Method

The data in this study consists of transcribed interviews. The interviews are then managed via a coding process adapted from grounded theory (Strauss and Corbin, 1998) before discourse analysis is carried out. A brief explanation of grounded theory and how its coding procedure is applied to the interview data as a data management tool prior to discourse analysis is presented in chapter 3 of my thesis.

THE RESPONDENTS

Since the goal of this study was to investigate the Swedish management style in Singapore, the search for respondents to this study began with a search for Swedish owned and managed organizations in Singapore. The targeted organisations were Swedish owned or Swedish managed organizations based in Singapore as listed by the Swedish Trade Council (Svenska Exportrådet) in 2003/4. Contact information for the top level managers of these organizations in Singapore were also retrieved via a search at the Swedish Business Association of Singapore (SBAS) in 2003/4

A synopsis of the study was emailed to a total of about 147 respondents from Swedish owned organizations, both Scandinavian and Chinese top-level managers, together with an enquiry of whether they were interested in participating in the study and if they had time to spare for an interview. As the organizations were Swedish owned or Swedish related, the email was sent to slightly more Swedish or Scandinavian respondents (94 contact emails) than Singaporean or Asian respondents (53 contact emails), since it is usually a Scandinavian name which was listed as the ‘contact point’ for the organization. The response rate with a successful interview was about 25% for the Scandinavian or Swedish respondents, with 23 respondents agreeing for an interview and 18% for the Asian or Singaporean respondents, with 10 respondents agreeing for an interview. Those who declined to be interviewed cited a busy work schedule or that they were travelling and out of the country during the time the interviews were to be conducted.

For those who agreed to be interviewed, interview times were scheduled at their convenience in their offices. 33 long interviews with leaders (both Scandinavian and Asian) of Swedish owned or Swedish managed organizations were conducted in the months of February and December 2004 in Singapore. The interviews were of an average time of 1 hour 39 minutes per interview and rendered a total of 540 A4 pages of transcribed data including 260,178 words.

Of the 33 respondents, 23 were Scandinavian (21 of 23 were Swedes) and 10 were Asians (7 of 10 were Singaporean Chinese). The targeted group of respondents for the interviews were persons predominantly in leading or managerial positions in these organisations, holding such titles as Managing Director, Chief Executive Officer and Regional Director etc. The respondents were randomly selected in the sense that no headhunting was conducted for any particular respondent; no one type of organization was targeted and no one particular industry was targeted. As such, this study prioritised the selection of participants based on the fact that they were leaders in Swedish managed organizations working in a cross-cultural environment regardless of their age, sex, socio-cultural background and the industry field in which they worked. They were selected with the assumption that it was the organizational decisions made and actions that they carried out that influenced and determined the future of the organizations for which they worked. The result was that the respondents came from a wide variety of industrial backgrounds including shipping, finance, food and information technology. And that it was their qualities, personalities and points of view that would be interesting to explore in a language analysis.

Grounded theory coding procedures as data management

The version of grounded theory coding procedures used for this study is derived from Strauss and Corbin (1990, 1998), whose work, gives specific and systematic guidelines on how such qualitative research be accomplished, emphasising at the same time, a great amount of flexibility and creativity on the part of the researcher when applying the procedures. Researchers should be “unafraid to draw on their own experience when analyzing materials” because such a process would form the foundations for making comparisons and discovering properties and dimensions (Strauss & Corbin, 1998:5).

It is the coding procedures and the resulting topics and concepts that have mostly been applied in this study as a form of data management and organization. During the coding process applied in this study (explained further in section 3.5.1), the word topic is defined in this study as any idea, thought, event or subject that the participants raise during the interview. Concepts in this study refer to a network of topics that can relate with each other to create a general theme. Categories in this study (there are 6 main categories in this study presented more fully in the next chapter of the thesis) hold all topics raised by the respondents