication of known ones. The first part of this chapter takes you to Mexico, Hungary and Poland, where I have studied enterprises and organisations from the point of view of innovation and technological development. Each project was an eye opener, which made me develop new theoretical insights and change or refine my theoretical framework as well as my data collection strategies. The second part of the chapter analyses briefly the methodologies of selected contributions to enterprise level innovation in CEE. I argue that, due to the inadequacy of historical, contextual and theoretical knowledge, most of this work is highly problematic, and more so because it is produced as an input into political 78

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and managerial strategies. In the final part of the chapter, I summarise my experiences with gathering empirical data in CEE, where circumstances have made me adapt pragmatically, as well as qualitatively develop my fieldwork, case studies and research interviews.

The value of being there The first spark for me to do fieldwork in industry and innovation studies came in the late seventies when I dealt with industrial development in the third world. Available theories could not explain the development of manufacturing in the third world. To the extent that any development took place, it was rejected as technologically backward and incapable of generating indigenous development. My first research project (1982–1985) took me to Mexico, where I visited twenty manufacturing enterprises in the machine-building sector. I investigated state-owned enterprises (SOEs), foreign-owned companies, local private firms and joint ventures. Through my field studies, I came to the conclusion that firms in a third world country could also compete on innovation, and that technology change was part of their agenda. With a less diversified industrial environment and a rather poor infrastructure, local Mexican firms had to integrate more tasks in the organisation than Western firms do. These tasks not only included the full production chain but also encompassed such fields of activity as teaching from elementary level and the transportation for workers. Many companies were dynamically adapting to the environment by diversifying and developing their organisation, their products and their production techniques. This research taught me the value of treating general theoretical statements with sound scepticism, of being on location and of meeting the people involved. Through this research, I developed the notion of ‘indigenous capability’, which has ever since been a kind of leitmotif in my research (Lorentzen, 1988). The course of my research experience in Hungary and Poland since 1992 was different and yet comparable. At the beginning of the 1990s, observers characterised industry in these countries as technologically backward, stagnant and overstaffed. I wondered what had happened to indigenous capability in CEE. When I started to study industrial development and innovation in CEE in 1993, my earlier experiences made it easy for me to choose field case studies as a major ingredient in the research. The idea was to identify common problems and potentials for innovation and development in Hungarian manufacturing companies and to discuss


industrial policy measures. I visited the first case company in September 1993. Several hours of semi-structured interviewing and a walk through the plant depicted a modern, dynamic, innovative and competitive firm with strong international links and high export share. The plant was completely automated and product development was a continuous activity. The company was founded in 1900, in the first round of industrialisation in Hungary, was nationalised in 1948 and privatised in 1991. The plant was well preserved and situated on the outskirts of a medium sized provincial capital in the Western part of Hungary. The company perceived transformation positively as offering better access to foreign markets and opportunities for a more independent management. This company was dynamic, strategically managed, lean and innovative. In 2003, it is still going strong and promoting itself on the internet. The following year, in 1994, I went to the north east of Hungary and visited, among other companies, an old mechanical engineering industrial complex, founded in 1915 as a producer of weapons, which at its peak in the mid-1980s had employed 10,000 people. This company had been developed to serve a huge Eastern market by producing at enormous but stable levels of output. Since then, activities had dropped because of the loss of the Soviet market and the contraction of the home market. By 1994, only 1,500 employees were left. On my first visit, the State Privatisation and Holding Company was in charge of the company. The original complex had been split into six independent units, the biggest of which, the machine-building factory with 412 employees, was part of my sample. By Western standards, the machine-building factory had probably been overstaffed during the planned economy and still was, not least in administration, which in 1994 accounted for one third of the employees. The products of the company had not undergone major changes for many years. Its production equipment was also relatively old, but very well preserved, with, at the date of interview, an average age of between 25 and 28 years – apart from a huge CNC (Computer Numerically Controlled) machine centre from 1988. The buildings were much too big for the current level of activity. As self-sufficiency was a must during the planned economy in order to minimise production breaks, the production process was still highly integrated. This meant that the variety of machinery and equipment to meet these different tasks was huge. In 1994, practically every component, including each bolt and screw, continued to be manufactured on site. One consequence was that it took up to one and a half years to finish production of the most complicated machines.

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The managers with whom I talked for long hours in 1994 and 1995 were confident and optimistic about the future. They had been working hard with the many legal as well as organisational issues. Technologically not much had happened, but that was due to lack of funds rather than to a lack of ideas or competence. Further technological development of products and processes had to await the arrival of new owners. I found in this company a managerial capability to face the situation of transformation, and a fine example of the technological capability developed during the planned economy: a highly technical and diversified competence which integrated automation, mechanical manufacturing and workmanship. This company has survived. In 2003 the company could be found on the internet as exporting machinery to Japan and exhibiting cable machines at Russian trade fairs. After visiting more than 20 companies in Hungary and 26 companies in Poland I had the impression that transformation was well underway. With the 27th Polish company, however, I had to question this idea. In 2002, I went to a mechanical engineering company, which had not adapted to the market economy at all – or so I was told by the senior manager who had been appointed by the provincial governor a few months before my visit to save the company and the jobs. The company was founded in 1948, nationalised in 1950 and was still stateowned. Once 350, today its 77 employees produced small metal items such as buckles and badges. During communism, the company had covered 30 per cent of the Polish market, but at present the share was quite small. The company had not been able to compete with Chinese imports and local competitors, and only survived because the governor covered the deficit. Walking around the plant was like walking through a badly kept museum. Most workers appeared to do as little as possible and the only computer was located on the desk of the new manager. The only innovation was the recent introduction of a new mechanical forming machine. What was going on? For political reasons, this company remained one of the state-owned companies in Poland. The former management had tried to adapt the company to the new situation by downsizing and purchasing cheaper and therefore low quality inputs. Through the initiative of the governor, the old management was finally replaced by another public servant. He intended to upgrade quality and to establish contacts and contracts with foreign customers, with the final aim of making the company attractive for private investors.


This experience challenged my ideas about the determinants of innovation in CEE companies. Strong political factors were at play here. Politics is also part of the context, and corporate survival in CEE may still depend more on politics than the market. While researchers sometimes discuss the end of transformation in CEE, in some places it may not have even started. In sum, through fieldwork visits and interviews in companies I have often gained new theoretical insights and reflections, which could not have been obtained through desk-studies. Most of all, by working on location in CEE countries I got a hands-on impression of what the process of transformation is about, seen from ‘below’. The necessary continuous adaptation of firms to the surrounding context seems to be deeper and faster in situations of societal transformation. Within the process, continuity and change coexist internally in the enterprises as well as externally in their environment. A complex set of mutually dependent factors seems to be at play in this process.

A methodological critique There are thus many issues at stake in relation to innovation during the process of transformation. Since my interest is particularly in enterprise level innovation studies, I take a closer look at the methodology of those few studies that have been made in relation to this topic. I briefly analyse and discuss eight studies in relation to the following questions: What is the topic and viewpoint of the contribution? What is the role of history and context in the work? What types of empirical data are used in the work? What are the type, origin and status of theory? What type of conclusions do the authors draw?

The topics and intentions The eight contributions can be divided into four groups, according to their topics. The first group of papers deals with the transfer of Western approaches to the CEE, like the learning network approach (Bessant and Francis, 1999), management methods (Dickenson et al., 2000), or the removal of innovation barriers (Staudt, 1994). The second group discusses the development of capabilities in different types of firms with a particular view about the role of foreign investment in relation to market capabilities (Fahy et al., 2000) and in relation to restructuring (Bornstein, 2001). The third group of articles compares companies in CEE and the West with respect to innovative climate and culture (Susanj, 2000) and the search for more relevant comparisons from

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history or other cultures than the present Western one (Grancelli, 1995). A fourth group makes a quantitative analysis of the literature on operations management in transitional countries (Motwani et al., 2001). The papers share the intention of contributing to the solution of real existing problems in the countries under transformation, either directly as suggestions for action or indirectly through better research, as the last two mentioned papers do. In line with the topic and intentions of the contributions, two basic viewpoints can be identified – a practitioner one and a research-based one. The former is represented by the first five contributions, the latter by the last two, while Susanj, 2000) takes on both viewpoints. More specifically, the practitioner’s viewpoint in this context tends to mean that of Western consultants or researchers, since many of the authors are financed in such roles by the European Union. All articles adopt the viewpoint of the ‘outsider’ looking at the more or less exotic circumstances in the East, wanting either to understand these circumstances or, more frequently, to change them.

The empirical realities With the intention of developing applicable results from their research, how do the researchers approach the empirical realities of CEE? It is remarkable that two contributions make no reference to context or history at all (Fahy et al., 2000; Motwani et al., 2001). It is not common among the authors to look in detail at the history of CEE, and only Bornstein (2001) and Grancelli (1995) make an effort. Some other authors analyse more profoundly the importance of context to the performance of companies (Susanj, 2000; Dickenson et al., 2000). When dealing with CEE history and context, most authors consider these issues as the origin of blocks and barriers to innovation (Bessant and Francis, 1999; Susanj, 2000; Dickenson et al., 2000; Grancelli, 1995). Concerning the use of empirical data, the articles fall into three groups. One group (Staudt, 1994) does not refer to empirical information at all. A second group refers broadly to observations made by the researchers themselves in CEE countries (Bessant and Francis, 1999; Dickenson et al., 2000), or refers to empirical results produced by others (Grancelli, 1995; Bornstein, 2001; Dickenson et al., 2000). Finally, a third group presents empirical analysis based on primary data from CEE enterprises, namely Susanj (2000) and Fahy et al. (2000). Susanj (2000) collected data using questionnaires in 21 manufacturing organisations in 11 European countries, with 50 respondents in each organisation.


The respondents were asked to rate, on a six-point scale from ‘never’ to ‘always’, the frequency in their organisation of certain practices of importance to innovation (Susanj, 2000: 354). The study leaves out any exploratory or qualitative element. Fahy et al. (2000) conducted two phases of fieldwork in Hungary, Poland and Slovenia. In a first phase the questionnaire was developed to avoid problems of terminology. The second phase consisted of a quantitative study. Respondents in companies employing 20 people or more were asked to judge whether results in the company were better, the same or worse than budget, the previous year and their main competitors. 3,000 firms in Hungary, 2,000 in Poland and 1,581 in Slovenia were on the mailing list and the overall response rate was 25 per cent. The samples were broadly representative in terms of industry classification and ownership structure, and the results were statistically significant. A key problem in this study is its Western view of innovation, which led, predictably, to the conclusion that firms with Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) were making strong gains over their local rivals. In sum, the contributions on enterprise level innovation in the CEE lack historical and contextual analysis. Original empirical work is not usual among them, while those who conduct primary research apply quantitative methods. The lack of historic and contextual analysis combined with the solely quantitative methods implies a mismatch between the complexity of the topics studied and the narrowness of the methodology that is likely to impede the development of sufficiently relevant knowledge and adequate theories.

Origin and level of approach How can the theoretical frameworks of the eight studies be characterised? Five contributions apply Western theories and approaches (Bessant and Francis, 1999; Staudt, 1994; and Fahy et al., 2000; Susanj, 2000; Dickenson et al., 2000). Bessant and Francis (1999) take their point of departure from evolutionary economic theories and present a theory of learning networks, which they apply to CEE reality without modification. Staudt (1994) approach is to develop a general framework of action, which is based on experiences in Western Europe, with a focus on innovation potentials and barriers and learning processes. The framework is very general and does not address innovation issues related to transformation. When studying the development of market capabilities in transition economies, Fahy et al. (2000) construct a theoretical framework based on a review of Western literature. The resulting idea of what makes

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companies successful (market orientation, positioning capabilities and time-horizon of strategic decision-making) leads to the hypothesis that the success of companies in transition economies in acquiring marketing capabilities is influenced by the nature of their ownership (Fahy et al., 2000: 68). The basic problem with this study is the general application of specific and narrow criteria of success to companies with different ownership and history in CEE. With the aim of examining differences in innovative climate and culture between East and West, Susanj (2000) applies an analytical framework based on Western theories of organisational innovation and of the role of climate and culture in this innovation. The framework is not refined to reflect issues of transformation, and there is a suspicion that the author has missed something. Without any theoretical approach, Dickenson et al. (2000) discuss the applicability to CEE of five Western management models: Total Quality Management (TQM), ISO 9000, Quality Awards, Business Process Re-engineering and a special Soviet-Western Hybrid model. The authors assess the applicability of the models by analysing the requirements they pose for the enterprises and the society in which they are to be applied, without mentioning the possibility of adapting these models to the CEE culture. Contrary to these five contributions, three studies acknowledge the need to evolve approaches that take the circumstances in the CEE into account. Bornstein (2001) adopts a conceptual approach, in which he develops the notion of restructuring in order to reflect specific transformational issues. Based on this framework, he analysed the performance of former SOEs in the manufacturing sector in Hungary, the Czech Republic and Poland (Bornstein, 2001: 190–5). The selection and interpretation of indicators represents a particular challenge, and different indicators should be used in the different phases of restructuring, e.g. profitability indicators can be used only after strategic restructuring (Bornstein, 2001: 196). However, the conclusion that Multinational Corporations (MNCs) are preferable as a means of restructuring in CEE does not result from this approach, but from other researches.1 Grancelli (1995) discusses how best to study organisational change in SOEs in CEE and argues that the approaches used are nothing but a ‘way of not seeing’ (Grancelli, 1995: 2). His analysis implies that the conventional East-West comparison is not relevant. The East is also to be compared with the West during the pre-industrial or protoindustrial period and with third world countries. On this basis, he argues that we need a theory that explains the interplay between


institutional and organisational changes in conditions marked by a high degree of structural and cultural continuity with the past regime. Motwani et al. (2001) conduct an analysis of the operations and management literature dealing with transitional countries. They look at main research issues, trends over time in number of articles, country focus, country profile of researchers, research methodology, topic, and comparison with operations and management literature in general. They conclude that we need more knowledge on change over time, theory building and comparison of CEE with developing countries. In sum, most studies apply Western theories without any adaptation. The approaches are too general to be helpful, too narrow to reflect the complexity of the issues and fail to refer to the specific problems of transformation. Only one contribution has actually invested in developing a new approach for the study of transformation, while two suggest beginning such a search. Ethnocentrism is thus a particular characteristic of CEE enterprise level innovation studies.

Type of conclusions In accordance with the intention of the studies to contribute to the solution of problems in CEE, the conclusions of the studies are actionoriented. It is necessary to develop policies, which motivate firms to enter a learning cycle and facilitate the formation and operation of learning networks (Bessant and Francis, 1999). Barriers to innovation must be surmounted at every level, and qualifications and structures must be developed, based on existing potentials (Staudt, 1994). Firms should also develop a culture that emphasises specific innovative organisational values, such as pioneering, being at the forefront of new technology and searching for new markets (Susanj, 2000). Dickenson et al. (2000: 55) propose the creation of an organisational and educational infrastructure to facilitate the implementation of Western TQM systems. Since FDI has proven to be an effective mechanism for developing important capabilities, the attitude towards foreign investment in the region should be changed (Fahy et al., 2000). Bornstein (2001) suggests inviting foreign strategic investors to help expand the participation of transition economies in the globalisation of production. Two contributions suggest more research. We need more relevant comparisons, for instance with developing countries (Grancelli, 1995; Motwani et al., 2001), more knowledge about organisational change over time (Grancelli, 1995; Motwani et al., 2001), and theories to explain the interplay between institutional and organisational changes in conditions marked

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by a high degree of structural and cultural continuity with the past regime (Grancelli, 1995). In sum, six contributions suggest doing things like the West. Western institutions, practices and cultures should be introduced, and to this end FDI is an effective means. Only two are critical and point to the need for knowledge about the CEE. It is my contention that many of these suggestions, which are not based on thorough knowledge of the issues at stake in CEE, are too simple and unlikely to enable the development of local innovative capabilities.

Towards a new research strategy As illustrated in the first section of this chapter, my research experiences have taught me the value of acquiring first-hand empirical information and of exploring the field. I have argued in the last section that simple deduction from Western-based theories seriously reduces the possibility of creating useful knowledge for the local circumstances. Empirical, historical and contextual knowledge of enterprise level innovation in the CEE is needed. As pointed out by Flyvbjerg (2001: 73), ‘…concrete, context-dependent knowledge is more valuable than the vain search for predictive theories and universals’. Concrete context-dependent knowledge is particularly needed in unique situations of transformation (see Steger’s chapter in this volume), in which it certainly can be discussed which theoretical approaches could be adequate (see Balaton in this volume), since no approach has been designed for this purpose. More specifically, I suggest that innovation (and other) studies in CEE need to be designed in a highly contextual and historical manner, including the following aspects: first, the heritage from socialism; second, the industrial culture; third, the context of the firms in terms of networks, institutions and infrastructure; and fourth, the existing innovation potentials in CEE companies and society. Further, I suggest that middle range approaches need to be constructed in dialogue with empirical input, and that concepts and theories should be developed flexibly in order to reflect the ongoing processes of change and learning. To support this work, new more adequate comparative reference points should be found. Empirical research is at the centre of this strategy. Following the requirements mentioned above, knowledge is needed on overall, macro-level developments as well as on micro-level processes. This calls for a combination, or triangulation, of different


empirical research techniques, and in my work, like that of Steger and Balaton in this volume, I have combined different empirical methods flexibly with a focus on qualitative studies.

Studying the macro-level Following from the suggestions outlined above, it is necessary to establish the economic and institutional context in which the agents of innovation operate. I have approached the issue of context at two levels. One is the ‘objective’ macro-societal level as portrayed in statistics and documents and in information from key persons or ‘experts’. The other level is the context as perceived from the viewpoint of the human agents in enterprises (i.e. a Verstehen approach). In this section, I focus on the first level. Macro-level statistics in Hungary and Poland are usually accessible, although during most of the nineties were often not current. However, more detailed and specific statistics have been more difficult to find. I have sought industrial statistics that deal with investment, sales, production, employment, number and size of enterprises, branch structure and development by branch as well as regionally. The search for such information at the beginning of the 1990s, when I started research on technological change in Hungarian manufacturing, led to new insights about the institutional structure of and change in the Hungarian public sector. These insights resulted from ‘detective’ work, in which networking, the use of experts and a good deal of luck was involved.2 The data collection and publication practices were based on sectors, in accordance with the planning traditions of the former socialist government.3 Each ministry or ministerial department took care of its own data collection. For instance, the Ministry of Agriculture provided information about the food processing industry, while data on other manufacturing industries were collected and processed in the Ministry of Economy. Regional level data were not available, only nationally aggregated data organised by sector. Procedures were relatively slow, and published data were already some years old at the date of their publication. Data were generally not meant for the general public but for the ministers of State and the specialists in the ministries. I managed to get permission from co-operative people in the Central Statistical Office to copy some sheets. In the second half of the 1990s, things got better as the Central Statistical Office launched a publication programme in English. In Poland, where I have conducted research since 1998, many statistics are still only published in Polish.

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The interpretation of official statistical information is particularly difficult, which has made me cautious. The difficulties include exchange rate instability, artificial pricing, inflation rate fluctuations and sometimes the use of non-monetary units of measurement. The categorisation of data also represents a challenge. How are industrial branches defined? What is an enterprise?4 How is employment/ unemployment measured? What is the territorial level of aggregation of data (nation, province, county)? Thus problems of accessibility, structure, language and age of data in most of the 1990s represented barriers to macro-level empirical knowledge in Hungary. The situation got easier, as international organisations started to publish statistics covering the whole region, and as the governments, together with the counties, started to publish cross-sectoral regional statistics after the territorial reforms.5 The access to reports and to policy documents, for example related to science and technology policy, required a good deal of networking, starting maybe with colleagues at the university connecting me to their connections in ministries and organisations, who finally could provide me with different documents, as well as give me their ‘expert opinion’ on different topics (compare Hutchings in this book). This work was much more than ‘bibliographic’ and could in no way be done from a desk in Denmark. The work required considerable resources in terms of time, money and psychological strength to go on and meet new people, the kindness of whom I always admired.

Gaining access to organisations As mentioned, case studies are my preferred research design when studying innovation (Yin, 1994; Eisenhardt, 1989). In my CEE research, the establishment of one’s own empirical database seemed to be the only way to tackle the topic, due to the lack of relevant information from other sources. The following remarks summarise my experience of case studies in enterprises and business development organisations during ten years of research from 1993 to 2002. My research into the business development organisations in Poland and Hungary included establishing an overview of the field and an examination of the capabilities of selected case organisations. However, I discovered that here was indeed a moving target, as the field was changing so rapidly. The stepwise reorganisation of the state in both countries led to the disappearance of state departments and offices and the creation of new ones. In this process I found that responsibilities were sometimes moved back and forth between


ministries and departments, so that one year I would meet one person at one address, another year another person at a different address to learn about the evolution of the same issues. I also discovered how international organisations and foreign governments independent of the national governments had established agencies of business development and developed different projects of knowledge transfer. The European Union was certainly not the only player on this arena. Consequently no one I met had a clear overview on the field of business development organisations.6 Serious investment in networking was needed. Chance also played a role, as when I, in Györ in Hungary, stumbled over a small American agency working to support local entrepreneurship. There seemed to be no way of making sure that the overview of organisations was complete (Lorentzen, 2000). Constructing a sample of relevant companies in Hungary or Poland to investigate has been no less of a challenge, and certainly not a desk job. In relation to Hungary, I managed to find a privately published company register in German (Compalmanach Kiadói Kft, 1996), which served as a starting point for selecting and contacting companies. I did not have the same luck with Poland. Instead I asked for help from local Chambers of Commerce and Regional Development Agencies or from national bodies maintaining contact with individual businesses. It was not always easy to convince people from these organisations to help me, due to time pressure, and maybe because they did not believe that their member companies were ‘good enough’ for me. In the end, staff members from these organisations established contacts for me, and sometimes provided an interpreter – free of charge. At the beginning of the 1990s, poor technology and infrastructure hampered contact with enterprises (see Hutching’s chapter in this book). When I started doing research in Hungary in 1993, telephone lines were very few. Fax and telephone numbers blocked each other and were continuously being changed. Mail was slow. Letters disappeared. The new ICT technologies (cell phones and internet) were at their very beginning. The mere establishment of contact required many resources, whereas the admittance to a company was not a major problem. Entry was gained once the company management was convinced that I was not practising industrial espionage or tax control! Western researchers were still considered exotic, and their number not yet overwhelming. My more recent research in Poland has run into the opposite problem. E-mail and cell phones work wonderfully, mail tolerably, and the fax and phone system satisfactorily. However, the motivation of the

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enterprises to receive researchers seems to have decreased. Faced with the hazards of the market economy, managers have become considerably busier. More researchers are around, and suspicion towards strangers has not decreased, since foreign visitors often represent foreign firms wanting to get a foothold in the market or buy out local companies. But once the permission for access is given, often with the help of a local organisation, it has been my experience that information flows freely in a friendly atmosphere. I did not feel particularly good about taking the time and resources of the staff in enterprises and agencies this way but I do a great deal to show my gratitude. It goes without saying that I return their kindness by sending reports of the work I have done with them and with their help.

The construction site for knowledge in CEE innovation Reflecting upon my research experiences, it is clear to me how my approach to empirical research has moved from the testing of hypotheses towards increasingly open and exploratory methods. This is paralleled by a shift of balance from quantitative methods towards qualitative ones. In my early Mexico study, I used a questionnaire, based on a couple of hypotheses and ended up with a quantitative description of the company sample. However, path-breaking insights resulted from more informal conversations with managers, production leaders and foremen, making me reconsider the evidence from new angles and develop alternative theoretical approaches. More than the questionnaires, these conversations represented the construction site for knowledge (Kvale, 1996). When starting research in Hungary, I soon realised that the approach had to be basically exploratory, due to the unique situation of transformation, with its lack of relevant theories and concepts and its backlog of collected empirical information. When approaching this research, I was encouraged by the work of Andersen et al. (1995), who discuss the art of doing field studies. They argue in favour of professional intuition and creativity as a guideline in field studies, as an alternative to traditional, linear rules of research methodology (see also Nojonen in this book). I particularly liked a criterion of success suggested by Kristensen (1995: 113), who felt that his study of technological change in Danish enterprises was successful because it upset his previously established picture of the world. That is, it was successful because he learned something new. Crisis, reflection and change of practice are part of the research process and the key to new understandings. The researcher has


to be open-minded or, more specifically, to exert empathy, humility and curiosity. I recognised my experiences from the Mexico study, and the work of Andersen et al. (1995) inspired me to develop my empirical research techniques and to trust the new ideas emerging from this work. The question is how one copes professionally with open-mindedness in research work. As I argued above, qualitative methods have a central role in the type of research that I conduct. But what specifically makes qualitative studies so appropriate when studying transforming contexts such as CEE? Quality refers to ‘what kind’, to the ‘essential character’ of something; quantity refers to ‘how much’, ‘how large’, the ‘amount’ of something (Kvale, 1996: 67). Knowledge of quality is necessary to develop a meaningful study of the quantity (Kvale, 1996: 69). Knowledge of the quality, or the essential character, of the society is particularly needed in the study of the CEEs, because of their uniqueness and complexity. It is not enough to extrapolate and import knowledge from Western Europe. Furthermore, in CEE, a processual view is necessary, because transformation is about emerging structures and processes. These cannot be grasped by counting. In the first place, it is the content or quality, and not the quantity, which is relevant for research into CEE. In my research, I have found a certain combination of qualitative and quantitative analysis helpful. When studying innovation at company level, I thus add a certain number of company cases, which I research qualitatively by interviews and observations. The ‘sample’ need not be very large and I add cases until I feel that I know what to expect. This is what Glaser and Strauss (1967) call theoretical saturation, which is the point at which incremental learning is minimal because the researchers have seen the phenomena before. In my research this saturation tends to happen after about 14 cases, and I end up with a sample of 20–25 company cases, on the basis of which it is possible even to identify certain patterns, quantitatively speaking. My choice of qualitative data-gathering methods in my research in companies and organisations in Hungary and Poland was guided by a wish to be very open. I felt a dilemma between the need to be open and empathetic on the one hand, and the need to keep the research on track on the other. My solution to this dilemma was to use open-ended or semi-structured interviews. This methodology is often used in, for instance, psychology, but not in innovation studies, which are based on quantitative research traditions. I therefore experimented a great deal to develop useful interview guides and solve problems of terminology. When developing the interview guide, I faced an eternal dilemma

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between making the interview guide sufficiently comprehensive and minimising the time demanded by my interviewees. The open-ended interview is what Kvale (1996) calls a ‘research interview’. The research interview is different from, at the one extreme, an open conversation and at the other extreme, a highly structured questionnaire. The interview is conducted according to an interview guide, which contains certain themes and suggests questions (Kvale, 1996: 22), enabling the researcher to define and control the situation (Kvale, 1996: 6). The interview involves careful listening by the researcher and an exchange of views between the interviewer and the interviewee. The qualitative interview is thus a construction site for knowledge (Kvale, 1996: 14), which involves mutual learning for both participants. The interviewer gets to understand the life (the background for the decisions) of the interviewee from this person’s own perspective. On this basis, new empirically grounded theories or generalisations can be developed. Moreover, the interviewee learns from the reflections initiated by the questions about his situation and gets new insights, on the basis of which he or she might change his/her situation (Kvale, 1996: 74). In my research on innovation, regional and institutional development in Hungary and Poland, semi-structured or open-ended research interviews have been the major tools of data gathering (Lorentzen, 1996; Lorentzen, 1999a; Lorentzen, 1999b; Lorentzen, 2000). Interviews were conducted in samples of companies and with representatives from the key organisations in regional development, business development and science and technology. The interview situations have mostly been a very positive and inspiring experience for me. Usually the interviewees have been happy with the interest that I have expressed in their organisation and their work, and they were pleased to have the opportunity to talk about their activities and plans. I have often felt the interview situation to be a construction site of knowledge for all participants. As a researcher, I have gained new insights related to qualities, dependencies, priorities and viewpoints in the organisation. For their part, the interviewees have, by listening to my questions and getting the opportunity to talk, started to reflect about their situation in new ways. Often we have ended up in a friendly exchange of views and experiences and small talk. However, I gradually came to realise that my semi-structured interview guide may also hide important issues and processes. While forcing me to reflect upon my preferred theories and hypotheses, the method did not prevent me from falling into the trap of ‘not seeing’.


For example, my interview guide did not refer directly to issues of power and politics (see Soulsby in this book), yet these were exactly the crucial factors in the Polish case referred to above. It was the openendedness and not the structure of the interview guide that eventually led to this insight. Qualitative research has an immanent danger of becoming subjective. Temporary subjectivity seems to be part of the research process connected to the personal contact and empathy involved in interviewing. In my research in Poland and Hungary, I have experienced several times how initial interpretations of a research interview underwent considerable modification as the number of cases grew. Also discussions with local ‘experts’ and research colleagues about my findings have helped me to balance my interpretations of qualitative data and achieve the kind of objectivity which Kvale (1996: 65) calls ‘intersubjectivity’. Also the problem of individualism connected with case studies is a danger in my research, because of the small numbers of companies and organisations. I try to avoid individualism in two ways: a research design that encloses the context of the organisations, and having a certain number of cases. I study the context by mapping out relevant economic and institutional circumstances (see also Kvale, 1996: 57) and asking the interviewees about their relation to and view of the context. The latter is important because the actors base their decisions on their perception of the context, not on its existence as such (e.g. Berger and Luckmann, 1966). For instance, the company representatives whom I have met in different CEE countries prefer not to benefit from objectively existing possibilities of subsidies or consultancy because they do not trust the public sector.

Conclusion The purpose of this chapter has been to argue in favour of exploratory and qualitative research methods in innovation studies in the CEE, as an alternative to the usual deductive, macro-oriented and quantitative methodologies. The field needs empirically grounded theoretical development. In connection with this, a second purpose has been to discuss how to cope professionally with open-endedness in the fieldwork without losing direction in the research. The chapter suggests a number of important points. Fieldwork is a must. There is no alternative to being in the field because of the poor theoretical development and the backlog of em-

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pirical documentation. Micro-level case studies are a key to complex and holistic insights about the conditions of innovation in transforming societies. Moreover, context and legacy must be dealt with as serious determining conditions for decisions in private and public organisations. Objective contextual conditions may matter less than the perception of these conditions in organisations. The research interview with people in CEE organisations represents a valuable construction site for knowledge for all participants. The open-endedness of the interview is at least as important as its structure. Flexibility, perseverance, empathy and humility are important qualities for the researcher wanting to gain insights into transforming organisations and societies. Little of this will come as a surprise to international business practitioners, who are used to approaching different national and organisational cultures. However, I believe that international co-operation would gain from focusing more on mutual learning. Acknowledging local capabilities, differences in the local institutional and economic structural context, and the perceptions of local managers are of enormous value when developing joint international projects. Better qualitative knowledge is likely to enhance the performance of green field investments, joint ventures as well as technology transfer projects into the CEE.

Notes 1. For example, MNCs obtained clear control, integrated the company in the MNC’s international structure, brought a body of management know-how, paid above average wages, modernised and expanded the capital stock and improved the quality of output (Bornstein, 2001: 196–8). 2. The project on technological development in Hungarian industry after 1989 was conducted from 1992 to 1997. 3. The information on the data collection in the planned economy is based on my impressions during many visits in Poland and Hungary since 1992. 4. The question ‘what is an enterprise?’ relates to changes of legal status and the splitting up of different state-owned production units. 5. Very useful are the annual ‘Transition Reports’ since 1994 (European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, 1998) and ‘Countries in Transition’ (The Vienna Institute for International Economic Studies, 2000). Polish and Hungarian statistical yearbooks have become available partly in English. International organisations such as the EU have supported work which produces statistical documentation on the development of small and medium size enterprises in both Hungary and Poland (e.g. Laky, 1994; Czako and Vajda, 1993; Polish Agency for Enterprise Development, 2001).

96 Fieldwork in Transforming Societies 6. For example the so-called SCI-TECH programme financed by the EU aimed at mapping out the field and suggesting reorganisation. The Danish Technological Institute was involved in this work.

Suggested further readings Andersen, I., Borum, F., Kristensen, P.H. and Karnøe, P. (1995) On the Art of Doing Field Studies: An Experience-Based Research Methodology (Copenhagen: Handelshøjskolens Forlag). Eisenhardt, K.M. (1989) ‘Building theories from case study research’, Academy of Management Review, 14(4), 532–48. Flyvbjerg, B. (2001) Making Social Science Matter: Why Social Inquiry Fails and How it Can Count Again (New York: Cambridge University Press). Kvale, S. (1996) Interviews: an Introduction to Qualitative Research Interviewing, (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage).

6 Researching Organisations in Hungary: Practical Experience and Methodological Reflections Károly Balaton

Introduction The radical political, social and economic changes in Hungary, as in the other post-socialist countries of Central and Eastern Europe (CEE), have created a new arena for business organisations. The macro-level changes have had direct consequences for firms. Formerly high levels of state ownership have been dramatically reduced by the privatisation of formerly state-owned firms and the emergence of new private companies. Foreign investors have entered the country and bought up existing firms or set up green-field plants. Within two years of the end of CEE communism, the Soviet trading system (the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance, or COMECON), which had been a major source of sales opportunities, started to fail and collapsed. Companies formerly exporting to the COMECON market had to look for new customers and markets. As the domestic market offered few relevant sales options, due to severe economic recession in the country, companies had to search for new international markets. They soon recognised that their existing products and services were not meeting the requirements of these markets, and many went bankrupt or were forced to downsize radically. While the first three years of economic transformation in Hungary were mainly a story of recession and collapse of firms, later on signs of growth and innovation were increasingly observable. The first positive indications were connected to the increasing investment of foreign firms. Parallel with this, new private Hungarian firms were set up and many of them started to grow, innovate and adapt to emerging market conditions. During the 1990s, my colleagues and I were eager to understand the changes that were experienced within business firms. Several research 97


projects were started to discover the characteristics of organisational transformation and the emerging behaviour of enterprises. When we began the analysis of organisational changes, we were not sure which theoretical approaches and research methods would be adequate to discover the nature and process of changes. As I prepared the first case study on a state-owned service firm in June 1991 (Balaton, 1991), it came as a surprise to me that it had introduced hardly any changes in organisational strategy, structure and processes. I was not sure whether there had been no changes, or whether my approach to the study had been inadequate to discover what was happening within the company. During the following years, a lot of empirical evidence on changes was collected, and I began to understand that selecting an appropriate methodology was crucial to analysing and explaining organisational changes in a transformational period. In this chapter, I share my experiences with the reader, offering examples that may help international managers to understand the problems of doing business in transforming countries. Based on experiences of conducting organisational research in Hungary, this chapter focuses on the following methodological issues. • The effects of researcher-researcher relationships on understanding field situations and their implications for later theory building. This methodological issue came to the surface during our empirical studies with colleagues from different cultural or political backgrounds, who might interpret the same empirical evidence quite differently. • The influence that respondents should have in shaping researchers’ accounts. We have always sought feedback from respondents in order to increase confidence in our interpretations of their answers. Feedback to respondents has the advantage of being capable to correct misunderstandings that might accrue during the fieldwork. But this technique may result in the omission of data that reflect negatively on conduct of organisational members. • The vulnerability of apparently objective quantitative methods to the effects of respondents whose motives and interests (other than telling the truth) can confuse the findings. • The advantages of combining qualitative and quantitative research methods. Relying on either quantitative or qualitative methods risks limiting the scope of the conclusions. Numerous publications related to empirical studies in Western Europe and North America have argued in favour of combining different research methods in a

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process of triangulation (Jick, 1979; Miles and Huberman, 1994). The need for triangulation is even more relevant in case studies of organisations in transforming economies, because high levels of uncertainty are inherent in the historically unprecedented shift from centrally planned to market economy. The use of multiple methods is likely to be helpful in developing an understanding of such organisational situations. The chapter unfolds as follows. The next four sections describe, contrast and evaluate research projects from before and after the changes in Hungary, providing the context for exploring methodological issues in a transforming society. I then move to a consideration of the researcher as a subjective agent and a discussion of the problems of involving respondents in the process of developing research explanations. The final few sections examine the advantages and disadvantages of qualitative and quantitative research methods in a transforming context, before drawing some conclusions.

Lessons from pre-transformation research projects Empirical organisational research is of course not a new phenomenon in the former socialist countries. I have been engaged in such projects since 1980, when I first examined the organisational structure of large Hungarian industrial enterprises (Máriás et al., 1981). At that time, our intention was to get a general picture on how organisations were structured and managed under conditions of direct state supervision. Sixty large industrial enterprises were selected from four branches: machinery, light engineering, chemical and food. A questionnaire survey was conducted with top enterprise managers, and data were analysed using statistical methods like correlation, regression, factor and cluster analyses. Quantitative methodology was chosen in order to analyse a large sample of enterprises and draw up a characteristic picture on the organisational structure of Hungarian industrial enterprises. In order to have deeper information about the motives behind structural decisions, interviews were conducted in 16 companies from the larger sample. The interviews offered the chance for the researchers to understand the rationales of decision-makers concerning the solutions chosen for shaping organisation structures. It was our conclusion that dependency on state-level institutions led to the centralisation of decisionmaking within business organisations (Máriás et al., 1981).


This research work led to important conclusions regarding the methodology of empirical organisational research. It was felt that the combination of both qualitative and quantitative methods provided significant advantages in understanding complex organisational situations. During the interviews, the managers gave explanations for their structural choices and such information contributed to our deeper understanding of organisation design processes. The questionnaire survey, on the other hand, provided the advantage of studying larger samples of organisations and analysing connections among data by using sophisticated mathematical-statistical methods. Studies of larger samples of organisations always raise questions of gaining access to company data. In Hungary before the transformation, such research was mainly possible with the help of central state institutions. The fact that the highest-level political decision-making bodies initiated our research work helped us in getting access to company data. A letter was written by the state institution to company managers asking them to provide both support for our research and data for the study. Without such support it would not have been possible to get data from the companies. During our interviews, we had the opportunity to examine the way of thinking and the modes of explanation adopted by company managers. It was our general observation that they did not try to hide any relevant information from us. There was one area of inquiry, however, where we felt that managers did not provide true information. This area was connected to conflict within the company and between the company and central state administration units. Managers tended to deny the existence of such conflicts, some making clear statements to this effect. Based on other – mainly informal – sources of information, we were convinced that they told us what should be the case and not what actually happened. Such managerial behaviour was in accordance with the official opinion of that period, viz. that conflicts did not exist in the centrally planned socialist economy. Another major research project in which I was engaged during the 1980s examined the organisational consequences of using new technologies in the service sector. This project was part of an international research endeavour comparing empirical findings in six European countries (Child and Loveridge, 1990). The participation of the Hungarian research team was only possible after getting ministry-level permission. Top university managers were not in the position to authorise such research, and, when permission was finally given, it had taken more then one year to acquire it. The long delay was due partially to slow bureau-

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cratic processes and partially to the uncertainty of bureaucrats as to whether permission should be given or denied – at least, this was the perception of the researchers involved (see Nojonen’s chapter in this book). After gaining ministry-level approval for the research, the organisations selected for the study were ready to participate. It was relatively easy to get the agreement of the top management, whether in hospitals, banks or retailing units. The major lesson of our empirical organisational research in Hungary during the 1980s was that access to organisations depended on central – generally ministry-level – approval. A positive reply from authorities could be expected for research projects associated with the current priorities of state administration. Informal connections to decision makers could also help in getting approval for the research project. When ministry-level approval was acquired, business organisations were ready to participate in the project and top managers of organisations were prepared to be interviewed and to provide relevant documents to the researchers. Compared with access to company data during the transformational period, it was our view that companies were much more open to providing data for research work during the 1980s. When ministry-level managers were convinced about the relevance and importance of the research, their influence on company executives cleared the way to gaining access to company data.

Studying organisation in a transformation economy Transformation from a centrally planned to a market economy is a change process without historical precedence. The uniqueness of the transformational problems raised the question of what theoretical approaches and what methods could be used in order to develop knowledge and get relevant information on organisational change (see Nojonen’s chapter in this book). My collaborators and I faced this dilemma in 1990, when the first drafts were being prepared for a research project to study organisations in the period of transformation. As there was no theoretical approach designed to study organisations in a transformation period, the only choice was to rely on existing concepts of organisational change and try to use them to analyse organisations in Hungary. Four related concepts were selected (Balaton et al., 1990): • Selection processes, by which some organisational forms and practices survive and others do not.


• Learning processes, by which organisational forms and practices are modified on the basis of interpretations of experience. • Decision processes, by which organisational forms and practices are chosen deliberately as part of a strategy. • Diffusion, or institutional, processes, by which organisational forms and practices spread through the population of organisations. In addition to studying these processes of change, we also saw structures and actors as important factors. Among structural characteristics, both macro- and micro-level factors were studied. The selection of variables was influenced by our perception that enterprise level changes are the consequences of transformation at the macro-level. At the macro-level, political, economic, social, ethical, legal and technological variables were analysed. At the level of the business firm, emergent strategies and organisational structures were at the forefront of our analysis. Among social actors, owners, managers, analysers (technocrats) and lower level organisational members were taken into consideration. This process-structure-actor framework (Crozier and Friedberg, 1980) seemed to offer a relevant way of describing and understanding organisational changes in a transformational period. At the beginning of the research work, we had rather limited information on what was changing and how it was changing in organisations, so it was not possible to construct a questionnaire with adequate items. The questions to be asked had been developed during the research process (Eisenhardt, 1989). Due to this difficulty we started the research by using a qualitative case study methodology. We interviewed managers at various levels in organisations as well as lower level employees. The interviews were mainly unstructured giving interviewees the chance to express their thoughts on and understandings of the changes. Drawing also on company documents, we prepared case studies of 21 Hungarian firms during the first phase of the project. The second phase involved comparative analysis of case studies. During the comparison, we came to recognise that ownership was a relevant factor in explaining the differences among organisations. Structuring our case studies according to ownership resulted in the following groups of organisations (Balaton, 1996): • Formerly state-owned companies: 11 organisations, • Hungarian private owned firms: five organisations, • Joint ventures with foreign partners: five organisations.

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Comparative analysis of firms belonging to these categories showed relevant differences in the content and process of strategy development. Formerly state-owned firms mainly struggled with survival and crisis management. They had to find new markets, renew their products and technologies, and acquire financial resources for the renewal. Strategy development could be characterised as a centralised planning type of process, partially influenced by the former annual and five-year planning systems. Private Hungarian owned firms mainly developed growth and diversification strategies. Diversification was seen as one possible way of organisational growth. Growing and being larger meant that they became more important and accepted by other organisations in a culture where previously large enterprises mainly formed the organisational population. Joint ventures with foreign partners followed the development pattern of their parent organisations. Strategic planning systems and organisations were developed according to the business systems of their parents. The foreign partners had a generally decisive role in managing the company. As the foreign-owned companies showed different patterns of organisation development compared to the Hungarian owned ones, it seemed to be relevant to study the behaviour of foreign-owned companies located in Hungary. As mentioned earlier, access to company data was relatively easy in Hungary during the eighties, especially with higher level support to the research project. During the 1990s, approval for company level research became the responsibility of company executives and we had to recognise that many more data became sensitive and unavailable to researchers. This change in accessibility of data was primarily due to fears that information might be acquired and used by competitors. In the case of foreign-owned firms working in Hungary, we had the impression that local managers were not sure whether they should provide information or not. The uncertainty they felt often resulted in refusal to co-operate in research work.

Studying foreign-owned companies: understanding cultural differences Foreign-owned firms have had a decisive role in the Hungarian transformation process. In 2001, foreign-owned firms working in the country accounted for about 80 per cent of the total Hungarian export volume. In our initial sample, foreign firms showed different patterns of organisation development and it seemed to be important to examine these companies in more detail.


Three groups of organisations with different cultural background were selected for analysis. The study started with the analysis of Austrian and German firms investing in Hungary. All the firms had Austrian parent connections but one of them was originally German. The sample consisted of five firms working in the construction materials, electronics, insurance, financial services and food industries. The second sample included Dutch companies located in Hungary. The four companies in the sample worked in the food and detergents (two companies), household equipment, and painting materials industries. The third sample comprised South African firms. The culturally distant South African firms were consciously chosen in order to be able to investigate larger cultural differences in the parent company behaviour. The analysis of foreign-owned firms with different cultural background raised the question of how a Hungarian researcher could understand the motivations and the behaviour of the foreign partner. How could we be sure that we properly understood the explanations given by the foreign manager? To avoid the problem of misunderstanding due to cultural differences, a foreign research partner was involved in each case. For the study of Austrian and German firms, an Austrian professor took part in the research work. A Dutch consultant working in Hungary during the period of analysis helped in the study of the Dutch firms. In case of the South African companies, a professor from Pretoria participated, at least in the early phases of the research work. The foreign research partners provided useful help in understanding the strategic intentions of the foreign companies and the background of their business practices implemented in the Hungarian firm. Although it was not always possible for foreign research partners to be present throughout the whole research project, their partial participation proved useful for the Hungarian researchers.

Privatisation as an influence on organisational changes It can be seen from the analysis above that patterns of and changes in ownership had a strong influence on the structure and behaviour of enterprises. During the mid-1990s – between 1994 and 1996 – we conducted a study within the European Community’s Action for Co-operation in Economics (ACE) programme, aiming to discover the consequences of privatisation for Hungarian firms.1 The research work was based on retrospective case studies (Adorján et al., 1996), covering the period between 1989 and 1993. We collected structured data for the major functional areas of company activity. Data collection was

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based on interviews and analysis of company documents. The sample comprised six companies: two clothing firms, one poultry company, one firm engaged in maintenance of electronic equipment, and two firms working in the machine industry. Each company was privatised during the period of analysis. The longitudinal approach (Pettigrew, 1990) allowed us to study the timing of organisational changes in relation to privatisation and we identified three distinct phases of change: changes before privatisation, changes during privatisation, and changes after privatisation. The findings suggested that changes related to privatisation depended on what had happened before privatisation, especially what actions had been taken to change market structure and technological level. Companies that had started to export to Western markets during the 1980s stood a relatively good chance of surviving and being privatised successfully. In our sample, the two clothing companies started to produce using the designs of their West-European partners. During the early 1990s, the former commercial partners became the new owners of the local firms and helped them to change their technological and organisational systems, and provided stable product markets for them. Privatisation was a major turning point in the life of the enterprises studied. The six cases showed different methods of privatisation. The two clothing companies were privatised by selling their assets mainly to foreign owners. The poultry company went through a long process of privatisation and downsizing, and its value decreased due to a lack of profitable business options. In the end, a foreign owner bought what was left of the company. The managers and workers took ownership of the household equipment maintenance firm. While identification with the company increased and the company managed to diversify its profile, inadequate financing prevented the much-needed innovation. Banks and private individuals acquired ownership of the two machine industry companies. However privatisation in itself did not provide a general cure for the companies. Privatisation had positive consequences in cases when it took place in parallel with solving the major problems of organisations concerned. These problems generally comprised access to new markets, technological upgrading, quality improvement, and provision of financial resources for daily activities and for investments. When privatisation was unable to solve these problems, the changes after privatisation could be characterised as downsizing, cost cutting, and a struggle for survival, in many cases connected to inadequate liquidity of the firms.


The role of researcher as a subjective agent Understanding and interpreting organisational changes in the transformational period depends on the theoretical and methodological approach chosen by the researcher. A researcher adopting a positivist stance in organisational research aims to gather ‘objective’ data, which minimises the influence of the respondent as a subjective agent. On the other hand, a researcher using a social constructivist approach argues that facts cannot exist without being perceived and interpreted by involved social actors, such as interviewees. However, the situation is rather more complicated in transformational research settings, since the constituent changes include philosophical and political orientations as well (see Soulsby chapter) As a result, the views of both organisational members and researchers can be strongly influenced by their own personal beliefs and attitudes to the changes. Is it really possible to form an independent view about what is going on in transforming economies (see Steger’s chapter in this book)? I am convinced that this is an issue worthy of deeper analysis, but before going further, I would like to mention a few examples from our research projects. Our first post-1990 project included former state-owned enterprises and involved interviewing top managers, who, in many cases, had been nominated under the previous system. Reactions, even among researchers, to these nomenklatura managers, were diverse, but two contrasting opinions could be observed. First, some people held that all top managers appointed by the previous system should be removed, as they had mainly been put into position by political considerations and through their connections with the Communist Party. Although in Hungary since the early 1980s, political reliability had not in itself been enough to get into a top managerial position, it had been a necessary condition of appointment to executive posts (besides professional qualifications and managerial capabilities). Second, others argued that only low performing or politically compromised managers should be removed from the top positions of state-owned enterprises. Thus companies that performed acceptably should have their executives left in place. In reporting early research findings, I commented that probably the best management solution lay between these two standpoints (Balaton, 1996), but, in discussing this paper at a faculty seminar, I was criticised for being biased against those who had held managerial positions in the socialist system. It was no accident that this critical colleague had

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formerly been a general manager of a state-owned company, who had been dismissed after the political changes in 1990. As a Hungarian researcher of organisational changes during the early 1990s, it was obvious that he would hold a different view on this issue. After the seminar we had a private discussion about our different views, but they did not get any closer. We concluded that our different historical experiences were so strongly built in our viewpoints that it would not be possible to agree on a common interpretation of the findings. Studies on foreign direct investment create another area where the researcher’s subjectivity is a real issue. Working together with a foreign researcher in analysing Dutch companies located in Hungary, it became clear that observers with different scientific and cultural backgrounds could perceive the transformation in different ways. Conducting interviews together, we heard the views of Dutch managers on their Hungarian subordinates. These interviewees often described their Hungarian partners as lacking initiative and communication skills. While my Dutch research colleague was convinced by the examples given, I had doubts about whether the opinions expressed could be supported by empirical evidence. In my view, some of the cases demonstrated a lack of mutual understanding and communication by the Dutch business partner. The aims of the Dutch partner as the representative of the new owner were often not clearly communicated to the Hungarian employees, who were therefore afraid of forming their own opinion and preferred to take a defensive position until the foreign partner’s intentions became clearer. In other words, their behaviour was not so much influenced by lack of initiative as by the poor articulation of objectives by the foreign partner. Moreover, within the prevailing power balance, Hungarian employees did not feel able to say that they did not have enough guidance to take actions based on their own evaluation of the situation. After conducting the interviews, my Dutch colleague and I evaluated the findings and tried to come to a common understanding of the interview material. Discussion and evaluation of the different perceptions gave us the chance to consider our different cultural and empirical backgrounds and thereby come to a mutually acceptable interpretation of the information provided by our interviewees (see the chapters by Alt and Lang, and Illes and Rees in this book).

Feed-back of information to members of organisations studied A proper interpretation of organisational changes in transforming economies is a problematic issue. Individuals involved have different


interests and intentions and evaluate actions from different points of view. According to the positivist research tradition, the researcher should take a neutral standpoint and not being influenced by the emotions and values of the organisational members. However it is rather difficult to take such a standpoint in the practice of qualitative organisational research, because getting deep information during the interviews demands the creation of personal relationships with interviewees. At the same time, the interviewer should retain a certain distance in interpreting their responses. The picture formed about an organisation might be strongly influenced by the perceptions of the researcher, so there are strong arguments in favour of adopting a social constructivist perspective. Changes are interpreted in a different way depending on the significance of the transformation period for the individual concerned. Both the researcher and the respondent are influenced by these changes and their views are dependent on what they perceive as personal consequences. In case study research, it is possible to ask company managers to read and approve the case study material, a method we have used extensively during our research of transforming organisations. Sending the case studies for approval to the managers of organisations studied offered the chance to correct any mistakes or misunderstandings that occurred during the process of case study writing (Heller, 1969). However, the feedback may also have negative consequences for the content of the case study. In our experience, company managers tended to eliminate statements that gave a negative impression of their organisation, especially failures in managerial decision-making. In one case, managers did not allow us to include the organisational chart in the case study, a decision we did not understand since they had already given us a verbal description of the organisational hierarchy and division of labour.

The value of qualitative and quantitative research methods This chapter has so far dealt mainly with experiences related to qualitative research methods. As previously mentioned, we consciously started our research with qualitative methods in order to understand the nature or organisational changes during the transformation period. The qualitative studies gave us useful information on relevant issues and questions to be raised in our organisational analysis. My colleagues and I have prepared 41 case studies on transforming Hungarian organisations, which provided relevant information on organ-

Károly Balaton 109

isations belonging to different sectors and having different ownership structures. While qualitative methodologies are useful to discover characteristics of individual organisations and the processes of change, they do not provide a vehicle for drawing statistically generalisable conclusions. However, using quantitative techniques does not eliminate methodological problems arising from respondent subjectivity. We felt it was necessary to extend our research work with the use of quantitative methods to study and analyse a larger sample of organisations. The possibility was provided within the framework of a larger research project called ‘In Competition with the World’, initiated by Attila Chikán.2 The project covered broad areas of business activities and other factors connected to competitiveness. Our research was connected to the sub-theme ‘Management and Competitiveness’, in which we analysed strategies, organisational structures and managerial behaviour. The Competitiveness research project included two surveys of Hungarian enterprises, and we have plans to continue this quantitative research. The first survey was conducted in 1996 and included 325 business organisations. The researchers prepared a relatively long questionnaire and the survey was conducted with the help of trained university students (Chikán et al., 2002). Thirteen hundred top managers from the selected companies answered the questions. The survey was repeated in 1999 with 318 companies. The structure of the questionnaire was nearly the same in order to optimise comparability between the two surveys. Data collected by the surveys were analysed by using different statistical methods like descriptive statistics, factor and cluster analysis. Comparison of the company strategy clusters revealed that by 1999 the ‘state connection orientation’ has disappeared as a cluster of strategies, suggesting a strategic shift towards more market-oriented orientations – especially the strategy clusters of sales orientation and of product quality-technological level orientations. The continuing presence of other clusters demonstrates, however, that many Hungarian firms are still struggling with developing capabilities for successful market orientation.

Longitudinal study and quantitative techniques Transformation from centrally planned to market economy in former socialist countries of Central-East Europe has been taking place over a long period of time. We have learned during the last 13 years that


fundamental changes in economies and business organisations are not possible within a short period of time, and that understanding the change process needs information on the sequence of events in the change period. Qualitative research techniques provide good opportunities for following the changes in a small number of organisations, but we cannot arrive at statistically generalisable conclusions based on such small samples. In the case of quantitative surveys the process of transformation might be captured by a longitudinal approach that repeats a similar analysis every few years. The repeat surveys between 1996 and 1999 gave us data sets from which we could compare the strategies and organisational structures and analyse the changes between the two years. Although there were differences in the sample, it was possible to get relevant data on the direction of organisational changes. A possible third survey in the coming years could provide further evidence on the outcomes of organisational transformation.

The validity of data from questionnaire surveys In our long-term research design, the use of quantitative methods based on a questionnaire survey was planned to check whether data collected from a small sample of companies were valid throughout a larger population of organisations. Questionnaire surveys always raise the question of validity3 of data. In the case of postal questionnaires, the need to control for validity is extremely important, as the researchers do not have information on the circumstances in which the questions are answered. Due to this difficulty, we decided to use students to manage the questionnaire survey. They were present when the questions were answered and could provide information for managers in case there was uncertainty about the aim of the question. Despite such research assistance one can never be sure about the validity of data collected. Therefore it is recommended to include questions that provide mechanisms for checking the validity of data collected. Our questionnaire survey included the analysis of strategic planning methods used by companies. The questionnaire was designed in a matrix format, the rows listing a range of possible strategic methods and the columns allowing respondents the chance to indicate the extent of their knowledge and usage of them. We enumerated eight possible methods, one of which does not exist: SWOT-analysis, Scenario analysis, Porter’s industry analysis, Portfolio analysis, Value-chain analysis, Value-added portfolio analysis, Technological portfolio ana-

Károly Balaton 111

lysis, and Group decision-making techniques. Value-added portfolio analysis is a fictional method, included to discover whether company managers were able to spot it. Company managers responded as follows to value-added portfolio analysis: • • • • •

We have never heard of it: 30.9 %, We know of it but do not use it: 48.5 %, We have tried it but it proved to be inadequate: 10.3 %, We use it occasionally: 5.9 %, We use it regularly: 4.4 %.

It can be seen from the above answers that about 70 per cent of the respondents did not identify value-added portfolio analysis as a nonexistent method. It appears that company managers preferred not to admit that they had not heard of a method – named by a university research group – suggesting that they were influenced by motives other than ‘telling the truth’. If this is the case, it is not clear how much credence we can give to their answers about the other methods. It is possible that the managers’ desire to project a more positive picture about their strategic management knowledge is connected to their aspirations of seeking legitimacy in a period of turbulent change and high uncertainty. In short, respondents tended to avoid answers that might lead to negative evaluations of their knowledge – and their claim to be modern managers. Our qualitative interviews provide additional information to help us make sense of the ‘false’ answers given about the use of inexistent strategic methods. Hungarian companies only started to use strategic planning as a standard management tool after the socio-political changes. Managers invested in learning the new methods and acquired a basic understanding of them, but if their knowledge were not deep enough, they may have miscombined value adding and portfolio management techniques.

Conclusions Understanding organisational changes in a period from radical transformation is a complicated issue. As there is no historical precedent for such changes, organisational researchers are confronted with a complex problem of choosing from theoretical approaches and methodologies devised in and for other contexts. Our research examples


show that it is advisable not to limit your theoretical approach to a single framework. Analysing organisational changes from different points of view gives the advantage of being able to capture multiple faces of change and to construct a more comprehensive view on what is happening in organisations. As our research was influenced by four concepts related to organisational change (natural selection, learning, decision-making and institutional processes), by using them in parallel we probably developed a fuller explanation of the nature of organisational changes. It was our understanding that changes at enterprise level could not be studied separately from the macro-level economic, social and political transformation. The whole process of change was initiated by the radical political and economic transformation during the early nineties. To analyse the interconnections between business firm level and macro-level changes, co-evolution theory (Lewin et al., 1999) seemed to provide a relevant explanatory framework for drawing conclusions. To study organisational changes under conditions of high uncertainty and lack of adequate previous knowledge, a qualitative case study methodology seemed to be an appropriate and useful approach. Qualitative methodology has advantages in discovering the process dynamics of changes and identifying cause and effect relationships. It is not, however, applicable to studying large samples of organisations with an aim of generating statistically generalisable conclusions, so we found it necessary to combine qualitative and quantitative methodologies. It is our experience that the triangulation method (Jick, 1979) can usefully be applied in studies of transforming economies.

Notes 1. Collaborators in the research were M. Adorján, B. Galgóczi, F. Heller, P. Koopman, Cs. Makó and F. Tervnovszky. 2. Professor Chikán was at the time Head of the Business Economics Department at Budapest University of Economic Sciences. 3. We use the term validity here to describe the extent to which responses to questionnaire items reflect the real practices of enterprises.

Suggested further readings Adler, P.A. and Adler, P. (1987) Membership Roles in Field Research (Newbury Park, CA: Sage). Alvesson, M. and Deetz, S. (2000) Doing Critical Management Research (London: Sage).

Károly Balaton 113 Child, J. and Czeglédy, A.P. (1996) ‘Managerial learning in the transformation of Eastern Europe: some key issues’, Organization Studies, 17(2), 167–179. Clark, E. and Soulsby, A. (1999a) Organizational Change in Post-Communist Europe: Management and Transformation in the Czech Republic (London: Routledge). Denzin, N. and Lincoln, Y.S. (eds) (1994) Handbook of Qualitative Research (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage). Gummerson, E. (2000) Qualitative Methods in Management Research (2nd edition) (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage). Koopman, P.L. and Heller, F.A. (2000) ‘Decision-making and human factors in the context of privatization and transformation’, Social Science Information, 39(2), 289–316. Kiezun, W. (1991) Management in Socialist Countries – USSR and Central Europe (Berlin: de Gruyter). Lieb-Dóczy, E. (2001) Transition to Survival – Enterprise Restructuring in Twenty East German and Hungarian companies, 1990–1997 (Aldershot: Ashgate). Strauss, A.L. and Corbin, J. (1990) Basics of Qualitative Research. Grounded Theory Procedures and Techniques (Newbury Park, CA: Sage). Yin, R.K. (1989) Case Study Research: Design and Methods (Newbury Park, CA: Sage).

7 Transformation Research in East Germany: Institutions, Knowledge and Power Ramona Alt and Rainhart Lang

Introduction The hidden conflict Twelve years after the reunification of Germany, one might expect the transformation of the East German science system to be finished. This would include the resolution of the early conflicts arising, for example, from the closing down of research institutions, massive staff reductions of up to 60 per cent, dismissals of professors due to incompetence and political misconduct, and transfer of the institutional rules of the science system from West Germany. In the dominant discourse, this process has been described as the necessary modernisation of the science system in East Germany (Kocka and Mayntz, 1998; Mayntz, 1994a; 1994b; 1995; for an exception, see Pasternack, 1996; 2001a; 2001b). The main focus of the modernisation argument is on the ‘objective’ requirements of the transferred institutions and the logic of the system, as it functioned in pre-1990 West Germany. Despite some critical remarks (Alt, 1993; Ahbe et al., 1998; Bierwisch, 1998; Campus and Karriere, 2002), most publications are aimed at legitimising the realised changes. If power is mentioned at all, the argument mainly follows a simple schema of the ‘good’ versus the ‘bad’, e.g. ‘innovative’ forces, supporting changes, or the ‘bad old cadres’. The ‘normal’ rules of science are seen as neutral and outside ideological or political discourse. Overall, the role of institutional rules and their influence on research processes and outcomes (i.e. scientific knowledge) has been at best underestimated, but probably neglected. In particular, the dominance of the new rules of science seems to go unchallenged in East Germany! 114

Ramona Alt and Rainhart Lang 115

However, the following dispute at the University of Applied Science in Zwickau between East and West German professors gives rise to an alternative conclusion. In a letter written by a West German professor of Economics published in Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (February 2002), he accused his East German colleagues of being former communist cadres or nomenklatura, who, while using the Western rhetoric, actually still cultivated the East German mentality and approach. In addition, he argued that they used the new rules of science to dominate political discourse and faculty policy. The East German Dean of the Faculty rejected the letter as using negative clichés about the New German States. He also drew attention to the ‘rules of science’, ‘careful selection procedures’ and ‘decision-making structures’. It is interesting to note that both parties referred to ‘the rules of science’ to strengthen their own positions in the conflict. Contrary to the general situation in the social sciences, including massive reductions of East German staff in the East German universities, the East Germans in this particular case probably have better chances to win the conflict. But the conflict has still not yet been resolved. There is similar conflict in disciplines such as natural science and engineering, where there was no fundamental turnover in academic staff in the early 1990s. Nevertheless, the consequences of the conflict for the production of knowledge depend on the ways in which different actors use their power within the conflict situation. This example shows that the structural composition of the actors involved, the rules and the process itself have to be taken into account.

The purpose of this chapter This chapter deals with the production of scientific knowledge about transformation by scientists and their institutions in East Germany. We argue that the results of transformation research in Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries cannot be fully understood and evaluated if the structured process of scientific production is left out of consideration (Alt et al., 1996; 1997; Lang, 2000). This is not only a question of the research approaches and the paradigms behind the research. It also concerns the dominance of Western scholars and researchers over the body of knowledge, through the control of the means for research, of research groups, and the chances for publication, including access to journals and questions of style. Since these influences on the research process and their results have been widely neglected in transformation research, they are at the centre of this contribution.


The chapter aims to answer the following questions: • How far is the research process at the level of research groups influenced by the research institutions established in the transforming countries? • To what extent are the results of transformation research influenced by the composition of research teams, with insiders and outsiders from East and West or from different professions? Does team composition have an effect on the research process? • What are the typical roles and strategies of the various local actors? What are the main conflicts in mixed research groups? • What lessons can researchers in other CEE countries learn from the East German experiences? What kind of advice could be given to managers as users of the results of scientific research on the transformation? These questions will be answered with respect to general patterns of the production of scientific knowledge about the transformation process in East Germany. At the structural level of research groups, we consider our own experiences from East-West research projects as well as reported experiences from other projects. The chapter proceeds by discussing the literature on the production of scientific knowledge, before outlining the contours of an analytical framework and applying it to the case of research into the transformation of East Germany. We then explore our personal experiences of working in mixed (West-East German) research teams, examining the implications for the research process and research outcomes. The chapter concludes by offering advice on overcoming the problems and realising the benefits of mixed research teams for understanding the complex issues of social and economic transformation.

Producing scientific knowledge: the critical role of institutions, actors, rules and social discourse Following Giddens (1984), it is necessary to examine both structures and actions to explain the settings and the processes, through which scientific knowledge about change in transforming societies is produced. Institutional analysis follows theories of institutional power, domination, and control, looking at the structure of the research processes, the structural and cultural dominance of institutions and powerful actors, and their control over rules and resources, including


agenda setting power and hegemony over scientific discourse. This approach draws on ideas of Clegg (e.g. 1989), Foucault (e.g. 1970; 1972), Gramsci (1984) and Türk (1995). In his fundamental writings, Foucault (1970; 1972; 1991; 1980) developed a concept of knowledge, focusing on how knowledge is produced and fixed through organising practices such as managing the academic career, organising collaborative work, and selecting or excluding colleagues1 (Illes and Rees in this book). Special scientific discourse – as a historically developed practice of good science – plays a crucial role in this process. Language is a very important element in the constitution of a discourse. Ideology is not seen as outside science, but as embedded in the choices for example about objects, forms, terminology, and theoretical approaches to knowledge production. The practices, choices and procedures in turn influence the results, that is, the knowledge produced. This influence has to be seen as enabling as well as limiting action (see Figure 7.1). Foucault (1972; 1991) also analysed the different modes, techniques and procedures that form a discourse and produce knowledge. These include systems of exclusion such as prohibitions and taboos, as well as procedures of control and the limitation of discourses as systems of classification, order and distribution (e.g. comment, repetition), leading to the doctrines and scientific rituals of the disciplines, the principle of economic behaviour. Also at the centre of his analysis are scientific disciplines, which are seen as systems of rules, including a permanent reproduction of the rules (see Figure 7.1). Finally, he

Scientific disciplines with specific modes, procedures and techniques

Discourses

Actors

Figure 7.1 Enabling and limiting relations between discourses, actors and disciplines


demonstrated the close connection between power and knowledge, especially through control over the process of knowledge production. In scientific institutions, ‘truth’, the product of knowledge production ‘… is linked in a circular relation with power which produces and sustains it, and to effects of power which it induces and which extend it’ (Foucault, 1980: 133). Knowledge production practices, their results (knowledge, truth) and power form specific knowledge/power regimes (Jones, 2000: 163). Clegg (1989), Clegg and Dunkerley (1980) and Türk (1995) introduce mechanisms of control into the analysis, emphasising the relation between societal institutions and organisations (e.g. universities, research centres) and the rules in and between these levels. ‘Circuits of power’ (Clegg, 1989: 214) are a useful way of understanding aspects of social integration (e.g. rules fixing relations of meaning and membership) and the social relations between the actors. Clegg also underlined the relevance of ‘episodic agency power’ as part of the process of action, referring to the influence of the situation and the concrete process in which power is used in order to accomplish certain results. Depending on the actors’ abilities to actualise the power basis and to enact situational possibilities and constraints, the outcome is more or less open. Clegg (1989) also stresses the processes of reproduction and change of rules and structures through action (Figure 7.2). Türk (1995: 180ff.) focuses on the system of science, its special ideology, symbols, power structures and mechanisms of marginalisation

Scientific disciplines with specific modes, procedures and techniques

Discourses

Actors

Social relations between actors (dominance of actors or groups)

Figure 7.2

Disciplines, discourses, actors and actor relations


and exclusion. He addresses the influence of a positivist science and the exclusion of institutions and laymen, as well as the external influences of economic, political and educational systems. He identifies major lines of contradiction between critical, emancipatory knowledge, the technological interests of capital, the affirmative interest of the state and the technology of education and dogmatic knowledge, as well as challenges to the system of science (Türk, 1995: 197). In relation to the special case of reunification, Gramsci’s (1984) concept of cultural hegemony is very helpful. He demonstrates the importance of non-coercive practices from civil society, which exercise control through the dominance of the ruling class in science, culture, media and language, including processes of consent or the formation of cultural standards. Hegemony requires, among other things, the establishment and reproduction of intellectual and moral leadership in the society in order to control the main discourses. In addition to the influence of institutional rules and practices and the forms of structural and cultural control, it is important to understand the role of research action in the reproduction and change of the structural patterns (Giddens, 1984). ‘Micropolitics’ offers an influential concept for examining intentional action and understanding how actors can make use of the room provided by the ‘enabling’ characteristics of structure. Politics, strategies and tactics of influence, as well as their use by the various actors in the struggle for resources, are central to these approaches (Crozier and Friedberg, 1979; Friedberg, 1995; Neuberger, 1995; Yukl and Falbe, 1990). Researchers have identified the critical role of techniques such as rational argumentation, reference to higher authorities and general rules, construction of coalitions, mobilisation of social networks, and the control of special knowledge and of information channels (Crozier and Friedberg, 1979; Neuberger, 1995). Our short discussion of the relevant literature leads to a number of conclusions. First, scientific knowledge, in form of research outcomes such as research reports, publications, reputation and influenced decisions, is produced by specialised actors in specialised institutions. Those institutions include those responsible for research itself, funding and monitoring the research process, and publishing results. Second, the process of knowledge production and the dissemination of its results are therefore influenced by the established rules, procedures and techniques of the scientific disciplines, the scientific and, more generally, current social discourses, and the values and rules of the involved institutions. Third, the process of scientific knowledge production


is not ‘neutral’. Power and ideology are embedded in the practices and the choices about objects, forms, terminology, and theoretical approaches concerning knowledge production and the composition and power structure of the involved actors. Fourth, the process of scientific knowledge production is controlled by not only external forces, systems and institutions, but also the established system of science itself, through systems of classification, order and distribution, as well as by the dominant scientific culture, and the hegemony over the discourses. Finally, the process of scientific knowledge production includes the reproduction and change of the existing knowledge/power regimes through the intentional activities of actors, who use politics, strategies and tactics of influence.

Analysing power and dominance in scientific knowledge production An analytical frame Taking into account the above discussion, we draw on both institutional and social action approaches to examine the production of scientific knowledge about transformation. In order to include the changing environmental context of scientific knowledge production and diffusion, it is necessary to look at the different actors (institutional actors, powerful people, decision makers and researchers) at different levels (institutions vs. research teams) and dimensions (structure vs. action). This leads to the introduction of a dual approach to structure and action at the macro- as well as the micro-level. Table 7.1 shows these factors within an analytical framework. Macro institutional analysis concerns the role of institutions involved in the production, funding, monitoring, evaluating and disseminating of scientific knowledge. The analytical framework (see Table 7.1) includes the objectives, tasks and structures of the institutions, as well as the values, norms and standards of ‘good practice’ in science and research. For example, to what extent does transformation research focus on functionalist or interpretive analysis or on meta-discourses in the relevant disciplines, like notions of ‘follow up-modernisation’ (Habermas, 1990; Zapf, 1994)? Such analysis would refer to the established rules for research funding and for the evaluation of institutions and research processes, including the language and rhetoric of application and the assessment criteria for research proposals. It would also concern the criteria for evaluating research output, such as how new

Ramona Alt and Rainhart Lang 121 Table 7.1

Double approach to the analysis of structure and action Institutional/Structural analysis

Action analysis

Macro-level

Institutions involved in the funding production and dissemination of scientific knowledge, e.g. universities, research centres, funding, monitoring or evaluation institutions, publishers, their values, norms, procedures, discourses, and their relevant networks

Decision-making process in the institutions by powerful actors on research priorities, projects, criteria for funding, monitoring, publishing, involved actors and coalitions, politics of influence

Micro-level

Research projects, • Their local environment, objectives, local values, norms, research standards, • Composition of the research teams, e.g. East vs. West, insider vs. outsider, different professions, position of members, • Local discourses

Research process, • Use of resources, means, • Local handling of the discourses, • Co-operation and conflicts, • Use of strategies and tactics of influence

knowledge is received by practitioners in industry and government agencies like the Treuhand,2 by policy makers and by the scientific community in general. Altogether, the analysis has to investigate the structural and cultural dominance of actors, or groups of actors, and their control over rules and resources, including their agenda setting power and hegemony over scientific discourse. Referring to important actors and their networks underlines the role of social relations, e.g. the social capital possessed by the actors in both society and the research setting. It links institutional analysis, with its focus on dominance, to the analysis of social action. Important actions at the macro-level include processes of decision-making regarding the establishment of research priorities, the funding of projects and selection of outputs for publication. At the micro-level, institutional analysis has to look at the structure of research teams as a result of selection practices and rules, as well as the special values, norms, standards and procedures, and local


discourses of the involved institutions. At the centre of the micro action analysis are the strategies and tactics to gain control over the research process and its results, co-operation and conflict and special language games. This includes the control over the resources and the uncertainty of the research situation and outcomes.

The example of East Germany Power and dominance in scientific knowledge production at the macro-level Looking at the social science literature, it seems as if the process of scientific knowledge production is not at the very centre of research. Nevertheless, there exist some reflexive articles as well as some quantitative and qualitative research attempts to describe and partly explain the transformation of the science system in East Germany, the transfer of the institutional patterns from West Germany and the consequences for researchers and research processes. Mayntz’s studies (1994a; 1994b; 1995; Mayntz et al., 1995; Kocka and Mayntz, 1998) focus particularly on structure and transformation of the science system, which includes research institutions, industrial research units, universities and the Academy of Science institutes in the German Democratic Republic (GDR). In addition, a number of articles in a special issue of the Berliner Journal der Soziologie reflected the situation of ‘transformed’ institutions (see especially Bertram, 1995). Many research activities in the field were carried out by Pasternack (1996; 2001a; 2001b), at the Wittenberg Institute of Higher Education Research, and through special research centres funded with joint East-West co-operation (e.g. Ahbe et al., 1998). In relation to institutional structures, the results reflect a strong research attempt to analyse the societal transformation, which is taken to be a ‘unique social experiment’, a piece of ‘good luck’ for the social sciences. Especially in the early 1990s, much money was made available for transformation research in the broadest sense. The German Research Foundation in particular, but also the Federal ministries, played an important role as funding institutions. Within the New States, other foundations and ministries acted as funding and monitoring institutions. The Science Council (Wissenschaftsrat) and the Rectors’ conference (Hochschulrektorenkonferenz) were very influential in setting up criteria for the new East German institutional structure. The Commission for Research into Social and Political Change in the New Federal States (Kommission für den sozialen und politischen Wandel in den neuen Bundesländern or KSPW)


played a special role, mediating between the funding institutions at the federal level and universities, research institutes and single researchers. This commission established the biggest institutionally funded research project in social scientific transformation research on East Germany. According to the Wissenschaftsrat, KSPW was founded as a social science based, interdisciplinary project over five years from 1991 to 1996. The tasks of KSPW were to analyse the transformation processes in East Germany and to support the development of social science research institutions in East Germany. Report groups had the control over the output and West German professors headed all of them; indeed, only two of these professors worked in East Germany. The published research output was impressive: 1. Expert Studies (KSPW’s own sources, ‘grey’ literature at the beginning of the research): 145 studies 2. Series (partial results, published by Westdeutscher Verlag Opladen or Akademie Verlag Berlin): 26 volumes 3. Main Reports (published by Westdeutscher Verlag Opladen): six volumes 4. Additional Reports (special aspects of the final results, published by Westdeutscher Verlag Opladen): 27 volumes 5. Independently published articles (final and partial results published in different journals) The main research output (i.e. the reports and series) consisted of more than 20,000 pages. Although a number of researchers from East German institutes were included in the publication of expert studies, series and additional reports, in general university editors and authors dominated, with West German universities being strongly represented. In the publication of the results, Western actors dominated as editors and authors, and the more important the publication, the higher was the share of West German editors and authors. On the other hand, in the less important and less well disseminated expert studies, a majority of East Germans were involved from the start. Finally, KSPW’s aim to develop East German social scientific institutions seems to have failed, at least outside the universities. They had been involved in the expert studies, but were increasingly excluded, as can be seen from the publication output. For example, the independent research institute, WISOC (Chemnitz), completed four expert


studies and was also involved in the publication of the results, but was never re-invited to apply for a longer-term project. Publishing companies performed a notable but not decisive part in the dissemination of scientific knowledge about transformation. We can highlight one important shift in this regard. While a broad spectrum of publishers – including traditional East German firms like Akademie-Verlag (Ost-)Berlin – were involved in the early years, with diminishing interest in transformation, the numbers decreased later on. The final reports from the larger research projects were published in West Germany, largely by one publisher, Westdeutscher Verlag Opladen. As faculties and institutes were closed down and staff were dismissed, especially in social sciences, new faculties were founded and whole institutions (e.g. the federal law on universities), or institutional elements, laws, norms and rules were transferred from the West German states. Additionally, professors and assistant professors were recruited from West German universities to work in East German academic institutions. Not surprisingly, Western institutions and their norms played the decisive role in the process of knowledge production about transformation, defining the ‘new rules of the research game’ (see Table 7.2). The complete transfer of Western research institutions, their structure and institutional elements, was realised despite the recognition that the West German system itself needed reform (see Czerwon, 1997; Bierwisch, 1998; Campus and Karriere, 2002; Pasternack, 1996; 2001a). In addition to dominance by West German groups, especially in the social science faculties (e.g. Pasternack, 1996), researchers from West German universities played a significant role in transformation research. Despite their shorter-term interest in transformation, their influence within the research community and on the research outputs was impressive. In comparison, the participation and influence of independent research units in East Germany were much weaker (see Bertram, 1995; Czerwon, 1997). The independent research units were founded after 1990, partly outsourced units from the universities. The staff often comprised researchers made available as a result of closing down academic institutions during the dismantling (Abwicklung) of social scientific university units. Therefore they had no connections with leading institutes and actors and had to learn the new rules. Because of the dominant position of West German institutions and staff with West German background and the relative exclusion or marginalisation of East German institutions – especially non-university

Ramona Alt and Rainhart Lang 125 Table 7.2

Old and new rules of research

Old rules

New rules

Single plan of research funded by the state

A lot of funding institutions with different programs and research preferences

Decision criteria quite clear and not contradictory but politically influenced

Different decision criteria with particular political interests of different groups

Lower influence of scientists and networks

Role of research networks is higher

More tenured positions of researchers

Fewer tenured positions of researchers

More long term contracts

More short-time contracts

Less work in advance, most research projects were ordered from the state

Research projects need more work in advance (for application)

Application language: references to political authorities were necessary

Application language references to important network authorities and possible reviewers

institutes (see Pasternack, 2001b) and researchers – it became normal for Western standards to be applied in the research process. Moreover, East German scientists from former GDR research institutes were not successfully integrated into the new structures of mainly university based research, leading to a further decline in East German influence over transformation research (Bierwisch, 1998: 506–507). The relatively high involvement in the early 1990s of East German non-university institutions and their co-operation with West German institutions diminished in the second half of the 1990s. In our view, this was the consequence of the transformation of the science system in East Germany towards the more competitive West German structure. In the mid-1990s, the KSPW programme of research was terminated and knowledge about transformation was transferred to West German institutions or the universities. The research agenda had moved on to other topics. Since Western researchers defined the research agenda, the typical discourses on transformation mainly originated in the West. In particular, the leading rhetorical theme of ‘follow-up modernisation’ – implying that East Germany had ‘pre-modern structures’ compared with the ‘modern’ structures in the West – served to legitimise the


transfer of the whole system of science and research. Two tendencies could be observed here. First, institutions and researchers originating from East Germany tried to adapt quickly to Western structures, conforming to the transferred rules of practice in order to gain acceptance, employment and research funding. If they were at all successful, on the one hand they underwent a more adaptive learning process; on the other, the newly established research practices and discourses from the West remained virtually uncontested. Second, a few institutions and researchers tried to set up an alternative research discourse to challenge the dominant theme of ‘necessary, follow up modernisation’ (Pasternack, 2001b: 130). After early attempts by Reißig (1994) and others in the independent East German research institute Berliner Institut für Soziologie und Sozialforschung, Pasternack founded the journal hochschule ost,3 which was mainly aimed at giving a voice to East German researchers. Nevertheless these institutes and journals had difficulties in becoming accepted within the scientific community. It is important to note that a small but growing number of Western researchers also became increasingly critical. While concerned about the appropriateness of the ‘traditional’ approaches like modernisation theory, they still tended to draw on established themes from Western scientific discourse to explain the transformation (e.g. Wiesenthal, 1995; Windolf et al., 1999; see Lorentzen in this book). In summary, despite the scarcity of critical literature, there is a clear pattern of dominance by Western institutions using Western standards, language patterns, discourse structures and theoretical frames, and exercising control over the material and financial resources of transformation research through their established funding and evaluation institutions. It is also evident that external factors, notably the politically necessary speed to transform the science system, helped to support and legitimise the transfer of established institutions and rules.

Power and dominance in scientific knowledge production at the micro-level Experiences from different projects (Ahbe et al., 1998; Alt, 1993; Pasternack, 2001b) show that the macro-institutional frame has had a strong influence on research practices. Mainly due to the dominance of Western institutions and institutional patterns, recruitment procedures and selection rules have tended to give preference to Western researchers. So, the composition of research groups in big universities or research institutes has tended to become homogeneous, staffed wholly or mainly by West Germans. There may also be a difference in the


employment status of East German researchers, whose mainly shortterm contracts may have an influence on the process and results of research. In East German institutions, salaries have tended to become more and more similar to those in West Germany. Research project staff in general were appointed on termed contracts, and the additional payment that West Germans in East Germany received in the early years (Buschzulagen) was soon reduced. Because of high unemployment among social scientists in East Germany, the problem for East German researchers has been more on their unfavourable contractual position compared to their Western colleagues (Bertram, 1995; Pasternack, 1996). In these labour market conditions, small short-term projects attracted young East German researchers, who accepted less favourable contractual conditions, such as low salary. The special rules of the German Research Foundation to ensure employment of East German researchers on transformation projects, and similar procedures of the KSPW, did not really lead to a change in the structure, because of the dependent position of East German researchers within this structural setting. Our personal experiences also show that Western institutions have tended to contract Western researchers. For example, one of us was involved in a research group that was formed in the early 1990s to examine changes in working cultures at the shop floor level in East German enterprises. A West German university institute with good relationships to funding institutions made a successful application and intended to hire the three West German scientists who were involved in the proposal. Despite that, the German Research Foundation (DFG) requested that an East German researcher participate in order to include insider knowledge about East German enterprises. The institute wanted to employ a researcher without a PhD, because the Western researchers did not have one and they wanted to avoid the dominance of one researcher. Nevertheless, the West German project team members were involved in the selection of the candidates from the East. Contractual conditions (same contract duration, nearly equivalent remuneration according to payment rules) were written to guarantee internal fairness. This example shows that these research groups were not only put together in order to produce pioneering results. In addition to research experience, project managers also used political criteria. For example, the institutions frequently tried to include influential professors into the research groups, even if they had no professional experience of the topic.


Whether the scientific disciplines or the regions are adequately represented in teams often depended on those who first proposed the project and acquired the funds. The initiative for the project may have proceeded from a single person, a small group or many participants, but the structure of power that developed strongly predisposed the eventual composition and organisation of the team. It is understandable that the researchers who were appointed directly from the organising chairs had a stronger informal position within the research group. Despite this, it was still possible for a new structure of influence to emerge through the exercise of competence with the research process. While West Germans tended to dominate research groups in big universities or research institutions, within a number of small, marginalised East German research institutions, research teams tended to develop a homogeneous East German structure, with implications for gaining access to existing research networks. One researcher in an independent East German institute observed: No, we did not have real relations to (other) institutions, we do have relations to a few people, who give us advice in the case of applications…So, we are not really well established as an institute…since we are not a university institute…The staff in the ministries, mainly from the West, normally have personal contacts to research institutes there, and they ask them… (Head of an independent East German research institute). As for the research process itself, there is much evidence that mixed East German-West German research teams had hidden problems at cognitive (see Kocka and Mayntz, 1998), cultural and mentality levels (Ahbe et al., 1998; Pasternack, 2001b), as well as at the level of language and discourse. At the cognitive level, there were differences in knowledge about mainstream Western discourses as well as in research values, practices and methods. Combined with differences in mentality and language, this led on the one hand to learning opportunities for both sides, but also to conflicts and misunderstandings. The language issue could be best illustrated by the quotation from an East German researcher with experiences in mixed teams. He asked another East German, ‘have you learned to write [in a] West German [style] yet?’ Because of this question she recognised that the language problem and the conflicts in her team were not uniquely her personal difficulty. Her West German colleagues had quickly classified her papers as ‘curious’ – not in a social scientific sense (such as Sociology against


Business Studies) but in the form of an East-West stereotype (e.g. being ‘typically East German’). In the case of a specific East-West-research project, each actor took on a different role: the East German researcher had her special insider knowledge about East German enterprises as well as social networks which allowed easier access to firms at that time (see Hutchings and Steger in this book). Western researchers were more familiar with the expected theories, methods (e.g. narrative interviews) and the special language of Western discourses. While the access of the East German researcher to theories and methods was supported by the structure, at the same time the Western researchers tried to overcome their deficit in insider knowledge as quickly as possible, leading, in the East German researcher’s opinion, to a tendency to develop superficial interpretations. Conversely, the West German colleagues criticised the East German researcher for proceeding too elaborately and circumstantially. Nevertheless, discussions about results within changing coalitions gave room for a multi-perspective interpretation and led to sound and professionally respected results. In addition, a shared interest in getting a follow up project increased the willingness to co-operate successfully. In mixed research teams, East German influence on the results was weak. The traditional positivist requirement of collective consent on the results does not pose a problem in separate homogenous groups. Indeed, the contrasting features of each homogeneous group’s publications could contribute antithetically to argument within the other – East or West – discourse, or simply reinforce each group’s dominant discourse. However, in the case of heterogeneous groups, consent largely meant the subordination of the minority opinion, which, in nearly all cases, was that of the more dependent East German researcher. From all the reports and publications of transformation research, not one pointed out different interpretations within the team of what was presented as researched ‘facts’ (Alt et al., 1996). In local discourses, the willingness to apply new research paradigms or approaches has often been limited by the need to meet the expectations of the funding institutions and the monitoring peers. For careerminded West German researchers in particular, it was critical to take these external expectations into consideration. Finally, all participants in such projects have been aware of the fact that the research project could only be continued if the results would be presented on time. This shared interest had a conflict-reducing impact (Alt, 1993; Ahbe et al., 1998).


Knowledge production in mixed teams Experiencing mixed teams in transformation research From our own experiences, mixed research teams proved to have many advantages, regarding both the conduct of interviews and the construction of interpretations (see Illes and Rees in this book). The emotional engagement of the East German researchers, affected by the daily life in transformational settings, could be positively balanced by a more distant observer position of West German researchers. By working in such mixed teams, we became aware of the danger of a partial ‘blindness’. With the argument, ‘we also know that in East Germany (or West Germany)’, some ‘facts’ were revealed as being the taken for granted expectations of East German or West German researchers. Such assertions of taken-for-granted assumptions in mixed teams could provoke protests from either the East or West German side, but in homogeneous teams could serve to inhibit deeper consideration of an issue. Bringing such conflict over interpretation to a premature end could result in researchers staying thoughtlessly within their own frames of reference, reproducing their own East German or West German background expectancies, rather than engaging openly and profoundly with local cultural peculiarities. The more that the surface structures seem to be well-known, the deeper characteristics that can reveal peculiarities are likely to remain covered up. For a possibly open-mindedly, self-reflexively and intersubjectively comprehensive interpretation (see Lorentzen’s chapter in this book), we found it useful to record and transcribe interviews with respondents. In our conflict-loaded discussions, we did not depend on our vague memories and the few notes of the interview. With the historical experiences of the former GDR in our minds, we had worried about how respondents would react to interviews, especially when talking in front of a tape-recorder. But it turned out that they were very ready for discussions even if we used a tape-recorder, because we offered plausible guarantees of anonymity and confidentiality (see Hutchings and Nojonen in this book). An intersubjectively comprehensive interpretation, in which different assumptions of the researchers are made visible, can hardly resolve problems of analysis and evaluation, which result from the reported myths. Not only did the different statements of the respondents cause long discussions between researchers, but high levels of agreement between respondents also caused problems of analysis, because of the need to warrant its truth-value. It turned out that the answers to a


questionnaire concerning enterprise data showed clear differences when compared with the interview data. To us as researchers, the experience of the changes was associated with a high readiness to construct collective myths. We therefore had to take into account how the transformational processes touched the identity of the respondents and whether this imposed on them a ‘compulsion of justification’. The need for self-justification and representation especially resulted from reflection upon their own behaviour in the former GDR and from their self-experienced deficits of legitimacy. Moreover, being interviewed by a West German carried with it a desire to overcome their assumed disregard or disrespect of an East German manager, as well as the wish to correct images presented in the media.4 The research group tried very hard to break down stereotypical ideas about life in the former GDR. Without thinking that a complete understanding was possible, we felt that constructing an intersubjectively controlled analysis could help to avoid wrong interpretations. The mixed East-West-German composition of the team offered good opportunities for such analysis, by encouraging consideration and discussion of contrasting interpretations of interview findings. But, as a result, a lot of conflicts had to be fought out. Instead of the research team members from West Germany taking up the expected ‘neutral’ researcher position, their personal assumptions played a significant role in the perception of the research object. Furthermore, differences in mentality, professional understanding and preferred methods, as well as in the knowledge of ‘transformation in East Germany’, led to long lasting, and often fruitless discussions within various and changing coalitions. Beyond different professional standards, the different personal attitudes of the West German researchers towards the market economy in general, and to West Germany in particular, influenced the discussions about the transformation in the East. Because the research approach stayed more or less in the mainstream, despite some attempts by single researchers to sidetrack the researchbased discussion, there was no real chance to develop more subtle and probably contradictory interpretations in the eventual publications. In this case, the applied theories and methods tended to lead to a ‘sound’ result. It was not considered to be ‘good science’ by Western actors to include minority views within a published report.

Advantages and disadvantages of mixed teams Everything that has already been mentioned leads to the basic question: should different points of view be expressed in a research project


or is extensive homogeneity and consensus better? Our experiences show that, first of all, all basic assumptions, value judgements, and experiences of the participants flow into the discourses that are built into the framework of the research project. As cognitive samples, they filter the information and shape the best imaginable procedures. A heterogeneous research group opens discussion up to ideas that are outside the collective norm and reduces the danger of omitting ideas from beyond the mainstream. Problems are likely to be analysed and discussed more intensively. The typical characteristics of groupthink, such as suppression and denial of inappropriate observations, are most likely to be reduced in mixed research groups. An increase of the discussion period, a slowing down of the decision-making process, and a trend towards a higher conflict potential are consequences associated with the inclusion of multiple points of view. Diversity can quickly lead to communication difficulties, because everybody lives more or less in her/his own ‘world’ and a clash of different points of view is more likely than finding a common solution. This can also result in an increase in micro-political behaviour prompting the research group to become involved more with internal group-related problems than getting on with the main research work. Our experiences suggest that disadvantages arise above all when there is only token participation, in which team members contribute to the development of new ideas only when they meet the expectations of the project authorities. This can create both personal frustration and micro-political conflicts, especially when individual efforts are ignored. There is the danger that only a minimum consensus will emerge and that micro-political activities in the team can break out again at any time. Since greater homogeneity of group composition usually reduces the time it takes to speak the same ‘language’, it can quickly deal with the main topics. A serious disadvantage of a homogeneous research group, however, is connected with increased restriction of the range of expressed points of view and with subsequent problems concerning the interpretation of observed transformational phenomena.

Proposals for research in other CEE countries Proposals for research in mixed teams Instead of rejecting heterogeneous research groups (and their advantages) for the mentioned reasons, it seems better to find effective


ways to moderate their potential dysfunctions. To clear up misunderstandings in the team, it is useful to encourage all participants to reveal and discuss their personal viewpoints, their fundamental theoretical ideas as well as their preferred intellectual approaches. This requires more time, a fact that has to be taken into consideration in managing the project. Our experiences of including a neutral third person or a presenter have been very positive. This person does not have to be involved constantly in the research process, but s/he needs to promote from time to time reflective thinking about the research process and its results. In our transformation projects, we had noticed that there were hardly any serious obstacles with an odd number of participants in the research team. This was not a big surprise, since, in these circumstances, decisions are often made through the formation of power coalitions. But to ensure a fair inclusion of all participants, we have started to integrate an additional tool – a neutral person – into the research process. In concrete terms, this includes the use of supervision. With the help of the supervisor, we have deliberately inserted into the research process phases of reflection, during which we did not discuss the topic much, but tried, by using the presenter, to reveal the assumptions and the interests of the group members. This action made it possible to clear up some misunderstandings and give minorities a voice in the group. However, this method was not sufficient to persuade all team members to express their assumptions and consciously reveal their personal interests. In practice, we could promote a mutual understanding through more open communication, though we could not remove basic differences concerning the interests of the team members. By taking these experiences into consideration, we have started to compose conflict-loaded teams. During a project on the postunification destinies of former top managers in the ex-GDR, we deliberately composed the team with one researcher from East Germany, one from West Germany and one from Switzerland. During the project, the Swiss researcher really was able to take the position of the neutral third person, we have been able to insert phases of reflection and have used the method of supervision. In these ways, problems in mixed teams could be solved effectively and the influence of the East German researcher could be increased without denying other opinions.

General lessons The proposed analytical framework offers many opportunities for a deeper analysis of the process of scientific knowledge production,


and it could be usefully applied in a more general context. For transformation studies, however, it provides a necessary corrective, encouraging greater awareness of less visible factors and their influence on the process and outcomes of scientific knowledge production. As a consequence, within transformational settings, researchers – as well as managers who want to use scientific results – need to adopt a critical approach to those involved in the production of the results, and to the reasons and circumstances under which the knowledge has been produced. They should avoid taken for granted positions towards the presented results, especially if it meets their own expectations. Regarding research strategy, Jones’ (2000: 159) general advice to use reflexive fieldwork strategies is particularly important for transformation research. This requires critical reflection of every step and decision in the ongoing research process, because of the ethico-political character of the choices within the process (Jones, 2000: 173). For research in other transformational settings, we can also learn from the experience of the East German case. Putting together a mixed group of researchers – insiders and outsiders, strangers and indigenous researchers, East and West, various disciplines – could help to avoid the partial ‘blindness’, the mistakes, and misinterpretations of results, as well as other research shortcomings. This means that differences must be used as a resource, an opportunity and a hope. Within a reflexive strategy, tactics such as a change of perspectives and research supervision are helpful (Ahbe et al., 1998: 93). A change of perspectives means that the researcher is asked to look at the data and the results from the different or opposing position of his/her research partner (e.g. from the East or the West) and to argue from that position. It also appears that giving team members the same formal position and status is a very important factor, as is encouraging open, local discourse. All interviews and interpretations can benefit from being done in mixed groups, and, in the end, results should be presented to reflect existing differences in interpretation, instead of presenting a superficial or contrived consensus of knowledge. Within the context of transformation research, the institutional structure must have the form and practices that support these processes and allow all researchers – but especially those from the inside – to contribute their special perspectives to the emergent international discourse.

Notes 1. We focus on the process of knowledge production and structures of discourse, rather than on the content. For information on typical topics,

Ramona Alt and Rainhart Lang 135 paradigms, and discourses, see Alt et al. (1996), Alt et al. (1997) and Lang (2000). 2. The Treuhand was the state agency, which was responsible for privatising the state-owned property. For further readings, see MacLean et al. (2003). 3. The journal hochschule ost (‘College East’) renamed as hochschule (‘College’) is now a journal of HoF Wittenberg – ‘Institut for University Research’ (Insitut für Hochschulforschung e.V.) at the Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg. 4. For example, Ahbe et al. (1998) report on the fact that the persons questioned told different stories depending on whether they were questioned by an East German or West German researcher.

Suggested further readings Ahbe, T., Kraus, W. and Mitzscherlich, B. (1998) ‘Ich sehe was, was Du nicht siehst…’ Ost- West-Unterschiede im Prisma einer narrativen Identitätsforschung’ (I see something you do not see… Differences between East and West Germany in the prism of a narrative identity investigation), in Lutz, B. (ed.) Subjekt im Transformationsprozeß – Spielball oder Akteur? (Subject in the transformation process – commanded or acting?) (München/Mering: Hampp Verlag), pp. 89–103. Jones, D. (2000) ‘Knowledge Workers “R” Us: Academics, Practitioners, and “Specific Intellectuals”’, in Pritchard, C., Hull, R., Chumer, M. and Willmott, H. (eds.) Managing Knowledge. Critical Investigations of Work and Learning (London: Houndmills), pp. 158–75. Kocka, J. and Mayntz, R. (eds) (1998) Wissenschaft und Wiedervereinigung (Science and Reunification) (Berlin: Akademie Verlag). Mayntz, R., Schimank, U. and Weingart, P. (eds) (1995) Transformation mittelund osteuropäischer Wissenschaftssysteme (Transformation of the Central and Eastern European Science Systems) (Opladen: Leske+Budrich). Pasternack, P. (2001) ‘Der ostdeutsche Transformationsfall. Hochschulerneuerung als Komplexitätsreduktion’ (The Case of East German Transformation. Renewal of colleges as decrease of complexity), in Kehm, B.M. and Pasternack, P. (eds) Hochschulentwicklung als Komplexitätsreduktion (Renewal of colleges as decrease of complexity) (Basel: Weinheim)

8 Behind the Bamboo Curtain: Problems and Pitfalls in Researching Australian Expatriates in China Kate Hutchings

Introduction My research entrée into the People’s Republic of China was at the beginning of 1999 when I undertook one month’s qualitative fieldwork involving interview-based research investigating the preparation of Australian expatriates working in China. Subsequent projects, having synergies with this initial research, were undertaken in late 2001 and early 2002. In each case, I spent two weeks interviewing Australian expatriates on their experiences with Chinese guanxi, which refers to interpersonal connections that facilitate favours (while there is no direct English translation, usually the term ‘networks’ is substituted). Throughout the duration of these projects, I visited China on two further occasions: for one month in January 2000 and for one month in February 2001. In these two instances, I facilitated study tours to China for undergraduate and postgraduate business students. While these tours were instrumental in shaping my understanding of Chinese culture, the discussion contained herein relates specifically to my experiences in undertaking research in China. The most valuable lesson I learned throughout my visits to China was the absolute necessity to build networks if one is to achieve some degree of ease in undertaking research. The ability to have achieved guanxi, built guanxi and, in some cases, exercised guanxi is essential to doing both business and research in China (see Luo, 2000; Yang, 2002; and Nojonen’s chapter in this book). I rapidly became aware that not only was networking a ubiquitous part of daily life for Chinese, but that the Australian expatriate community also had its own form of guanxi. Building and maintaining it was essential if one wanted to do research with this group of people. Indeed, I discovered that gaining 136

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access to expatriates and building their trust to elicit further information was dependent upon networking within this expatriate circle. During my first foray into China, I was an outsider to the Australian expatriate community. My initial efforts at undertaking research through conventional methodological approaches were somewhat unsuccessful. I soon realised however, that exercising what might be termed my own guanxiwang (networks of others’ networks) helped move me along the path to becoming an insider. I undertook the first research project with a PhD student who had lived in China for two years, spoke fluent Mandarin and was networked into the Australian expatriate community. From this first visit and introduction to the Australian expatriate community, I began to build up a network of potential interviewees. In my next two forays into China (January 2000 and February 2001) to conduct study tours in which students had the opportunity to visit a number of Western factories, I was able to gain access to businesses through some of the contacts acquired during my first visit. During these study tours, I gained access to other Australian expatriates and organisations and added them to my list of contacts. By the time I conducted further research projects in 2001 and 2002, I had developed quite a sizeable pool of potential Australian expatriate interviewees. In 2001, I was accompanied by a colleague who had not previously visited China. Utilising my Australian expatriates’ form of guanxiwang as an effective snowballing technique, I was able to introduce my colleague to my networks. On this occasion my colleague, who had not previously met the expatriates involved, had the benefit of outsider status. Our interviews were enhanced by having a team comprising one researcher with insider status and one researcher with outsider status (see Siu, 1996). It became apparent that as an outsider she had the benefit of academic objectivity and distance from the research subjects but as an insider I had the benefit of access to, and established trust with, interviewees. The purpose of this chapter is to present my research experiences in interviewing Australian expatriates in China and to examine and analyse the problems and pitfalls I faced in doing research in this society moving from a centrally planned command economy to a market-driven socialist economy. In essence, I explore the relationship between me as the researcher and those that I researched and do so by examining three key themes. The first theme is that the nature of individual expatriates (dual allegiance, hearts at home, or gone native) influenced the data I collected. The second theme is that the development of insider status in


the Australian expatriate community was crucial to facilitating my conducting of research. The third theme is that my being a female researcher impacted upon the data I collected. The experiences related in this chapter provide some valuable insights for both researchers and international business practitioners who seek to operate in China and other transitional societies. Moreover, my analysis of the advantages of utilising unconventional methodological approaches provides some insights for those researching in the developed world. The chapter begins by defining the parameters of my research in terms of the international strategic significance of China, the necessity for expatriates to be cross-culturally prepared in order to maximise the advantages of operating in this transitional economy, and my rationale for researching Australian expatriates in China. This is followed by a section that details some of the obstacles I encountered in doing research in China, including that a conventional methodological approach would not work in China, perceptions held of researchers and lack of availability of management, logistical difficulties, and the concerns that potential interviewees had about confidentiality. The next section introduces the first theme of insider status and considers the importance of personal contacts in China, the relationship between trust and insider status, and the extent to which insider status allowed academic distance or objectivity. The next section introduces the second theme of the impact of the type of expatriate on my research, and examines the relationship between insider status and expatriate type. The final section introduces the third theme of the relationship between being a female researcher and expatriate type.

Why research Australians in China? My rationale for undertaking research in China arose from recognition of the strategic importance of China to Australian businesses and the necessity of those businesses to develop their international managers’ China knowledge if they were to do business successfully in China. I decided to research Australian expatriates’ Chinese cultural knowledge with a view to utilising the experiences of these expatriates and their businesses to inform other Australian organisations intending to enter the lucrative China market.

The international strategic importance of China Since the announcement of China’s accession to the World Trade Organisation and Beijing’s hosting of the 2008 Olympics, Chinese

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political leaders have been anxious to show the world that they were serious about being an international economic and political player. Moreover, the emergent legal system and management practices within China suggested that the Chinese government had taken seriously its need to adapt to international political, economic and social standards. This was necessary if they were to profit from rapid global expansion as well as from its own penetration by increased numbers of multinational corporations that had flocked to its massive labour and consumer market. China’s international significance in respect to world trade can be traced to the Opium Wars of 1840–1842. Since then, except for the brief time period after 1948 when China closed its doors to the outside world, it has been on the internationalist track, especially since Deng Xiaoping’s Open Door Policy of 1978. Since that time, China has incrementally reformed its economic and political policy until the early 1990s when Jiang Zemin pushed for almost complete conversion to a market economy (Chai, 1998; see also Blackman, 2000). Despite some continued concerns about China’s humanitarian record and obstacles to its economic development, China has characterised itself as a market-driven socialist economy, and has become a market of extreme strategic importance to many Western businesses, exemplified by having commanded one of the highest rates of expatriate assignments (GMAC, 2002). In 2002, China overtook the United States as the largest recipient of foreign direct investment (FDI) in the world, and of the transition economies, it has become the largest, fastest growing and the most heavily engaged in international investment (Child and Tse, 2001: 5). China is currently Australia’s third largest partner in two-way trade (DFAT, 2002), yet Australian business people have continued to be poorly internationally ranked in terms of their cross-cultural skills (Hutchings et al., 2000).

The importance of cross-cultural awareness It has been suggested that acculturation and adaptation (Bird et al., 1999; Hannerz, 1996), the need to make sense of and understand other cultures (Osland and Bird, 2000) and to adapt managerial styles (Osman-Gani, 2000; Schneider and Barsoux , 1997), are essential in ensuring intercultural effectiveness and avoiding interpersonal blunders (Zakaria, 2000: 493). Moreover, the need to develop cross-cultural skills in expatriates has been cited as being even greater where the gap between cultures is very wide (Forster, 2000),


or as Kaye and Taylor (1997) note of China, where culture shock (see Oberg, 1960) is marked. Given the increased necessity for cultural preparation of Western business people being posted to nations like China, it could have been expected that cross-cultural management in China would have been studied extensively by researchers. In fact, though China has for hundreds of years been a highly interesting and highly utilised site for ethnographic researchers, it has only recently been researched in the management literature (for People’s Republic of China (PRC))-focused research, see Hutchings and Murray, 2002; Selmer, 2002; Tung and Worm, 2001). Significant research has been undertaken into Chinese cultural characteristics (Child, 1994; Hofstede, 2001; Redding, 1980), yet most of these articles have referred to the differences between Chinese and Western cultures. Some of these authors have made reference to methodological difficulties of researching in China, yet few articles have been specifically devoted to the problems and pitfalls inherent in researching in China (for comprehensive reviews, see Adler et al., 1989; Roy et al., 2001). Hence, there has been a clear rationale for more research into cross-cultural management issues in China and the methodological difficulties associated with researching such issues.

Why qualitative research on Australian expatriates? In my research in China, I have deliberately elected to utilise semistructured interviews (see Stake, 1994) with Australian expatriates because of the specific difficulties I have been presented with in respect to language and interpretation. First, as I did not possess a working knowledge of business Mandarin, I would have needed to rely upon translators who may not have conveyed questions or responses accurately. This has been a particularly salient issue as concepts of management and industrial relations have differed quite markedly between China and the West and achieving some common ground of understanding has been fraught with difficulties. Second, even when translations could have been relied upon for accuracy, Chinese attitudes to authority, the need to preserve face and worries about confidentiality of research might have resulted in responses that were skewed in favour of management and hence may not have provided very usable information (see Roy et al., 2001). The examination of my experiences in undertaking research in China contained herein refers to issues associated with interviewing Australian expatriates, and specific types of expatriates. However, prior to discussing these experiences, some discussion is devoted to obstacles I encountered in doing research

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in China – obstacles that often also prove problematic for the international business practitioner.

Obstacles to doing research in China While the conventional methodological textbook approach has worked quite well in the majority of Western nations, my experience has shown that it does not work well in China, even when the people being interviewed were Westerners. Researchers have suggested that transition economies differ from Western contexts in a wide variety of institutional aspects and potentially represent a serious challenge to theories developed in the West. As such, they present fascinating research sites from which to refine existing theories and develop new ones (Luo and Peng, 1999). Certainly the transitional nature of China, like many other transition economies, proved itself suitable for adopting unconventional methodological approaches to research (see Geringer et al., 2002).

Why the conventional textbook approach did not work in China Conventional textbooks such as De Laine (2000) and Sekaran (2003) have described how research problems ought to be overcome. Some specialist texts have examined the specifics of doing comparative crosscultural research (Usunier, 1998). Yet, these texts have usually taken little account of specific problems that need to be overcome in a nation like China that possesses a range of logistical difficulties for getting to interviews, and necessitates establishment of a relationship before the business of interviewing commences. These are issues that China shares with most of the other transition economies (see, for instance, Balaton, in this book). Importantly, Michailova (2004) notes that fieldwork research is not conducted in some ideal setting but rather takes place within a certain set of organisational arrangements. My experiences certainly confirmed that fieldwork research in China was very much determined by not only organisational arrangements but also national, cultural, logistic and historical conditions.

Perceived status of researchers and availability of management Rynes et al. (2001: 340) suggest that ‘[o]bservers have long noted a considerable gap between organisational research findings and management practices’ and that there has been a pervasive gap between management and research. Managers typically have not used academic research or academic research findings when developing their management


practices. Moreover, when organisations have agreed to participate in academic research projects, generally they have not been interested in perusing the results of survey/interview data made available to them by the academics at the completion of the data collection phase or the project overall. These issues indicate that managers have not seen the value of research, making it difficult to undertake research even in the developed world. In an emerging economy like China, however, I found that other issues also worked against the ability to undertake research. Most Australian organisations have been fairly small by international standards. Therefore, Australian expatriates working in China for Australian organisations have usually been the only Australian representative in that subsidiary operation. Moreover, s/he has often been the only representative for the Australian organisation throughout Asia and, hence, has generally spent considerable amounts of time flying between several Asian offices. With the combination of demanding time schedules of expatriates and the reticence of many organisations to see the value of academic research, I found that gaining access to expatriates to interview became very difficult.

Logistical difficulties Though communication problems existed in the CEE until the beginning of the 1990s (see Lorentzen, in this book), a range of logistical issues have continued to confront international managers and researchers on a daily basis in China. In addition to poor communications, China has remained beset by indifferent technology, poor infrastructure, inadequate and inefficient transport systems, unwieldy bureaucracy, lack of basic amenities in rural areas, and a limited education of much of the workforce (Lin, 2001; Wang and Fang, 2001; Zapalaska and Edwards, 2001). While poor communications and the inefficiency of the transport system posed some difficulties to me while doing my research, it was language that created my greatest logistical challenge. China’s long history of isolation from the West has meant that few non-professionals possess English language skills – something that I quickly discovered when jumping into taxis and stating that I wanted to go to ‘X’. Moreover, I soon realised that the Chinese have a great propensity to change the names of English proper names, such as the Hilton. In order to find my way to my intended destination for conducting interviews, it was necessary to ask someone to write down the required address carefully in Chinese characters, which I could then present to the taxi driver.

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Concerns about confidentiality of responses Another challenge I faced in conducting research in China was in convincing interviewees of the confidentiality of any data I collected during interviews. While the ‘culture of fear’ has diminished in China (and other transition economies) since the 1980s, the political regime continues to impose quite considerable constraints on what subjects are considered acceptable for discussion (see Nojonen in this book). While there have been no instances of Westerners being detained without trial for disclosing ‘state secrets’, some Western business people continue to have concerns about comments attributed to them. The fact that the Communist leadership of this transition economy has kept a watchful eye on the activities of Westerners was affirmed to me when I posted home some background notes. When they finally arrived at my office many weeks later, it was clear that the notes had been examined. In contrast to the usual interview setting in the developed world, some individuals were concerned about being interviewed in their offices and instead expressed a wish to meet informally elsewhere. In many cases, interviewees suggested conducting the interview in a restaurant, bar or coffee shop. These requests presented problems for me ethically in terms of being able to ensure confidentiality of the participants. Moreover, the background noise that was recorded on the tapes made it difficult for me to understand the dialogue when transcribing these tapes. However, I realised that these expatriates’ preferred interview setting proved ideal for gleaning greater elaboration on some questions than was likely to have occurred within the confines of the company premises. It seemed highly unlikely that stereotyping comments such as ‘these people [the Chinese] are stupid, uncivilised, I cannot do anything with them, they just will not learn’ would have been made in the company boardroom, or indeed, for that matter, to a researcher who was not of Anglo-Saxon extraction. Whereas tape-recording interview notes has been considered de rigueur for modern research, not all interviewees were prepared to have their interview taped. While this meant that some of the richness of data was lost, such consequences were minimised in research projects that I undertook in collaboration with a research partner. In these instances, one of us asked questions while the other focused on taking notes. Nojonen (in this book) cites Tsang (1998) referring to having lunch with an interviewee when suddenly requested to erase, on the spot, a small part of the tape recording. This often happened to me when tape-recording and, even when taking notes,


interviewees occasionally asked me not to record a comment s/he had just made. Another difficulty in ensuring confidentiality resulted from the snowballing technique (see Von Glinow et al., 2002) that I used to access interviewees. The fact that most of the interviewees knew whom else I had interviewed meant that even when I used pseudonyms for individuals and organisations in published results it was often clear to other interviewees to whom I had referred. This situation was exacerbated by the fact that the Australian expatriate community in China was relatively small and putting some biographical details in published findings helped to narrow down the possibilities of who was who. Despite these obstacles, I still believed that there needed to be a clear rationale for undertaking research on Australian expatriates in China. However, I soon discovered three key issues that impacted upon the research process and outcomes. These are the need to achieve insider status, the type of expatriate interviewed, and my relationship as a female researcher to interviewees. Moreover, these three issues were interrelated in that it was much easier to establish insider status with those expatriates that were characterised as ‘hearts at home’ than those expatriates that were characterised as ‘gone native’. Further, as a female researcher I encountered much greater difficulties in researching the ‘gone native’ expatriates than the ‘hearts at home’ or ‘dual allegiance’ expatriates (described below). The interrelationship of the three themes is depicted in Figure 8.1.

Insider status Having developed an initial research proposal and draft interview questions, I travelled to China in 1999 ready to interview a cohort of Australian expatriates about the cross-cultural preparation they had received for working in China. However, I quickly faced a very real obstacle in the data collection phase in terms of gaining access to potential interviewees. Within a very short period of time I realised that these initial efforts at undertaking research via the conventional textbook approach was not effective. I became aware that to meet my objective of interviewing Australian expatriates in China I would need to have achieved insider status with the Australian expatriate community.

Experiences with the textbook approach to accessing interviewees When I commenced my research in China I wrote directly to large organisations listed in Shanghai’s chamber of commerce database

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Insider status Personal contacts Trust

Female researcher Collecting data in interviews

Type of expatriate Gone native

Dual allegiance

Hearts at home

Collecting data outside interviews Impact of expatriate type on ease with which insider status was established to undertake research easy moderate difficult Impact of expatriate type on ease with which a female researcher was able to undertake research easy moderate difficult

Figure 8.1

Insider status, expatriate type and researcher gender

of Western organisations and the Australian government’s trade commission’s database of Australian organisations in China. I contacted approximately 100 organisations. As specified by my university’s ethics department, I included a copy of the interview questions, a ten-page outline of the project and its aims and significance, and several further pages assuring confidentiality and ethical clearance. That I managed to elicit only one (!) positive response from this initial mail shot was directly linked to my lack of acquaintance with the interviewees sought. As in the developed world, the potential interviewees were probably also scared off by the dazzling array of documentation required by the ethics department! When I received no response to the initial letters, I wrote to the organisations a second time. I then faxed the same organisations and managed to attract a few extra potential interviewees. Faced with only a few weeks before my scheduled visit, and needing to achieve a significantly greater number of interviewees, I then decided to phone the organisational representatives directly in China. I found this a very frustrating experience as in the vast majority of cases it was almost


impossible to get past the receptionist. When I asked to speak to Mr. X., the receptionist invariably asked me why I had called. I would then proceed to explain the nature of my call. In most cases the receptionist would then just say, ‘No, he does not want to talk to you’, or ‘No, he would not be interested in that’ – even though her (it was always a woman) grasp of English was rarely proficient enough to have understood the nature of my research. While I realised that the receptionists’ role was to save her boss from unwanted disturbances (a normal blocking strategy utilised in China), I felt sure that had I been given the opportunity to speak with the Australian manager that s/he may have been interested in discussing my research project. Given these ongoing problems I decided just to fly to China to determine how I could fare from there. It was to prove a valuable lesson that both researchers and business people need to have acquired a third party contact or introduction to conduct business in China, and other transition economies (see Soulsby, in this book). Once in China, I decided to call the same organisations again and ascertain whether the receptionists would allow me to speak to their bosses now that I had actually arrived in the country. Again, the response was usually no. Still determined, I decided to try cold canvassing by door knocking around the offices of Australian companies in Shanghai. Once at the office I would again ask a receptionist if I could see her manager. The response was usually in the negative. After a few initial setbacks I decided that I would then ask if I could wait in the reception area. The receptionists generally did not have a problem with this. So, I would wait in the office until I saw someone walk in that spoke with an Australian accent. I would then say to the person in question, ‘Excuse me’, introduce myself, explain the nature of my visit and ask whether s/he would be prepared to participate in my research. Put on the spot, some expatriates did agree to be interviewed – some right then and there, others at another time. But this was far from an ideal situation as it caused considerable loss of face (mianzi) (see Buttery and Wang, 1999) for the company receptionist.

Recognising the importance of personal contacts I also decided that I would interview some Australian expatriate friends of my PhD student. I had some concerns about the methodological rigour of this approach, but realised that it was the only way to achieve an adequate interview sample size and believed that this approach would probably be acceptable for a pilot study. After all the efforts involved in trying to get those first few interviews, suddenly I had

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found a strategy that really worked. Once I had contacted these first few people who agreed to be interviewed, I found that I quickly built up a database of potential interviewees. At the end of an interview, I would ask the interviewee if s/he knew any other Australian expatriates who might be prepared to be interviewed. Very often the interviewees would get out their mobile phone and look through their list of friends/acquaintances and give me several names of other Australians working in China. In some instances they would even phone someone on the spot and ask him or her if s/he was prepared to speak to me. I would call later and say that I had spoken to so and so and that s/he had given me their name. In almost all cases working through personal contacts proved a successful approach. A common response of expatriates was along the lines of ‘Oh Johnno gave me your name – you’re a mate of Johnno – sure, no problem, I will have a chat to you – when would you like to come in and see me?’ While this approach did mean that I was forced to conduct interviews with a particular subset of individuals (by nature of their close associations with each other), it did also suggest the importance of my informal networks – activating personal contacts was really the most efficient and effective way to access organisations. The elimination of random sampling in favour of this strategy of ‘snowballing’ or ‘convenience sampling’ did increase the potential for bias on my part as interviewer and for the individuals who provided contacts. However, an international team of researchers currently reporting best practice in International Human Resource Management (IHRM) (Von Glinow et al., 2002: 150) also used this strategy. Utilising this approach also meant that I gained entry to other meetings and informal functions where I could collect informal data and meet other interviewees – all of who added to a database that could be used in my subsequent research projects.

Achieving insider status Much literature on China’s business culture refers to the importance of relationship building and achieving insider status (nei-wei) when wishing to engage in research with local Chinese (see Siu, 1996). My experience also suggested that gaining access to expatriates in China required efforts at building relationships, accessing networks and becoming an insider (for discussion of how the concepts compare and contrast between the West and China, see Michailova and Worm, 2003). The necessity of insider status is supported by Krug and Belschak (2001: 12), who argue that networking plays a central role for


businesses wishing to gain access to partners or clients in China. I found that while individuals may have been prepared to be involved in my research project once they were aware of its existence and content, just getting to this stage depended upon being introduced through a third party.

The link between trust and insider status Associated with developing insider status is the building of a relationship based on trust. Several factors helped to build the trust of the interviewees in my first research project and ensured that they were prepared to be involved in subsequent research projects. First, I promised confidentiality of their responses, their names and the names of their organisations. Second, I was prepared to undertake interviews at a location decided by the expatriate. Third, I was prepared to accept a non-response to any questions deemed unacceptable or to terminate the interview at any time the expatriate required. While points one and three fell within the guidelines of conventional methodology, point two offered something to doing research in the developing and developed worlds, namely, that sometimes it was necessary to put aside my own research preferences to ensure the desired end result (successful interviews). I also realised that it was easier to cultivate rapport with the female interviewees and younger expatriates because of our shared characteristics. While my own position was that I should maintain the same academic ‘distance’ from all interviewees, appearing empathetic to all and allowing them to believe that I was ‘on their side’ did not affect my academic objectivity but did build trust. The approach I adopted was what Steger (in this book) refers to as the Gulliver role type, although I accept his argument that the researcher can never be a blank sheet.

The problem of insider status – did it allow academic distance? Vinten (1994: 32) has suggested that there is an ‘inevitable trade-off between the observer’s privileged insider status and the reduced level of… reliability that is achieved’. It could be argued that my data were to some extent contaminated by the fact that the interviewees knew each other. By the third day of fieldwork, when I phoned individuals to request interviews, the expatriates already knew my intentions. For instance, it was usual for a potential interviewee to comment along the lines of ‘Oh yes, I heard that there was an Australian chick [sic] in town looking to talk to people about guanxi…sure I would be happy to have a chat with you’. Obviously it became quite difficult to maintain

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confidentiality when each new interviewee was well aware of those who had been interviewed before him/her – a consequence of the tightness of the expatriate community. Moreover, on occasion, an interviewee would ask me what a previous interviewee had said in response to a question (see also Soulsby, in this book). I managed to evade this by providing a very general response that could in no way compromise my source. In publishing my research, some compromises had to be made in respect of methodological rigour and ethics, but in such publications I have also provided substantial justification for the strategies employed. I have attempted to address concerns about reliability of interview data by supplementing it with secondary data sources. While secondary data published by the government in China (and other transition economies) have been inaccurate, had poor reliability and lacked a proper basis for comparison with statistics used in other nations (Roy et al., 2001: 204), I have found usable data at the Australian government agencies in China.

Types of expatriates Prior to conducting the research, I had expected that interviewing Australians in China would pose no more difficulties than interviewing them in Australia. From my first interviews, however, I soon realised that this was not so, and that accessing interviewees and conducting interviews were somewhat problematic. The primary reason for this was that the interviewees did not all behave in the manner that I would have expected, namely as they could have been expected to behave in an interview setting in Australia. Indeed, the individuals I interviewed throughout the course of my research projects fell into three main types. These types have been categorised as ‘dual allegiance’ expatriates, ‘hearts at home’ expatriates and ‘gone native’ expatriates (Black and Gregersen, 1992).

Identifying types of expatriates Dual allegiance expatriates have been characterised as expatriates who are highly committed to both the local operation and headquarters and are able to integrate the demands and objectives of both forms of the organisation (Gregersen and Black, 1992). Due to their adaptability and ability to understand, and elucidate differences and parallels between the Australian and Chinese contexts, dual allegiance expatriates in China proved to be very valuable interviewees.


The second type of expatriate, that Black and Gregersen (1992) referred to as ‘hearts at home’, are individuals that are highly committed to the parent organisation but have little allegiance to the local operation or the local nation’s culture, language, and business practices. While these individuals have usually proved quite problematic for their organisations because of their difficulties in personally adapting and being sensitive towards the local workforce, expatriates of this type proved relatively easy for me to research. While I needed to be cognisant of these individuals’ inherent bias, they were easy to access (often being prepared to talk to someone familiar from home) and they also tended to feel most at ease in the interview situation. The third type of interviewee is that which Black and Gregersen (1992) have referred to as ‘gone native’. These expatriates have usually formed a strong identification with, and attachment to, the host nation’s culture, language, values, and business practices. From an organisational perspective, they integrated well with the local workforce but were disadvantaged by having ‘lost touch’ with headquarters’ practices, policies, and procedures. In terms of my research, these expatriates proved most problematic. They seemed to be the individuals least likely to want to participate in my research – because they no longer felt an attachment to the Australian context – and they were often the most difficult to interview in that they were no longer accustomed to utilising Australian business customs and interview protocol.

Insider status and expatriate types Michailova (2004) has suggested that collecting data in a culturally familiar environment (in my case, with fellow Australians) can be problematic precisely because the researcher assumes s/he is safe on these dimensions and tends to take for granted much more than she should. On the other hand, personal experience has also proved critical to acquiring extra information. In my case, I found that the majority of interviewees (‘hearts at home’ and ‘dual allegiance’ expatriates) automatically felt at ease because they could relate more to me than they might to an interviewer of another nationality. For instance, several interviewees asked me if I knew someone they knew who had studied at my university. Nonetheless, it does need to be stated that the interpersonal style of the researcher does affect how research relationships are structured (see Illes and Rees, in this book). Certainly, I realised that eliciting information from research subjects did require some degree of role playing, even if it was only in terms of being empathetic to

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the interviewee (a lesson that also has relevance to interviewing in the developed world). Whilst I found that most interviewees would ‘let down their guard’ once fully immersed in the interview, particularly if they had friends with whom I had already spoken, it became apparent that individuals of the ‘hearts at home’ persuasion were most amenable to being interviewed. They elaborated on interview questions and seemed very interested in discussing their problems in adjusting to China, as they perceived me as having affinity with their difficulties because I was a fellow Australian visiting China. Indeed, some of these ‘hearts at home’ interviewees even criticised their colleagues that they regarded as having ‘sold out’ and ‘gone over to the Chinese side’ – the expatriates who had gone native. While the ‘hearts at home’ expatriates may have needed to keep up appearances with their mates in China by giving the impression that all was going smoothly (an Australian version of face – ‘she will be right mate’), they were quite happy to get things off their chest with a neutral, third party. The insider status I had achieved with the ‘hearts at home’ expatriates and to some extent the ‘dual allegiance’ expatriates, ensured more personal responses than the more factual, strictly rational responses that Illes and Rees (in this book) identify as typical of Anglo-Saxon interviewees (and indeed also typical of the my ‘gone native’ interviewees). However, the type of expatriate did not just impact on the extent to which I achieved insider status and the degree to which I could gather information as a result of this insider status. The type of expatriate also influenced how I was received as a female researcher and this had consequences for the research I could undertake and the settings in which the research was undertaken.

Female researcher Not all the expatriates that I interviewed in China followed Western interview protocol and this had particular significance for me as a female researcher. While I had never previously encountered any differential treatment in my work life or indeed in undertaking research, I found that when interviewing some expatriates in China my gender did became a point of difference. This was demonstrated in two main ways. First, some interviewees made comments to me that pointed out the distinction between how I was viewed as a Western female and how the local Chinese females were viewed (a distinction that would not have been as dramatically noted by a male researcher). Second, I


realised that the extent to which I could gather extra information in non-traditional interview settings would be hindered simply because of the fact that as a female researcher I felt very uncomfortable in these settings (although I do acknowledge that some male researchers may also feel such discomfort).

The impact of expatriate type on my reception as a female researcher While the vast majority of interviewees were highly professional and treated me with great respect as a researcher, some of the ‘gone native’ expatriates dealt with the interview quite differently from Western norms. This related primarily to the fact that these individuals had so adapted to Chinese employment practices that they were no longer conversant with Western standards of interview protocol. Removed from a workplace and society that values equal employment practices and anti-harassment legislation, some of these ‘gone native’ expatriates seemed to have forgotten appropriate interview etiquette. The difficulties I encountered were similar to those related to me by female expatriate interviewees and serve as a warning to all international business women planning to work in China! In one particular interview, the interviewee constantly directed my attention to the ‘office girls’ and boasted about how useful it was to have these young girls at his beck and call. He asked me whether I thought it was wonderful in China, where there was no legislation against sexual harassment or firing women once they reach a certain age. In this instance I tried to steer the interview back to my research questions. Having failed to do so on several occasions, and the interviewee becoming more persistent in trying to goad me about the ‘problem’ of Western women who always speak their minds, I decided to terminate the interview. In many more instances, ‘gone native’ interviewees would make sharp distinctions between me as a Western female and the local females, in treating me with complete respect and courtesy and as an equal while also showing complete contempt and lack of respect for their Chinese secretaries. However, I viewed the behaviour of denigrating other women in my presence as being a form of insult to me also. In one example, an expatriate who owned his own business asked me to come to his office outside the city to conduct the interview. The office was also his place of residence and his secretary was also his de facto marriage partner, his interpreter and legal business partner (at this time, all small private businesses were required to have a local business partner, even if in name only). This inter-

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viewee’s partner was present throughout the interview. While perfectly courteous towards me, he did not bother to introduce her as though she was of no significance. Throughout the interview he sat with his back to her. Occasionally he would make a response to one of my interview questions and turn to her and say, ‘Is that not right, Ling?’ and then when she would attempt to answer he would cut her off mid-sentence. While ‘gone native’ interviewees had probably always held such sexist and/or racist attitudes, the fact remains that they could not express them openly while working in Australia, and in some cases this was given as their rationale for moving to China to work. Indeed, one interviewee went as far as to say to me that he would never return to work in Australia as it was ‘liberating’ living in a country that did not have ‘all that equal employment opportunity stuff’. Such comments suggest that the climate in China for Western expatriate females, including researchers, is not without its difficulties. This view was supported by an Australian expatriate female: ‘I cannot wait to get back to Australia where management will treat me as being as competent as any of the men and I do not have to tolerate the belittling attitude that these men (expats) have towards women, particularly the sexual objectification that they have of women’.1

Collecting data in non-interview settings – potential problems for female researchers Nojonen (in this book) suggests that some interviews may not be especially useful but provide good opportunities to make contact with interviewees afterwards and make other contacts that may prove much more useful. In particular, he refers to the value of attending banquets and other social events for acquiring extra contacts and information (absolutely essential for business people wanting to transact business with the Chinese). Occasionally I too have been asked to go to banquets. I too found these useful for collecting extra information informally. However, while Nojonen (in this book) refers to the benefits of gleaning information over a pint of beer, as a female researcher I did not feel terribly comfortable doing so. Fortunately, both Chinese and Australian attendees at banquets were prepared to accept that, as a female, I need not engage in the gambei (toasting) to the same extent as men. As a consequence, I found that I could actually benefit from the fact that many of the attendees were drunk and freer with information than normal. However, I did believe that the extra information that I gained in such non-interview settings was substantially less than


a male researcher may have been able to acquire, simply because I could not develop the same degree of camaraderie that a male may have been able to achieve. On rare occasions, I was asked to go with expatriates to Karaoke Television (KTV) bars. While the KTV has no direct equivalent, it falls somewhere between the geisha bars in Japan and the lap dancing bars in the Western world. As in the West, many of the women go beyond lap dancing/stripping to being available for prostitution through separate negotiation. While the KTV bars may have been another venue for collecting information from expatriates, I felt affronted to have been asked to go to such a place. I did not feel comfortable with playing the researcher role in this way (compare Steger’s ‘Roman’ role type in this book). When I said that I could not attend, the response was often ‘but don’t you want to experience the whole of Chinese culture to inform your research’. In Australia, it is customary that men do not want women to know that they go to such bars, much less that they would take a woman with them – so these individuals had certainly ‘gone native’. I did, however, realise that I would need to decline these offers graciously, if I did not want to risk losing the network of interviewees. Usually I did so by saying that I was not feeling well. However, I believe that I did lose opportunities to gain more information and that a male researcher, who may have felt more comfortable in a KTV bar, would have acquired further research data in such an informal setting in which the expatriates had further ‘let down their guard’. While some of the ‘hearts at home’ expatriates did not frequent the KTV bars, some of the ‘dual allegiance’ and most of the ‘gone native’ expatriates did and hence, the type of expatriate did impact on the extent of information that I was able to access as a female researcher. A final informal way in which data could be gathered was via social organisations such as the rugby and cricket clubs (which are also the arenas in which much headhunting for jobs takes place). A lot of the expatriates’ spare time was spent socialising at the Australian Business Club. While it was not essential to participate in these activities, it was a useful strategy adopted by business people wanting to build networks. I realised that these venues could not be used for interviewing – indeed it would have made people feel quite uncomfortable if I had pulled out my paper and pen and started making notes while people were socialising! Yet, the informal commentary at these venues was useful to me in building up background impressions. It should be noted, however, that female researchers and business women that do

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not feel at ease in undertaking copious drinking sessions at such venues are somewhat disadvantaged in not being able to make the contacts necessary to undertake their work.

Conclusions This chapter has addressed some of the methodological issues that I faced when undertaking research with Australian expatriates in the People’s Republic of China. Specifically, the chapter has explored the relationship between researcher and research subjects, and focused on the interrelationship between the type of expatriate interviewed, the insider status of the researcher, and being a female researcher. Despite the fact that those I interviewed were Australians who should have been familiar with the conventions of Western research, I have demonstrated that the difficulties in conducting research were exacerbated by researching in a transitional society. My argument suggests that these challenges may be faced by future researchers and international business practitioners alike when operating in China. Despite the rigours of fieldwork endeavours in China, I discovered that it is not without its rewards, and indeed undertaking research in China taught me much about the need for researchers and business people to be flexible and adaptive. For all the challenges presented by a nation juggling a rapidly expanding capitalist economy with Confucian roots and a still coherent and powerful Communist Politburo and military, researchers and business people should not be put off! China also provides a fascinating array of opportunities to explore divergent methodological and business approaches.

Note 1. For discussion of the challenges for female expatriates in specific cultures, see Adler (1987), Hofstede (1989) and Taylor and Napier (1996).

Suggested further readings Adler, N.J. et al. (1989) ‘In search of appropriate methodology: from outside the people’s Republic of China looking in’, Journal of International Business Studies, 20(1), 61–74. Child, J. and Tse, D. (2001) ‘China’s transition and its implications for international business’, Journal of International Business Studies, 32(1), 5–21. Roy, A. et al. (2001) ‘Chinese puzzles and paradoxes: conducting business research in China’, Journal of Business Research, 52, 203–10.

156 Fieldwork in Transforming Societies Siu, Y.-M.N. (1996) ‘Getting in, getting on, getting out: the role of participant observation research in a professional organisation’, Business Research Centre, Hong Kong Baptist University, Working Paper Series (Hong Kong: Business Research Centre, Hong Kong Baptist University). Usunier, J.-C. (1998) International and Cross-Cultural Management Research (London: Sage).

9 Fieldwork in a Low-Trust (Post-)Communist Society Matti Nojonen

Introduction Doing successful fieldwork is difficult (Atkinson, et al.). This chapter discusses the particular challenges involved in conducting nonauthorised fieldwork on guanxi practices in Chinese organisations in three different Chinese cities – Beijing, Shanghai and Qingdao. To get data on a sensitive topic, I had to learn and practise the various roles and skills necessary to establish my own guanxi connections. This involved gift-giving, befriending through banquets, socialising and Karaok with people from different background and regions. Gaining access and establishing trust are universal problems in conducting ethnographic field studies. The greater the sensitivity of the research topic, the more is the challenge of gaining information from respondents. Furthermore, the actual interview process is a complex form of social interaction taking place between the researcher and interviewees, involving a subtle interplay of roles and a reading of visible and invisible signals that constitute a complex situation (Weinberg, 2002). Yet, most books on qualitative methodology for organisational research are by nature normative, explaining how research ought to be conducted and how concrete methodological problems ought to be solved. These are cookbooks providing recipes for students entering the field. The literature also assumes that the process of fieldwork is guided by ‘Western rationality’ and proclaims that research is a goal-oriented, a directly rational process that follows a sequential logic (Andersen, et al., 1995). In Western organisations there exist regulations and institutional practices – some transparent, some non-transparent – that restrict the 157


researcher’s access to the field. In most cases, the Western scholar has a pre-understanding of the field and therefore at least a rudimentary comprehension of relevant rules, institutions and practices. However, the Chinese regulatory framework on fieldwork and the logic of how it is applied differ drastically from Western practices. The particular conditions of conducting fieldwork in China are consequently worthy of further discussion. In this chapter and in my ethnographic research, I adopt Goffman’s (2002: 151–3) view of fieldwork, as comprising the whole process of getting an understanding of the observed social processes and rules governing the phenomena, involving how to gain access, reading signals, hints, gestures, body language, harnessing own physical, mental and linguistic skills in the process, understanding what the informants say with particular events and narration, and specific expressions. However, I had no education in ethnographic fieldwork, since I entered the field only after the Chinese authorities had forbidden my quantitative research. Hence, the process was literally ‘learning by doing’, guided by intuition, self-criticism, and, naturally, lots of mistakes. This chapter first describes the hostile institutional environment of carrying out fieldwork in Chinese organisations and communities. In the following section, I illustrate the particular Chinese fieldwork conditions: regulatory framework, low-trust society, no tradition of politically free academic sociology, and ‘culture of fear’. In the second part, I describe how I did my ethnographic fieldwork constrained by these institutional and collectively shared socio-psychological conditions. As I was interested in studying networking phenomena within and between Chinese organisations, this chapter concentrates on describing fieldwork in Chinese organisations, thus excluding reference to foreign conducted fieldwork in international joint ventures (IJVs) or wholly owned foreign enterprises or any other institution in which foreigners work.

Arbitrary and overlapping regulations and policies The fieldwork environment in China differs greatly from free Western democracies. Despite China being much more open, free and accessible for foreigners today, it is still governed by the Chinese Communist Party and the regulatory framework for fieldwork remains ambiguous and non-transparent. Under the surface of openness, a host of regulations, some still non-transparent, and ambiguous practices govern both

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qualitative and quantitative research in China. This reality makes journalistic and academic fieldwork an adventure, with officials hampering the research process, and, in the worst cases, leading to detention, arrest and expulsion from the country. In addition, people in China share a collective socio-psychological mistrust and even fear of talking openly to strangers (Yang, 1994). The foreign researcher needs to be aware that Chinese citizens live under a confusing regulatory system. Aside from laws (falü), citizens and organisations have to consider many other types of official rule – including guiding, fang’an, jueding, tiaoli, guihua, xize, shixing guiding, zhanxing guiding, jueyi – controlling a wide range of their daily activities. These rules are stipulated by various government agencies and ministries at central and regional level and are not necessarily consistent with each other. Furthermore, it is important to note that, in many cases, it is neither the above-mentioned regulations nor the laws that constitute the most fundamental rules. In China, politics are in command and overrule laws and regulations. However, the reality is even more complicated, since it is common for local authorities to interpret central policies differently, according to their personal or local interests. Furthermore, the control apparatus reacts to the political swings between periods of ‘rectification’ and relaxation (Baum, 1994; Wang, 2001). Foreign research fellows are directly subjected to Chinese regulations on foreign affairs (waishi jilü) that concern the activities of foreign journalists and to ‘internal regulations’ (neibu guiding: see Fang, 1999). While these regulations lack clarity and transparency, two general principles of enforcement can be detected. One set of regulations concerning independent foreign-conducted quantitative research in China is straightforward – research is forbidden. This regulation was implemented in late 1990s first as neibu guiding, but later became public. Now foreigners have to submit their quantitative research proposals to the National Statistical Bureau (NSB) or to those state universities that have gained necessary NSB approval. In the process of handing over the fieldwork responsibility to NSB, the authorities evaluate not only the cost of the study but also feasibility. Research topics considered sensitive are rejected. For universities possessing a licence for foreign-conducted quantitative research, judging the sensitivity of a project is complicated because there are no clear criteria to apply. To be on the safe side, Chinese academics have to follow the practice of feng pai (wind style), that is, adjusting to changes in political winds and acting accordingly.


A second set of regulations regarding qualitative research is much more ambiguous, non-transparent and complex. On the one hand, Chinese authorities allow and even openly support foreign research that is conducted in IJVs and wholly Western-owned organisations. The explosive growth of research on these organisations and the resulting image of Chinese authorities not hampering or banning the fieldwork process reflect either the easy access to these forms of organisation or researchers’ unwillingness to report the whole story. On the other hand, there is a different principle of enforcement for foreign-conducted qualitative field studies in Chinese-run organisations and local societies. The regulatory framework of the non-transparent internal regulations (neibu guiding) remains unclear, but is shaped by vague notions of ‘state secret’ and political, economic or cultural sensitivity. ‘State secrets’ have a central role in defining fieldwork regulations and are subject to wide interpretation. Information provided by the official state-run media, covering central and regional TV and radio broadcasts, all newspapers, most magazines and journals, which are available everywhere, can, in a surreal way, become state secrets if approached by Western or local scholars or journalists. At a news briefing for the foreign correspondents, the Foreign Ministry spokesman, Tang Guoqing, argued that ‘The law on [state] secrets has clear stipulations’. However, when asked to provide an example, Tang continued ‘Clearly, I cannot answer on this occasion. The specifics cannot be told because they are state secrets’ (WPFR, 2001). There have been dozens of occasions when the ambiguous stipulation of ‘state secret’ has been used to hamper the work of foreign journalists, leading to arrests, beatings and expulsions from China. Scholars, such as the Swedish Sinologist, Torbjörn Lodén in 1997, have also been systematically followed and harassed by state organs. In other cases, Chinese authorities have denied visas to or arrested foreign researchers while conducting fieldwork. A US-based librarian, Song Yongyi was detained with his wife on 7th August 1999 and eventually, on 24th December 1999, charged with ‘purchasing or illegally supplying intelligence for people outside the territory of China’. Song had made photocopies of newspaper articles in a public library. After pleas by more than 2,000 foreign scholars to President Jiang Zemin, Song returned to the US in early 2000, but this has not prevented similar episodes (www.scmp.com/jan/13/2000, WPFR, 2001). The regulations on foreign affairs constrain communication and cooperation between foreigners and academics at top Chinese research centres, like the Chinese Academy of Social Science (CASS) in Beijing,

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its provincial level organisations and even the key universities in China. Academics working at these institutions should follow the regulations on foreign affairs, having to report any discussions with foreign correspondents or co-operating researchers to their superiors. These regulations also apply to ordinary people, as any action, including interviews with local or foreign journalists or research fellows, can be interpreted as a violation against the system. Since the mid-1990s, several Chinese people have been arrested and convicted for talking to foreign journalists. Some have been detained without trial. According to the World Press Freedom Review (1996–2001), one of the few investigative Chinese journalists was murdered and at least 27 were serving prison sentences. In all cases, the reporters had published or intended to publish articles on using personal connections (guanxi) for private benefit, nepotism, corruption, embezzlement etc. In similar fashion, Chinese researchers are subjected to systematic control by Communist Party organs and their articles are subject to tight censorship before publishing. Some authors circumvent this by publishing abroad or in Chinese samizdat publications. Several journals covering socioeconomic issues, like the liberal Dongfang in 1998, have been closed down due to ‘deviation from the official Party line’ or ‘spreading anti-government information’. In order to clarify the ambiguous regulations on investigative research, the central regime announced in 2001 a ‘Seven Nos’ list of forbidden topics. 1) Negate the leading positions of Marxism, Mao Zedong Thought and Deng Xiaoping Theory; 2) Depart from the guiding principles, official line, or policies of the Communist Party; 3) Reveal state secrets, endanger state security, or harm national interests; 4) Run counter to official policies regarding nationalities and religion or undermine national unity and affect social stability; 5) Advocate murder, violence, obscenity, superstition, pseudo-science, erroneous political orientation and vulgarities; 6) Spread rumours, fabricate and disseminate false news, or interfere in the work of the party and government; and 7) Violate Party propaganda, discipline or the state publishing and advertising regulations. As all seven paragraphs are vaguely defined and highly political by nature, the regulatory principles remain ambiguous and provide much leeway for political interpretation. Still, these ‘Seven-Nos’ are just one more set of rules governing fieldwork in China (WPFR, 2001). The purpose of this regulatory framework is to restrict independent foreign research, except for letting foreigners rather freely enter foreign run organisations in China. This regulatory framework forces foreign


scholars to co-operate with local partners, who then have the difficult task of judging the sensitivity of the research topic. The Party department of universities makes the final decision over the fieldwork in Chinese organisations or societies. To acquire a green light for the fieldwork, a foreign researcher needs to find a local ‘supervisor’ who will appoint an assistant to him/her. The ‘supervisor’ is responsible to the authorities for the appropriate conduct and nature of the research, whereas the assistant helps on practical issues, like finding interviewees and acting as an interpreter (Yang, 1994). Entering the field with an assistant can easily complicate the interview process and even affect the reliability of the data collected. Aware of arbitrary and non-transparent regulations, respondents might be alerted by certain questions. Reliability becomes more problematic when the foreign research fellow, in the presence of a local assistant, raises issues that are personally or politically sensitive. On the other hand, if the research topic is not sensitive, a trusting relationship with an assistant can become fruitful, as s/he can reveal and explain the social, cultural or institutional structures that provide the background for certain phenomena (see Soulsby in this book). One possible way to circumvent the official procedure of applying for permission for fieldwork in Chinese organisations is to choose a more adventurous route – to do it by oneself. It is not uncommon for foreign researchers to conduct their research in Chinese societies by themselves. One notable and daring example was the wide questionnaire research on democracy and human rights, carried out in 1993 by Hjellum, who, with his students, went alone to neighbourhoods, interviewed people and asked them to fill in the questionnaire in 1993 (Hjellum, 1998). It is more common to go through a close and trusted relationship with a local person, which can open up access to the field. However, since some topics can easily become about ‘state secrets’, both the researcher and the local ‘friend’ can be skating on thin ice. It is known that ethnographers can harm research participants, who can feel ‘anxiety, guilty, stress, guilt and damage their self-esteem’ (Murphy and Dingwall, 2001: 340) – particularly relevant in studying personally sensitive issues. In addition, the foreign researcher should be aware that, in China, non-authorised fieldwork might lead to harsh legal, economic and social sanctions for all participants. Beyond the regulatory framework, other particular structures affect the research process. China, like former European communist states, is described as a low-trust society. The genesis of low-trust in China can

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be found in the traditional division between insiders and outsiders (nei-wai). Individuals tend to trust people of the same kinship and locality and distrust people from outside their immediate social circles, i.e. strangers. This is naturally a challenge for the researchers who carry out interviews in such societies (Fukuyama, 1996; Whitley, 1999). The social sciences have a short and politicised history in China. In Chinese communism, which proclaims itself to be the most advanced political system, there is no need or space for a science researching social problems. Social science was first accepted into the Chinese university curriculum in the late 1980s, but, like all other sciences in China, it does not enjoy political freedom. This is a universal problem complicating the fieldwork process in socialist countries or other dictatorships. In China, as ‘in Algeria the idea of objective academic sociology is largely meaningless’ (Mitchell, 1993: 38). In addition, Chinese people find it difficult to distinguish science from politics, since Marxism combines the two in a political science. Furthermore, people are not used to participating in sociological fieldwork studies and, in many cases, distrust the purpose and objectivity of such research (Fang, 1999). In contemporary China, politics has remained in command and any forms of social conduct and even language, the tool of thinking, have been a subject of political struggle (Liu, 1993; Schoenhals, 1992). The surreal and violent political history of China is encoded in the collective memory of Chinese people. This collective encoding, which Mayfair Yang (1994) has called a ‘culture of fear’, can have direct impact on the process of collecting data. By definition, people who live in a culture of fear share an omnipresent feeling that they are guilty of something, even though they have not committed any mistakes or crimes (Yang, 1994: 22). Citizens, especially if Party members, can be subjected to ‘disciplinary punishments’ due to the ‘mistakes’ they have made. Mistakes are not necessarily violating the laws of China, but more deviations from Party line and policy. During the course of the reforms since early 1980s, the collective sense of a ‘culture of fear’ has been diminishing and people are increasingly open in talking to foreigners. Despite this openness, the ‘culture of fear’ is still present in the collective mental encoding. Jiang Zemin’s policy of ‘strike hard’, non-transparent rules, detention without court decisions and an omnipresent control apparatus do not only keep the memory alive, but also occasionally realise the fear among people. In fieldwork, the ‘culture of fear’ can still keep interviewees at bay and influence the researcher, making him/her rather paranoid. This is


illustrated by Yang (1994), who, believing that she was being observed by the Chinese secret police, even destroyed her field notes.

Field study in non-friendly environment Establishing contact The non-friendly regulatory framework and the particular sociopsychological conditions described above affected my fieldwork. Under such fieldwork circumstances, imagination and flexibility become essential. George and Clegg (1997: 1017) describe their fieldwork experiences in Sri Lanka: ‘In the field, one finds that it pays off to try all possible ways to evince interest from respondents. Using a variety of methods gives better results than when one sticks to a script’. Hence, in conducting non-authorised interviews, finding interviewees and an appropriate place for the interview became challenges. During the interviews, I learned to deploy different ‘networking mechanisms’, roles and skills in attempting to get data (see Hutchings and Steger chapters in this book). Sometimes the learning was conscious but in many cases it resulted from subconscious reactions to various signals, such as grunts, smiles, laughs and hesitation. However, the process lasted almost two years, had personal and economic costs and was full of ethical pitfalls. The non-transparent regulations had a devastating impact on my original research plan in China. My initial intention was to carry out case-based questionnaire research on business ethics in three Chinese cities; Beijing, Shanghai and Taipei (Taiwan). I designed, translated and test-ran the questionnaire in Scandinavia in early 1996 and arrived later the same year in Shanghai on a scholarship to conduct my research among the local MBA students. At the University, I had an excellent connection through which I began to pull the strings. After more than six months of meetings, making applications, receiving rejections, reformulating my questionnaire and reapplying, I got approval, only to be finally rejected the day before the questionnaire was to have been delivered. It became evident that my influential connection had withdrawn its support. I was politely encouraged by my local supervisor to drop the whole issue (i.e. it was prohibited) and carry out safer fieldwork in a local joint venture instead. When I visited the Chinese University of Hong Kong in the spring of 1997, I found out that new non-transparent internal regulations (neibu guiding) had forbidden foreigners from con-

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ducting ‘uncontrolled’ research in Chinese society, and my research had become a victim. Instead of taking up the proposed change in my study, I decided to readjust my research question and quietly carry out an ethnographic field-study on how to establish and utilise guanxi in a Chinese context. In the early stages, I did a few interviews in JVs and wholly owned Western enterprises, but these data were excluded from my doctoral materials. I decided not to apply for permission for my ethnographic research and eventually managed to conduct 84 informative interviews in three different Chinese cities – Shanghai, Beijing and Qingdao – during 1997–1998 and in the summer of 1999. Carrying out non-authorised interviews affected the sample and the timeframe of the research. I did not have approval from officials for my research and in China it is impossible to pick up the Yellow Pages and choose one industry or a single company to arrange interviews on a sensitive topic like guanxi. In entering Chinese organisations, I either created my own direct connections or used intermediaries. Creating my own network of people was time consuming, and to build up the final sample I primarily relied on friends’ help as well as spontaneity, luck and coincidence. I grasped all available opportunities; I talked to people at airports, discussed with co-passengers on planes and trains and actively engaged with people in local communities. After each successful interview, I asked the interviewee whether s/he would be willing to introduce friends for interview. It was a time and resource consuming process (see also Hutchings in this book). Conducting non-authorised interviews involves finding a peaceful place for interviewing, because, without university approval, I could not take interviewees back to the campus. Moreover, affected by the culture of fear, some interviewees felt uncomfortable when I made notes while talking to them in public place. In the end, I conducted interviews in small street restaurants, in their company’s conference rooms or coffee shops. Because of the sheer size of Shanghai and Beijing, unlike in more compact Qingdao, I spent hours travelling in the chaotic traffic to various districts, mostly commuting by taxi, as the infrastructure of public transportation was poor (see also Hutchings in this book). In carrying out the fieldwork, I was aware that researchers doing non-authorised work are in an even worse position than journalists who have permission, however arbitrarily defined, to conduct their work. I was also aware of the harsh sentences that locals could get for talking to foreign journalists – up to twelve years – and of the expulsion of foreign journalists. On the one hand, I had to be discreet about


my activities. On the other, it was essential to mingle with local people and discuss my research with them, without endangering my own or their position. Despite the risks, I became seriously concerned only twice, when people – one a taxi driver, the other a local student – who should not have known what I was doing, began to talk to me about my research. Although I became scared and wondered whether this was a ‘warning’ or just a coincidence, none of my interviewees, as far as I know, got into trouble with the Chinese authorities. As a matter of fact, here lies the strength of a totalitarian control system. When one does not know who is observing or when and how one is observed, one begins to suspect everyone, including oneself, which is a clear symptom of the culture of fear. As Yang (1994) notes, conducting a non-authorised study in a dictatorial state under an arbitrary control apparatus affects the researcher and the research process and prolongs the fieldwork. However, being plagued by the ‘culture of fear’ also has an important positive consequence. These startling experiences, whether real warnings or mere coincidences, made it easier for me to empathise with local people, and I got a taste of the bitter side of living under the culture of fear. Naturally these experiences slowed down my fieldwork for a while. The normal interview language was Mandarin Chinese, but I used English when the interviewee so preferred – usually we ended up talking both Chinese and English. As Tsang (1998) has pointed out, it is of paramount importance to communicate in the respondent’s language, because the respondent may not be able to express his or her ideas fully in a foreign language. Moreover, it is difficult to translate certain indigenous concepts into foreign language.

The warm-up stage Due to the nature of the research, I guaranteed confidentiality for interviewees and anyone else mentioned during interviews. At this early stage, I followed a strict sequence of questions, which I went through with the interviewees. The first few interviews in Shanghai were very informative and I became entrapped in this ‘successful’ interviewing script. However, as soon as I had interviewed my local friends who trusted me, I had a succession of non-informative interviews with people whom I had not previously known and I became frustrated. During this process, I experienced the ‘culture of fear’ and low-trust in concrete ways. At this early stage of learning to conduct interviews, I used a tape-recorder. My first interviewees allowed me to tape-record

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the interviews, though the interviewing process and atmosphere changed with people I did not know. Some of these interviewees told directly that they did not want to be tape-recorded and others, who initially gave permission, stiffened and were visibly uncomfortable when the interview was tape-recorded. On one occasion, for instance, I asked for permission to tape-record, but the interviewee declined my request. However, having left the tape-recorder on the table, after a few minutes of discussion the interviewee suddenly grabbed the machine and checked whether it was on. He was embarrassed when he realised that it was switched off. Needless to say, this interview was ruined. After this experience I did not carry the tape-recorder with me anymore. Other researchers have had similar kinds of reaction. Tsang (1998: 512) describes a tape-recording situation: ‘When we were having lunch together after the successful interview, he (the interviewee) suddenly requested me to erase, on the spot, a small part of the tape that recorded his comments about the people who were responsible for upholding the socialist ideology in state enterprises’. Chinese observers suggest that this ‘no tape-recorder syndrome’ (Fang, 1999: 25; see also Tsang, 1998) can be traced to political system in which most Mainland Chinese are afraid of being caught and punished for what they have said. After finding an interviewee, arranging a time and meeting place through a network of friends, i.e. intermediaries, or by coincidence, I began the first stage by introducing my own background and the purpose of the research, and emphasising the confidentiality of all information. Being aware of the importance that gifts have in creating relationships in China, I usually gave the interviewee a small inexpensive gift during the first minutes of the encounter. Gift-giving is perhaps the most effective method of establishing and utilising guanxi (Yang, 1994; Nojonen, 2002). These gifts were small items brought over from Finland and, while giving the gift, I usually bridged the gap between interviewee and myself by accompanying it with a small story behind the gift. The gifts were mostly small functional items made of wood or reindeer horn, thus leading the discussion naturally to my personal background, coming from Finnish Lapland. In literally all interviews, deliberately identifying myself as a Finn helped to create a positive response from interviewees. One possible explanation was that coming from a country with no imperial, other historical or contemporary political links with China – a fact well known in China – was well received. In my understanding, the deliberate projection of the role of


‘being a Finn’ established a non-antagonistic political setting and thus lowered the level of distrust with interviewees. While handing over the gift in a respectful manner, with two hands accompanied with a bow of the head, I said ‘here I give you a small renqing’. The notion of renqing has three central meanings, referring to ‘gift’, ‘human feeling’ and ‘favour’. This expression can be frequently heard in China and can be understood as ‘to give a gift’, ‘to give a favour’ or ‘to give a piece of human feeling’. The notion of renqing is the central tool in establishing and utilising guanxi (Yang, 1994). I did not wrap these small gifts for two reasons. First, in China it is not necessary to wrap the kinds of small ‘business’ gifts given during a first meeting. Second, by giving the gift unwrapped, I avoided the situation where the interviewee, in accordance with Chinese customs, would open the gift only after the meeting, thus ruining the whole strategy of gift-giving. Furthermore, the timing of gift-giving, namely, at the early stage of the interview, was deliberate, as I hoped to generate a feeling of reciprocity, which might be realised in a good interview. Despite being aware that gift-giving is a respected traditional Chinese way of expressing respect for and gratitude to the other party, providing gifts caused me some ethical concern. After this initial stage, I usually asked warm-up and background questions on the interviewees’ age, education and work experiences. This was done not only to gather necessary background information, but also to generate an atmosphere where the interviewee felt comfortable in talking and noticing me taking notes.

Interplay of roles and tactics After the warm-up stage, I moved on to the actual topic – guanxi. As the motivation, openness, nature and history of the relationship between the interviewee and me always differed, this part of the interview always unfolded differently. At the early stage of my fieldwork I followed a strict script, but I soon recognised that the best way of acquiring data was to be flexible, innovative and self-reflective, thereby adjusting and improving my own roles, inputs and reactions. I gradually recognised that in tackling the sensitive issue of guanxi, two different, but mutually supporting processes emerged – the application of different interview tactics and the intentional and subconscious changing of the roles that I played. I usually asked the interviewees to elaborate on their daily working routines, and how they tackled various issues with customers and officials. Some interviewees explored the actual guanxi processes in detail, whilst others

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only touched upon it. In the latter case, I learned to deploy a tactic where, at the end of the interview, I asked for permission to go through the notes for possible further questions, knowing perfectly what I was going to ask. I did this by referring to certain issues that they had earlier mentioned. For example ‘By the way, you mentioned earlier this and that. As a foreigner, I don’t really understand what you meant. Could you explain it to me in more detail?’ Playing this role of ‘student of China’ and raising questions in this iterative and not aggressive manner were very suitable in interviewing Chinese respondents. It was also important to read the situation to know when to stop making notes. Goffman (2002: 152) described this as ‘faking off-phase note taking’, referring to the practice of not making notes when the researcher is observing the informant. I learned this practice gradually and it was very useful when the interviewee elaborated on a personally sensitive topic, or when the interviewee obviously felt constrained or pressured. It was better to put the notebook and pencil on the table and listen carefully, and, if in a restaurant, pour tea or beer or offer food to the interviewee, while listening. At the early stage of interviewing, I put many Chinese interviewees on alert and destroyed the interview by my inability to read the situation as to when to stop making notes or by reacting too hastily to interesting topics they touched upon. In addition to iterative questioning, two other tactics matured in tackling the sensitivity of the topic. The first step was to show the interviewee that I knew something of the topic myself, thus moving from the role of ‘student of China’ to that of ‘savant’. At this stage I usually cited traditional Chinese sayings, which describe the difference between the centrally led policies and local circumstances or idioms describing guanxi practices. After I had revealed some knowledge of guanxi practices, they apparently felt more comfortable talking about the topic without fear of diminishing their personal or China’s collective dignity. Fang (1999) notes that in dealing with sensitive issues, Chinese nationals are not only concerned to protect their own dignity, but often take it as their personal responsibility to protect the dignity of China as a whole. The following step – explaining to informants one or several guanxi cases that I had come across during the fieldwork – can be construed to be a move from the role of ‘savant’ to the role of ‘discussant’. In order to help communication, I would normally emphasise the case visually, by drawing figures and organisation charts while describing the case


(cf. Stiles, 1998: 191). This proved to be a powerful method of gaining information on a sensitive topic, often provoking great interest in the interviewee, who would compare the case with his/her own experiences. On many occasions, the interviewees took the pen from my hand and began to draw and comment on the case. During this process, it was natural to ask interviewees to explore their own experiences of guanxi. This practice was not only very effective in ‘re-tracking’ the interview, if needed, but also, in sharing knowledge, it generated trust between the interviewee and me. Goffman (2002: 152) notes that sharing ‘strategic secrets’ can be understood as an initial stage of ‘getting inside’ the observed society. However, with some interviewees, these tactics were unfruitful. I ruined several interviews, especially during the early stage of the fieldwork, by approaching the issues too eagerly, not knowing when to stop making notes, or unsuccessfully managing changes between the roles of ‘student’, ‘savant’ and ‘discussant’. When I felt certain interviews were less informative, but still potentially useful, I pretended at the end of the interview that it had been very informative and, as a compensation for their time, asked the interviewees for dinner or a beer, hoping to acquire additional information. This action on the one hand created a sense of guilt and became an ethical problem for me, while on the other, in many cases it provided useful information or more contacts. Asking non-informative interviewees for dinner or a beer as a sign of gratitude became a very common practice in Qingdao, where, compared to Beijing and Shanghai, locals seemed more distrustful of my research and less willing to provide information on the first encounter. In Qingdao, Fang’s (1999: 12–13) arguments that ‘the Chinese distrust of outsiders keeps many innocent foreign researchers … at bay’ and ‘it is not uncommon that researchers are suspected of spying’ were particularly evident. Here, it was not uncommon to be confronted with the question: ‘Are you a spy or a journalist?’ It is not clear why this distrust was apparent, though it might be related to the relative smallness of the city where people have fewer opportunities to meet Westerners who speak Mandarin and are conducting ‘objective sociological research’. The presence in the city of the headquarters of the Chinese Northern Navy may increase locals’ distrust, but it might also be linked to my own inability. In confronting this suspicion, I had to spend considerable time explaining and convincing people that I was not a spy, journalist or politician, but rather an independent scholar. In most cases, this was

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done over a pint of beer and steaming local delicacies, an environment that stimulated free exchange of ideas.

Socialising in informal settings I recognised that banqueting and other forms of socialising with interviewees were often the most fruitful ways of getting materials, although it took up my personal time and was financially expensive. Yet it was also the most fun. My experience supports Tsang’s (1998) and Hutchings’ (in this book) notions that informal, off the record settings provide researchers with more information than other situations in China. This phase of interviewing had its own strengths, methodological challenges and roles. After each informative or potentially informative interview, I would ask the interviewee for lunch or dinner. I observed that this served two functions. On the one hand, at the banquets, the informants themselves usually took up the research topic and elaborated on their experiences, feelings, and ideas of guanxi. On the other, banquets served as a springboard for new interviews as, in keeping with Chinese customs, they were occasions enjoyed within larger groups. Naturally, during the banquets, I learned more about the whole society and eventually made good friends with some of the interviewees. Banqueting is the main social platform where agents establish their guanxi relationships in China (Yang 1994). At banquets, one can observe different ‘networking rituals’, which were useful for my purpose as well. During banquets, it was necessary not only to interact through the roles of ‘student’, ‘savant’ and ‘discussant’, but also to follow the right etiquette in remembering to express gratitude to the interviewee and apply local manners in befriending interviewees. Important bridging strategies were to express gratitude by giving small speeches, drinking toasts by raising the glass with two hands, offering the tastiest parts of dishes, toasting to ‘new friendship’ and, if one smokes, sharing cigarettes. However, during banquets, I recognised that the nature of interaction differed according to age, gender and even region. With older successful businessmen, women, or state officials, I learned to apply a more orthodox and humble approach that, by giving them face, respected their higher social position. With younger male and female interviewees, the atmosphere was less constrained and more straightforward, although it was still important to comply with correct etiquette. Depending on the nature of relationship I could gradually balance the scale of social strata.


I observed regional differences in the role of banqueting and socialising with the interviewees. Compared with Beijing and Qingdao, banqueting in Shanghai was less common and involved the least drinking. In Shanghai, businessmen were usually too busy to share more of their time with me, though they were more eager to learn about Finland and possible business opportunities there. There were also differences between Beijing and Qingdao. In Beijing, the purpose was to have a good time and good food with friends. In Qingdao, more frequently than in other places, the purpose was to introduce a ‘new foreign’ friend who spoke Chinese, and, only after a certain time and testing, did discussion move to other topics. During these occasions, I sometimes felt that the role of a clown was imposed on me. In my experience, people with lower education were more interested in heavy drinking and eating, while people with a university background were more enthusiastic to discuss what I, as a scholar, thought about China. These discussions – intellectual debates on the history and fate of contemporary China – were the most interesting moments of my fieldwork. During these occasions, we discussed Chinese and international politics in depth. The Chinese have a great aptitude to talk politics and, since the central government openly admitted social problems like corruption and criminality, it was possible to touch on sensitive topics as well. However, several interviewees were more careful to point out the structural and political institutions behind these social problems. In covering international politics, I tended to be in tune with the interviewees who criticised the increasing global hegemony of the United States, thus generating common ground. It is evident that polite gestures accompanied by good food and some drinks set the tongues wagging, and interviewees usually needed no prompting to elaborate further on guanxi. Nevertheless, making notes during banquets was difficult and could destroy the relaxed atmosphere where ‘cigarettes and spirits bind people together’ (yanjiu bu fenjia). As I could not make notes while socialising, I made them as soon as I returned to my place of residence. In addition, I followed the advice of one interviewee, who told me that, during long business banquets, he sometimes withdrew to the rest room to make quick notes on important information. Multi-person situations at banquets, over beer or Karaok were most informative, especially if I happened to know someone well, i.e. referring to each other as friends. During these occasions, people provided much information and sometimes, they would recall happenings to each other, rather than directly telling me. I did not endanger the

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newly established friendships by making notes and recognised that, in befriending interviewees, it was also important to ‘talk friendship’. I noted that the requirements for friendship were sharing personal and professional information, respecting differences in opinions, being coherent and straightforward in expressing one’s ideas and having good time together. An important form of socialising was Karaoke, which is extremely popular in China. In Chinese Karaoke, customers rent private rooms where they can gather together, sing and socialise without being disturbed. To be invited to Karaoke was not that frequent, but it was very important. Eventually I made the effort to learn a Chinese Karaok song. Singing this song generated much fun, probably because I am a bad singer. However, it was a most efficient ‘ice-breaker’, breaking down the last vestiges of me as a researcher. The audience found my singing very amusing as the lyrics of this over-romantic hit-song by Lin Yilian is about a woman who fell in love with a man who does not return home (Aishang bu hui jia de ren). In Karaok, where I could behave in a self-mocking way, I made a few valuable contacts and friendships. These few contacts were at the beginning only interviewees, but after socialising at dinners and in Karaok, they became friends and acted as ‘tutors’ in my research. Together with these ‘tutors’, I went through several research-related issues, data and expressions that had been unclear for me (cf. Wank, 1999).

Conclusions This chapter illustrates how the hostile regulatory framework and the particularities of the collective socio-psychological setting affected my fieldwork in Chinese organisations and societies. The regulatory framework on foreign conducted research in China is ambiguous. There are three different regulatory frameworks controlling foreign conducted fieldwork in China: regulations on foreign affairs (waishi jilü), nontransparent internal regulations (neibu guiding) and the Seven Nos. These regulations are not clearly stipulated and, for instance, the idea of ‘state secret’ remains a ‘state secret’. Furthermore, laws and the stipulations of various ministries and provincial authorities regulate the activities of Chinese citizens and organisations. In addition, these regulations overlap and even contradict each other. Yet, the most important regulations in China are political. Despite the efforts to improve the legal system, politics in China still overrule all laws and regulations.


Notwithstanding the non-transparent regulations that forbid foreigners to conduct free and uncontrolled research in China, there seem to be two different practices governing foreign-conducted qualitative fieldwork, whilst independent foreign quantitative research has to be submitted to the National Statistical Bureau or its affiliates. Foreigners conducting qualitative research are provided with free access to IJVs and wholly foreign-owned organisations. On the other hand, foreigners who would like to conduct qualitative fieldwork in Chinese organisations or societies are treated differently. In their case, approval to enter the field is determined by the ambiguous definitions of state secret or is based on other politically sensitive decisions. Hence, local institutions evaluate the projects and force foreigners to work together with local institutions, which appoint a supervisor and an assistant. In addition, top Chinese research centres, like academies of social sciences, are subjected to the waishi jilü regulations that require their Chinese staff to report any foreign co-operation to their superiors. Clearly this kind of regulatory environment differs substantially from that of an open Western democracy. The internal non-transparent regulations affected my research, since the local university denied me approval. Instead, I carried out nonauthorised fieldwork in three different Chinese cities on establishing and using guanxi in Chinese organisations. On entering the field, I was faced with particular socio-psychological structures and had to learn how to conduct interviews on a sensitive topic in a low-trust society, to cope with the ‘culture of fear’ and to educate interviewees about politically free sociological research. In order to find interviewees and tackle these socio-psychological constraints, I had to learn to develop and practise various networking skills (see also Hutchings in this book). These involved gift-giving, socialising at banquets and Karaok, processes during which I learned to move between various roles and interview tactics. Gift-giving is one of the central networking practices in China. By giving a small present from Finland, accompanied by a history of the present, I was able to bridge the gap between the insider and myself and generate a sense of reciprocity. As a researcher I usually received more valuable information after interviews, while socialising, i.e. befriending interviewees over food, a pint of beer or in Karaok. During these occasions, it was important to learn to act according to local etiquette. Furthermore, I recognised that in talking and through gestures, one has to take into account not only the situation, but also interviewees’ social status, age, sex, and even

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locality. With people from higher social strata or who were older, I had to behave more humbly and traditionally to demonstrate respect for and give face to them. With younger interviewees, the atmosphere remained more relaxed. Banqueting with interviewees from Qingdao and Beijing involved more alcohol than with Shanghainese, and likewise more with men than women. It is commonly known that interviewers end up developing a repertoire of roles (De Laine, 2000; Steger in this book). In my fieldwork, projecting the roles of ‘Finn’, ‘student of China’, ‘savant’, ‘discussant’ and ‘entertainer’ were most useful in establishing an informative relationship with the interviewee. In addition, I employed different interview tactics to accompany the various roles. The first was to ask iterative questions and the next step was to illustrate by drawing various networking patterns. Depending on the situation and often driven by intuition, I deployed various combinations of roles and tactics. Furthermore, I learned to know when not to make notes. Moving between these roles and tactics was rather successful in tackling the sensitive research topic in a non-friendly environment. However, as each interview situation was unique, the combination of successful tactics and roles also varied. All ethnographic researchers share the challenges in interviewing, gaining access, establishing trust, switching roles and associated ethical questions. However, due to the particular socio-psychological conditions and the arbitrariness of regulations of China, much more critical research needs to be done on how Chinese fieldwork conditions – uncertainty, lack of transparency and hostility – affect the research process, the researcher and the informants. For successful interviewing in China, one needs to choose an appropriate place for interviewing, learn how to control one’s behaviour and read interviewees’ signals, hints, gestures and body language. Only then can an understanding be generated of what the informants say or do not say within particular events, narratives and specific expressions. By revealing one’s own knowledge base gradually, rather than in the initial phase of the interview, the interviewee seemed to gain more confidence to talk. This is consistent with psychological tests, which provide evidence that a person is better liked and trusted when he or she discloses intimate or sensitive information later rather than earlier in a conversation. With Chinese respondents, it is advisable to begin discussions in breadth and only gradually develop discussion in depth so as to penetrate the issue. A better knowledge of the institutional structures and practices of Chinese state apparatus helps foreigners, both researchers and business


practitioners, to prepare themselves for the emergence of possible problems. Despite reforms, the Chinese institutional and legal environment can still be hostile. Rules, contracts and laws can be interpreted in accordance with personal or local interests and the number of nontransparent internal regulations are unknown. It is time and resource consuming to go through all the red tape, though one way to speed up the process or to circumvent possible bureaucratic problems is to establish local connections and work through them. However, one needs to be aware that this process may involve ethical or even legal problems. These arguments about fieldwork regulations and practices may also be applicable in business negotiations. First of all, one should be aware, despite the glamorous facades of modernity in some parts of China, that under the glittering surface non-transparent regulations and practices still govern the field of practice. Second, in business negotiations, as during interviews, it is impossible to change the other person’s behaviour, so it is necessary to learn to adapt and change own behaviour in order to gain information or reach a shared understanding. Third, the Chinese appreciate a business practice where discussion starts off broadly and only gradually moves into details of business and moneymaking.

Suggested further readings Andersen I., Borum F., Kristensen P. and Karnoe P. (eds) (1995) On the Art of Doing Field Studies (Århus: Handelshojskolans Forlag). George, R. and Clegg, S. (1997) ‘An inside story: tales from the field – doing organizational research in a state of insecurity’, Organization Studies, 18(6), 1015–24. Goffman, E. (2002) ‘On fieldwork’ in Weinber, D. (ed.) Qualitative Research Methods (Oxford: Blackwell), pp. 148–53. Yang M. (1994) Gifts, Favours and Banquettes: The Art of Social Relationship in China (London: Cornell University Press.

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Index academic distance, 137, 138, 148–9 access physical access, 7, 9, 10, 12, 13, 15, 34, 40, 45–7, 89–91, 100, 101, 103, 128, 137, 142, 144–6, 157, 158, 162, 164, 175 mental access, 47 action analysis, 120, 122 see also social constructivism, Verstehen adaptation, 31 Albania, 24 anxiety, 11, 37 assumptions, 24–5, 150 Australian expatriates, 136ff. banquets, 153, 157, 171–3, 174 blind-spots, 33, 70, 85, 93, 130, 134 bricoleur, 12 capitalism, 20, 70 case study, 39, 42, 54, 89, 95, 102, 108, 112 comparative, 40, 102, 108–9 intensive, 43 China, 6, 17–18, 136ff., 157ff. bureaucracy, 142, 176 communications, 142 culture, 17, 140, 141 infrastructure, 142, 165 international significance, 138–9 coevolution theory, 112 cognitive psychology, 59 COMECON, 97 communism, 46, 70, 81 Communist Party, 43, 46, 52, 106, 158, 161 company strategy, 109 complexity (of research setting), 20, 36, 37 composition of research teams, see research teams conditioning, 59, 62, 63, 68, 70, 73

confidentiality, 53, 54, 130, 138, 143–4, 148, 149, 166, 167 conflict in research teams, see research teams contacts (making), 10, 17, 34, 39, 42, 47, 51, 55, 90, 138, 146, 153, 157, 162, 164, 173 context, 40, 79, 82, 83 ambiguity, 10, 45, 55, 157, 175 high context, 9 hostile (unfriendly), 18, 158, 164, 174, 175, 176 contextual information, 49, 78 contextualisation, 6, 8–10, 16, 42, 87 as methodological issue, 8, 24, 95, 98, 111, 157 control, 25, 50ff. cooperation in research teams, see research teams coping strategies, 3, 11, 44, 55, 94 corporate governance, 24 creativity, 4, 11, 15, 17, 36, 91, 168 critical distance, 5 critical management research, 63, 134 critical theory, 67, 68, 119 cross-cultural communication, 68, 71–2, 77, 132, 133, 139–40 cross-cultural cooperation, 36, 46–7, 58, 61, 63, 98, 104, 139–40 cross-cultural preparation, 138, 139 cross-cultural research team, see research team cultural difference (between researchers), 24, 34, 57, 73–6, 98, 107, 115, 129, 131 cultural distance, 9, 24, 34, 107, 140 cultural informants, see informants cultural insider, see insider cultural outsider, see outsider culture of fear, 9, 143, 158, 163, 165, 166 Czech Republic, 9, 14, 39, 40 Czechoslovakia, 40, 41, 48

191

192 Index danger, 9 data collection, 42, 43, 45, 78, 88–9, 103, 104, 144 problems in transformation, 88 see also transformation informal occasions, 153–5, 170, 171–3 Dewey, 61, 70, 73 discipline (disciplinary power), 58, 117–8, 119 dominance (domination), 15, 16–17, 58, 115, 116–20, 121, 125, 126 downsizing, 105 East Germany, 7, 16, 19, 30, 115ff., 130–1 see also GDR Elias, 70 embeddedness, 42 emotions, 2, 44–5, 55, 66, 69, 108, 130 emotional distance, 45, 108 emotional frameworks, 63 emotional labour, 26, 130 emotional support, 11, 44 empathy, 92, 94, 95, 148, 150 entry, see access ethics, 23, 55, 77, 134, 143, 144, 149, 164, 168, 175, 176 ethnocentrism, 86 ethnographer, 29, 30, 45, 162, 175 ethnography, 18, 45, 139, 157, 165 European Union (EU), 21, 104 expatriates (as researchers), 33 expatriates (as respondents), 12, 136, 149–53 dual allegiance, 137, 149, 150 gone native, 137, 150, 152, 153 hearts at home, 137, 150, 151 expectations (personal), 25, 47 experience personal, 3, 7, 66, 107, 150 theory of experience, 61 exploration (exploratory methods), 9, 15, 16, 78, 87, 92, 94 face, 146, 171 see also mianzi fear, 11, 15, 64, 68, 71, 73, 76, 143, 159

feedback (to respondents), 107–8 female researchers, 60, 138, 144, 151–5 feminism, 67 field dynamism, 25–6, 43–4, 89 internal social structure, 12, 39, 53 fieldwork, 20, 43–4, 82, 164 art of, 31, 91 definition, 6, 158 learning experiences through, 7, 70, 158, 164 non-authorised, 17, 157, 162, 165 preparation for, 44–5, 50–1 problems in, 5, 43–5, 93–4, 141–4, 171 flexibility of mindset, 4, 11, 15, 36, 37, 44, 47, 55, 95, 155, 164, 168 of research design, 46, 51, 78 foreign ownership, 103, 158, 165 Foucault, 58–9, 117 friendship, 35, 74, 171, 172–3 gatekeepers, 15, 33, 40, 46, 47 GDR, 22, 28, 122, 131 gender, 17, 60, 138, 144, 151–5 see also female researcher generalisability, 61, 109, 110, 112 Germany, East, see East Germany, GDR gifts, 167 gift-giving, 157, 167–8, 174 going native, 11, 31 grounded theory, 94 groupthink, 132 guanxi, 10, 136, 149, 157, 161, 165, 167, 168, 169, 170, 172 Gulliver (fieldwork role), 30, 148 hegemony, 58, 117, 119, 120 heterogeneous research team, see research teams history, 42, 70, 78, 82, 83, 142 hostile environment, see context Hungary, 6, 15, 16, 35, 57, 61, 64, 68, 70, 78, 79, 80, 81, 90, 97ff. hunter-gatherer, 27–9 hypothesis testing, 9

Index 193 ideal type, 27, 31 identity, see researcher ideology, 21–2, 117, 120 imagination, 14, 164 indigenous capability, 79 individualism, 94 inductive methods, 9, 87 informants, 14, 40, 48–50, 51 controlling information, 51–2 external cultural, 13, 15, 34, 35, 40, 48, 162 internal cultural, 12, 15, 40, 49, 51, 52, 55, 146, 173 innovation studies, 78ff. insider, 9, 10, 12, 17, 28, 116, 129, 134, 137, 138, 144–9, 151, 163, 170, 174 institutional analysis, 16, 116 macro, 120–1, 122–6 micro, 121, 126–9 institutions of science, see research institutions intent (or intentionality), 61, 68, 76 interpretation of data, 48, 89 interpreters, 13, 15, 40, 48, 71 see also translators interpretive repertoire, 63 interpretive work, 24, 48, 94, 140 involvement of respondents, 35, 94 intersubjectivity, 94, 130 interviews, 36, 48, 52, 65, 66, 82, 93, 95, 104, 108, 111, 129, 130, 136, 164–71, 175 as construction site for knowledge, 91–4 keeping control, 49, 50–3 in informal locations, 153–5, 165, 170, 171–3 interviewee, see respondent interview guide, 92 interview tactics, 168, 175 as social process, 52, 157 semi-structured, 79, 93, 140 switching roles, 168–71, 175 unstructured, 102 warm-up for, 166–8 intuition, 15, 17, 91, 158 involvement, 7, 11, 14, 27 iterative questioning, 169

joint venture, 35, 79, 95, 103, 158, 164, 165, 174 Jung, 69–70 karaok, 157, 172, 173, 174 Know-how project, 64 knowledge production, 16, 17, 116–20, 122–32 KTV bars, 154 labour process theory, 67 language, 20, 32, 34–5, 61, 71, 117, 128, 132, 140, 166 laws, see regulatory framework learning in fieldwork, 70, 158, 164 learning by doing, 17, 29, 158 learning through experience, 7, 9, 36, 62, 69, 70, 91, 93, 128, 164 learning from mistakes, 7, 17, 37, 58 legacies, 21–2, 48, 87, 95 legitimacy, 111, 114, 120, 125, 131 longitudinal research, 40, 77, 105, 109–10 low-trust, see trust luck, 88, 90, 165 macro level research, 88, 120–1 membership roles, 14, 30, 31 metaphor, 30, 37, 58, 77 methodology definition, 5 ‘Eastern’ norms, 22, 125 inducting principles, 6 Western norms, 6, 22, 125, 151 Mexico, 78, 91 mianzi (face) 146, 171 micro level research, 78, 95, 121, 126ff. micropolitics, 119, 120, 132 mixed research teams, see research teams modernisation, 114, 125, 126 Moravia, 40 myths, 131 naïveté, 42, 47, 50 narrative, 58–61, 63, 77 as mode of cognition, 59

194 Index narrative – continued narrative interview, 129 narrative self, 60 narrator, 68 native’s viewpoint, 23 native researcher, see researcher negotiated order (research setting as), 12 nei wai, 147, 163 neibu guiding, see regulatory framework networking, 88, 89, 90, 136, 146–7, 158, 161, 171, 174 networks (see also contacts, friendship, personal connections), 10, 12, 35, 40, 47, 52, 87, 119, 121, 129, 136ff., 147, 167, 171 Neumann, 70 neutral third person (in mixed groups), 133 presenter, 133 supervisor, 133, 134 nomenklatura managers, 52, 106, 115 normal rules (of science), 114, 119, 120, 125 notes faking note making, 169 making notes, 154, 170, 172 objectivity, 94, 106, 137, 138, 163 open-endedness, 11, 94 open-mindedness, 47, 92, 130 outsider, 10, 17, 24, 39, 43, 47, 48, 55, 83, 116, 134, 137, 162–3 see also stranger naïve outsider, 10, 48 paradigmatic (mode of cognition), 59, 77 participant observer, 26, 36 persona, 69–70 personal connections, 17, 136, 157, 164 see also contacts, guanxi, networks personal experience methods, 3, 7, 15, 61, 150 Poland, 7, 78, 81, 89, 90 political processes in the field, 12, 15, 39, 56

politics of method, 61, 62, 98, 134 of science, 16–17, 119, 120 positivism, 12, 15, 16, 22, 23, 67, 106, 108, 119, 129 post-communism, 2, 14, 39 post-modernism, 63, 67 post-socialism, 1, 9 power, 59, 115, 128 circuits of, 118 power distance, 34 practitioners (relevance to), 4, 7, 9, 20, 46, 95, 98, 138, 140, 141, 152, 153, 155, 175–6 preparation (for fieldwork), 44–5, 50–1, 55 presenter, see neutral third person pre-transformation research, 99–101 privatisation, 41, 42, 46, 97, 105 psychological coping strategies, 11, 44 qualitative research methods, 7, 14, 16, 20, 23, 31, 36, 92, 94, 102, 108, 109, 122, 136, 140, 157 quantitative research methods, 7, 16, 23, 36, 78, 84, 88, 91, 94, 98, 109–11, 122, 158 questionnaire survey, 99, 108–11, 131, 162 reflexivity, 4, 6, 14, 35, 36, 37, 57, 70, 130, 134 regulatory framework (Western), 157–8, 174 regulatory framework (China), 158–64, 173, 174 on foreign affairs (waishi jilü), 159, 160–1, 173, 174 non-transparent internal regulations (neibu guiding), 159, 160, 164, 173, 174, 175 Seven Nos, 161, 173 relational method of enquiry, 15, 58, 62, 71–3, 76 reliability of method, 61, 149 of respondents, 51–2, 162 renqing, 168

Index 195 research dissemination of findings, 16, 67, 115, 119, 123 non-covert, 39 personal aspects, 2 qualitative, see qualitative research methods quantitative, see quantitative research methods research discourses, 17, 114, 125–6, 128, 129 research institutions, 16, 58, 114, 116, 119, 134 research interview, see interview research outcomes, 3, 12, 25, 46, 54, 66, 116, 119, 123, 137 research protocol, 50, 145 research setting, 9, 17, 20, 25, 39 see also context, transformation research strategy, 27, 37, 87, 116, 134 research teams (groups), 11, 17, 44, 115, 128–33 composition of, 115, 126 conflict in, 35, 107, 116, 128, 130, 133 cooperation in, 36, 63, 104, 129 cross-cultural teams, 35–6, 104, 116, 129 mixed (heterogeneous), 16, 69, 98, 116, 128, 130–3 research traditions (‘East’ and West), 22, 35, 46, 64–5, 115, 125, 157–8, 163 researcher behaviour, 14, 19, 37, 150, 157, 164, 168–71 as bricoleur, 12 as detective, 52, 88 ethical stance of, 54, 55 identity, 11, 14, 19, 37 native, 33, 35, 68 as object of study, 50ff., 55 prior expectations of, 25, 26, 47, 130, 150 as resource for respondent, 53 roles of, see roles role switching, 168–71, 175 subjective aspects, 7, 11, 25, 95, 98, 106–7

respondents, age of, 148, 171 expatriates, see expatriates female, 148, 171 hiding information, 51–2, 55, 98, 100, 108, 111 as internal informants, see informants involvement in interpretive work, 35, 50, 98, 107–8 stereotypes of, 25, 143 suspicion of research, 46 types of, 17, 137 restructuring, 40, 41, 42 roles (of qualitative researcher) discussant, 169, 170, 171, 175 dynamics of, 33 entertainer, 175 ethnographer, 29, 30 Finn, 167–8, 175 Gulliver, 30, 148 hunter-gatherer, 27–9 ideal types, 27–33 Roman, 29–30, 154 savant, 169, 170, 171, 175 student of China, 169, 170, 171, 175 role set (in field), 14–15, 40 role taking, 26, 29, 33 role triangle, 26–7 Roman, 29–30, 154 Romania, 29 rules (conventions of science), 16, 114, 117, 119, 125, 157 official (China), 158 non-transparency (China), 158–9 Russia, 21, 22 scientific discourse, 16–17, 58, 114, 117, 119–20, 125–6, 128 scientific knowledge production, 16–17, 115, 118, 119, 122, 124, 130–2, 133–4 scientific methodology (conventional), 57, 59, 65, 72, 137, 138, 141, 157 masculine bias, 60 and the paradigmatic mode, 60 rigidity, 68, 72, 74

196 Index self narrative self, 60 presentation of, 26–33, 50 self-identity, 26 self-reflection, 4, 14, 19, 43, 130, 168 semi-structured interview, see interview sensitivity (of topic), 157, 160, 162, 165, 168, 170 Seven Nos, see regulatory framework (China) shadow, 17, 58, 69–70, 76 shadowing, 50–1 signature, 62 snowballing technique (convenience sampling), 137, 144, 147 social capital, 121 social constructivism, 106, 108 see also action analysis, Verstehen social structure of field, 12, 15, 39, 46, 53, 55, 137 socialising, 18, 153–5, 157, 170, 171–3, 174 Soviet bloc, 41 Soviet Union, 2 spontaneity, 11, 165 state-owned enterprise (SOE), 40, 79, 85, 97 state secret, 143, 160, 162, 173, 174 state socialism, 9, 23, 100, 106 stranger, 19, 24, 33, 46, 134, 163 see also outsider stress, 11, 44, 45, 55, 65 structure vs. action, 120–1 subjectivity, 8, 9, 15, 25, 45, 58, 70, 94, 99, 106, 107 subjects, see respondents supervisor, see neutral third persons tape-recording, 130, 143–4, 166–7 theoretical saturation, 92 theory construction, 10, 16, 25 thick description, 24 third party agents, 8, 10, 12, 13, 34, 46, 47, 146, 148 see also external informants time orientation (of project), 27 transfer (of knowledge, institutions), 20, 35, 57, 62, 65, 86, 87, 92, 95, 122, 124, 126

transformation as context, 7, 21, 37, 45, 55, 106, 112, 141, 158–64, 175–6 Hungarian transformation, 97 as follow-up modernisation, see modernisation transformation research, 116, 122, 125, 130, 134 transforming societies distinctiveness of, 2, 3, 10, 12, 23–6, 43, 92, 101, 105, 109, 122, 175 infrastructure, 87, 90, 142, 165 translators, 13, 35, 48, 49, 140 Treuhand, 121, 135 triangulation, 16, 36, 87, 92, 99, 112 trust between researcher colleagues, 44, 71, 73, 131, 162 gaining trust, 34, 55, 137, 138, 148, 157, 170, 175 low trust, 17, 158, 159, 162, 166, 174 truth, 23, 67, 118, 130 tutors, 173 see also internal informants validity, 35, 55, 59, 61, 110–11 values, 24, 107 Velvet Revolution, 40 Verstehen, 10, 11, 16, 43, 47, 88, 158 see also action analysis, social constructivism voice, 62, 67, 73 waishi jilü, see regulatory framework (China) Western education, 21, 57, 65 Western research principles, 6, 9, 16, 22, 46, 58, 86, 101–2, 115, 129, 151, 157 Western research setting, see research setting West German research institutions, 114, 122, 125, 127 witness, 68, 73, 76 writing in the field, 45 see also notes as form of inquiry, 61, 62

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