Search results

The aim of this paper is to highlight some of the issues that emerge in the researcher interview process. It is argued that researcher interviewing is becoming an increasingly used practice yet the researcher interview is under‐critiqued in the literature.

The authors provide an “insider” account of their own experiences of researcher interviewing. Additionally they seek to locate these experiences within two conceptual approaches: that of reflexivity and identity work.

The paper aims to investigate some of the distinctive concerns that arise when one researcher interviews another.

The paper outlines the implications for others who may be engaging in the process of interviewing researchers, and highlights further issues for consideration when planning a researcher interview study.

The paper provides an analysis of a little considered, but expanding practice within qualitative research, namely the researcher interview.

This study of multinational companies in China focuses on the role culture plays in relationship cultivation. The author interviewed 40 participants from 36 multinational companies in China. The findings revealed that characteristics of Chinese culture, such as family orientation, guanxi, relational orientation (role formalisation, relational interdependence, face, favour, relational harmony, relational fatalism and relational determination) had an influence on multinational companies’ relationship cultivation strategies. Multinationals from Western countries were found, however, to be more persistent in maintaining their own cultural values in relationship building than multinational companies from Asian countries.

This chapter aims to offer a focussed critical discussion of the combination of two qualitative data-collection methods used in a longitudinal multiple case study investigating the impact of intra-European mobility on the students' linguistic and intercultural development. The participant being the main (and often the only) source of data in higher education research, this chapter will centre on the use of shadowing as a data-collection strategy and on how this offered an other-report that favoured the co-construction and negotiation of meaning between the researcher and the research participant(s) in the narrative interview. Based on our experience shadowing and interviewing undergraduate students, we will stress: (1) the advantages of combining the direct and first-hand nature of the experience of the researcher with the participants' accounts of their experiences and (2) the need to not only rely on the participants' self-report(s) but also obtain an other-report about the phenomena being studied.

For policymakers and academics alike, gentrification – the renovation of socially and economically marginal inner-city areas by higher status social groups – has become an issue of rising importance in the changing social structures of developed-world cities (Smith, 1979; Rose, 1984; Hamnett, 1991). In the regeneration of deprived inner-urban areas, it is seen as a double-edged sword, its potential to reinvigorate local property markets and provide much-needed investments of social capital matched by its tendency towards displacement of ‘less desirable’ extant populations and social division between middle-class newcomers and incumbent working-class residents (Smith, 1992; Blokland, 2002; Butler, 2003).

There is a growing importance for public facilitation of corporate social responsibility and involvement of civil organizations in securing territorial cohesion and development. In the present article, the authors focus on how we are to understand a locally sensitive organization of territorial cohesion in the Danish context. Traditional sociological concepts and standardized area-types used for administrative purposes have turned out not being very helpful in understanding the interrelation between inequality, urbanization and territorial cohesion. The authors argue for a processual and relational approach to urbanization.

The present article is based on interview material and policy documents from three Danish case studies representing urban, suburban and rural forms of settlement. The case studies are part of a cross-European research project.

The authors show how territorial governance play a key role in the strategies of densification/de-densification facilitating shielding capacities of collective efficacy, and reversely that bottom-up innovations are crucial for the ability of territorial governance to mobilize territorial capital and mediate in effects of territorial inequality. Spatial imaginaries legitimize these efforts to organize cohesion. The spatial imaginaries work as common frame of references for the interplay between strategies of (de)densification and collective efficacy, and they activate particular balances between growth agendas and everyday life.

These findings represent an original perspective on how and why urbanization impact on places in a more specific and variated way than often portrayed as it highlight how social capacities tied to place might work with or against existing social, economic and cultural structures shaping territorial cohesion.

This study aims to examine how advance fee fraud (AFF) scammers build their criminal expertise over time and why the AFF scamming deception process succeeds.

This study is interpretive, based on case study interview data with two scammers operating in Africa. The interviews were done over a period of time, and the data collection and analysis processes were iterative, primarily driven by the interview data.

The authors identify four processes that explain how scammers build criminal expertise, namely, socializing with scammers, accepting scamming definitions, practicing scamming techniques and manipulating digital technologies. The fourth process (manipulating digital technologies) also explains why scammer’s tactics are successful.

AFF scamming is a major crime affecting individuals and organizations worldwide, yet it remains under researched as little is known about scammers, their expertise and why their deceptive techniques are successful. The first contribution identifies four processes by which individuals build scamming criminal expertise as they transition from scammers-in-the-making to full-blown active scammers. The second contribution identifies the rationalizations used by scammers-in-the-making and scammers to justify transitioning into scamming and engaging in scamming criminality. The third contribution explains how the digital environment contributes to the processes of building scamming criminal expertise and why scammer’s deceptive tactics are sometimes successful.

In this chapter we describe how paramedics deal with verbal and physical violence to expand on the available knowledge on this subject and relate it to their work-specific context. Our research consists of interviews in two large Dutch cities. We adopt a dramaturgical framework to discuss our findings. Paramedics initially ignore verbal abuse because they value the well-being of the patient above their own emotional needs. Furthermore, they utilize dramaturgical strategies – which entail emphasizing specific hallmarks of their work, such as compassion and professionalism – so that bystanders feel that the patient is in good hands. Not all of the paramedics interviewed proved capable of applying these strategies, resulting in more frequent exposure to physical violence for those paramedics. We conclude that managing emotions through impression-management, particularly one's own emotions and the emotions of bystanders, is crucial. Our recommendation is to further investigate the knowledge and skills present amongst paramedics in a larger qualitative follow-up study, and to repeat the study among other public professionals so that they may reap the benefits and (more) physical violence can be prevented in the future. Few studies exist that allow paramedics to describe their own experiences with violence on the job. In this chapter we let the paramedics do the talking.

We study how one form of wrongdoing behavior – gender-based discrimination – evolved and steadily grew amongst longshoremen over seven decades (from 1947 to 2017), despite changes in the nature of work and technological innovations that made the occupation increasingly accessible to women. Using data collected from 72 interviews with retired and active longshoremen and their employers, supplemented with archival and observational data, we find that although women were permitted into the occupation at the beginning of the period (1947 to the 1960s), they were progressively, completely excluded by male longshore workers. We find that after experiencing imprinting (the idea that early experience exerts a crucial influence on later behavioral phenomena) (Immelmann, 1975) during early decades, longshoremen instrumentalized their fear of occupational decline and voluntarily engaged in organizational wrongdoing by discriminating against women. Men rationalized their exclusion of women through two means: first, by adapting the “Madonna vs temptress” paradigm of framing women, and second by strategically emphasizing self-serving justifications. This study contributes to the literature on gendered work and the difficulty of eliminating imprinted, entrenched behaviors in gendered occupations.

This study seeks to investigate strategies for building personal relationships with an organization's members, and to examine the outcomes of personal relationships in an advocacy organization.

The case study includes interviews with 39 staff people at national, state, and affiliate levels of the organization; 58 members; and five former members, for a total of 102 participants. Document analysis and participant observation were supplemental methods.

The following strategies for cultivating personal relationships were identified: direct engagement, task sharing, constitutive rhetoric, peer linking, hat‐in‐your‐hand, investment in local relationships, and targeting of aware affiliates for diversity efforts. To contribute to the discussion about the value of personal relationships in organizations, the study also investigated the outcomes of personal relationships. The outcomes found in the study include affective commitment, political leverage, social capital, member recruitment, and member retention.

Although many of the cultivation strategies and outcomes are likely to apply to various contexts, some of them may be specific to the context of an advocacy organization that has a grass‐roots culture and layers of leadership, such as local, state, and national offices.

Organizations can read the study to identify potential strategies they can use to cultivate strong personal relationships with their stakeholders.

The study produces new cultivation strategies and outcomes for personal relationships and engages in a critical discussion of the existing literature.

This chapter examines different dimensions of leadership communication that promote creativity and innovativeness. It explores how leaders engage and inspire their subordinates on the one hand and how they motivate, challenge and encourage them on the other. The aim is to provide a multifaceted description of how leaders use communication to promote innovativeness in organisations. The chapter draws on the ‘wheel of leadership communication on innovations’ by Zerfass and Huck (2007). The wheel examines communication based on cognitive, affective, conative and social dimensions. The other key concepts of the study are transformational and communicative leadership. The approach is qualitative, and the data derive from interviews with leaders of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). The findings suggest that to promote organisational innovativeness all four dimensions – cognitive, affective, conative and social – must be taken into account. Multidimensional skills are required of leaders who are expected to master different communicational roles and to act as enablers, engagers, motivators and supporters at the same time. This calls for emotional and social sensibility, flexibility and adaptability to different people and situations. Leadership communication is crucial for innovation management because creative thinking and commitment enable innovation. Therefore, in the business context, attention must be paid to how people are inspired, supported and motivated, as well as to open communication. The main limitations of the study are that it focuses only on SMEs and that it does not include the voices of personnel, which would have added value to the managerial perspectives.