Empirical Data – REACH: General Company Description

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Research Ethics

We recognize that conducting research within the field of management and business can potentially have an effect on involved organizations and their individuals within. Bell and Bryman (2007), arrived at these ten principles through a “content analysis of the ethical principles of nine professional associations in the social sciences” (Eastherby-Smith et al., 2015, p.122). Hence our turf in this thesis is within the realm of social sciences, we choose to adhere to these principles. Instead of a rigorous walk through of each individual principle, we will instead explain how we attempted to protect our research participants, and the integrity of the research community.

Protection of Participants

Although our study is not concerned with the specific personal opinions, feelings and thoughts of the individuals we interviewed, this personal information is of fundamental importance to the successful completion of our research. We might not be interested in what the interviewees’ personal opinions/thoughts/feelings are in relation to the individuals, but we are interested in how these opinions/thoughts/feelings relate to the ones of the other interviewees. Because of this, we had to be particularly careful with the information that was entrusted to us. To clarify our intended use of the data we were asking for from our conversation partners, and to inform them about their rights regarding our study, each interviewee was presented with an informed consent form that s/he was asked to read and to sign as formalization of their understanding
Part of this was our promise to all employees (with the exception of employees in the management teams) to keep their identities disconnected from the data points presented in this thesis. For this purpose, we took out all names of all interviewees, except the top management members, to disguise personal identities. We choose to disclose the identities of the members of the management teams in the thesis because the content of what they said revealed their identity in itself. This we could do, since REACH and WONDROUS gave us permission to publicly use their company names, and identities of the members of the management teams in this case study. This meant in practice, that we had two different informed consent forms; a separate one for the leaders which did not include a promise to protect their personal, and company identities (the informed consent templates can be found in the Appendix V.I. & V. II.). To protect their data, after collection, we stored all the material on a password protected server that only the authors of this thesis had access to.

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Protection of Integrity of the Research Community

By applying an honest communication from beginning to end, in relation to the purpose of our study with all involved stakeholders, we have avoided deception about our aim of the study. Further, no funding has been received of any kind that could have influenced the findings in a biased manner. To avoid misleading or false reporting of findings, we gave both management teams the opportunity to comment on our interpretations, which ensured alignment.

Trustworthiness

Trustworthiness of our research can be directly linked to the quality of our findings, and given our choice of a case study design, limitations on the extendibility of our findings are unavoidable. We did however take active considerations to ensure the highest degree of Master Thesis Exploring Organizational Identity as a Potential Process Abildgaard & Köhlertrustworthiness of you tudy possible. This we did through the lens of Lincoln and Guba’s (1985) suggestion for judging trustworthiness of qualitative research through a discussion about credibility, transferability, dependability, and confirmability.

1. Introduction .
2. Research Problem
3. Purpose
4. Frame of Reference
4.1. The Perspectives of Organizational Identity
4.2 Enduring vs. Dynamic
4.3 Identity as Process .
4.4 Organizational Identity as Flux
5. Method
5.1. Research Philosoph
5.2. Research Purpose & Approach
5.3. Research Design
5.4. Data Collection: Interviews
5.5. Sampling Strategy
5.5.1. Sampling Strategy: The Company Level
5.5.2. Sampling Strategy: The Interviewee Level
5.6. Data Analysis Strategy
5.7. Research Ethics .
6. Case Company: REACH
6.1. Empirical Data – REACH: General Company Description .
6.2. Empirical Data – REACH: Company Narrative
6.3. Empirical Analysis – REACH
7. Case Company: WONDROUS
7.1. Empirical Data – WONDROUS: General Company Description
7.2. Empirical Data – WONDROUS: Company Narrative
7.3. Empirical Analysis – WONDROUS .
8. Combined Empirical Analysis (Conceptualization)
9. Empirical Analytical Conclusion
10. Theoretical Discussion