8. ANALYSIS
3.0. Empirical foundation and methods
BioTech (a pseudonym) is a global pharmaceutical company that employs more than 35,000 people and has annual revenues exceeding 10 billion USD. The organization continues to have great global success with its sales of medical drugs for diabetes treatment. However, for several years, top management has emphasized the importance of developing the product pipeline and here ‘the R&D organization is key to secure such a product pipeline’ (as expressed by one of the Senior Vice Presidents, 2014). To ensure future success, BioTech invests heavily in its research areas, which
employ around 3,000 people. They are primarily highly qualified scientists in the fields of biology and chemistry, almost half of them holding a PhD degree. The two main purposes of the research organization are 1) to search for new products for the R&D pipeline, and 2) to improve existing products in the majority of research departments. The study presented here is a case study of scientists trying to invent a new product, which would have massive implications for the diabetes medicine market: a cure for diabetes via stem cell research. The research department studied is called the Stem Cell Research (SCR) department. It employs approximately 15 scientists and is organizationally situated in BioTech’s largest research unit, the Protein Research Unit (PRU). Our interest in the organization’s management accounting systems and the ways they work came about in the course of a long engagement with the case organization, where one of the authors was formally employed during the project period.16 The following section details how the case was constructed and analysed.
This study is a qualitative single case study that draws on three kinds of empirical data: interviews, observations and documents, all of which were produced over a rather long period of time (between May 2012 and May 2014). The data are part of a larger project that explores the intersections between PM and innovation in the case-organization.17 The author’s affiliation has facilitated an almost unconstrained access to data. The analysis of this article is based on 35 semi-structured interviews18 (see Table 1 below), primarily with scientists and research managers in different
16 From 1 May 2012 to 30 April 2015, the first author was employed by one of the Corporate HR departments specialized in PM, the ‘Global Performance’ department, to do research within the mentioned areas.
17 The empirical data of the entire research project include 48 interviews, field-notes taken during the attendance of several events, 13 full days of observations during the period mentioned, as well as several hundred documents that describe the development and use of the organization’s PM system.
18 All of them recorded, 40 of them professionally transcribed (46,2 hours of recordings in total). The interviews have an average duration of one hour.
research departments in BioTech’s PRU division. However, interviews have also been conducted with corporate and local HR strategists. All interviewees were promised full anonymity, which was also highlighted by several interviewees as highly important due to their sometimes-controversial utterances.
This study focuses on how processes of innovation unfolded in one specific area of PRU, the so-called Stem Cell Research (SCR) department. Over an intensive two-week period (between 16 June and 27 June 2013) one of the authors was present at the department, followed work activities in the laboratories, conducted interviews and studied documents. In sum, seven in-depth interviews were conducted there.19 Besides our involvement with the SCR department, the theoretical and empirical inquiries around the communicative aspects of organizing innovation draw upon interviews (n=20) gathered in five other research departments in PRU and interviews (n=11) with HR personnel in Corporate HR and in the research areas. These interviews touched upon general aspects of how PM processes affected the work performance in R&D as well as how the PM systems were designed, communicated and so on.
We would generally characterize our strategy for conducting the interviews as ‘analytical’ and
‘exploratory’ (Kreiner & Mouritsen, 2005), as we asked open questions intended to explore the possible dilemmas constructed by the interviewees on the subjects of, for instance, PM and innovation. As a consequence of this way of understanding the interview process, we also understand our interview data as being constructions based on our conversations with the interviewees. For instance, we sought to allow the interviewees to ‘give input to the analytical conversation’, and in our later analysis of the data we tried not to regard their answers as being
19 One of the interviews was a group interview (reference: in group) with the scientists, and the six other interviews were individual interviews with two research managers and four scientists.
‘final’ or ‘privileged’ (ibid., p. 155). Instead, it has been our ambition to use the interview data reflexively, meaning that they have been studied in conversation with other sources of data, primarily observations made in the field. The table below provides an overview of the interviews.
Area of the organization and interview Ref-tag
Employee position (9 research managers, 18 scientists, and 12 HR consultants)
Date of interview (from June 2012 to September 2014)
Length of recording/
transcribed
Interview number If part of Pilot study = (P) Protein Research Unit,
sub-department 1, ResMan1
Research manager (manager)
07/06/12 1 hour and 4 minutes, transcribed
1 (P)
Protein Research Unit (PRU), sub-department 1, Res1
Scientist (Not manager)
07/06/12 1 hour and 2 minutes, transcribed
2 (P)
PRU, sub-department 1, Res2
Scientist (Not manager)
07/06/12 1 hour and 2 minutes, transcribed
3 (P)
PRU, sub-department 2, Res3
Scientist (Not manager)
15/06/12 50 minutes, transcribed, notes taken
4 (P)
PRU, sub-department 2, ResMan2
Research manager (manager)
15/06/12 1 hour, transcribed 5
Corporate HR, CorpHR 1 HR manager (manager)
16/05/12 N/A, not transcribed or recorded
6
Corporate HR, CorpHR 2 HR manager (manager)
18/05/12 1 hour and 1 minute, notes taken
7
PRU, sub-department 2, ResMan3
Research manager (manager)
20/06/12 58 minutes, transcribed 8
PRU, sub-department 2, Res4
Scientist (not manager)
20/06/12 52 minutes, transcribed 9 (P)
PRU, sub-department 2, Res5
Scientist (not manager)
20/06/12 36 minutes, transcribed 10 (P)
PRU, sub-department 3, Research manager 21/06/12 49 minutes, transcribed 11 (P)
ResMan4 (manager) PRU, sub-department 3,
Res6
Scientist (not manager)
21/06/12 52 minutes, transcribed 12 (P)
PRU, sub-department 3, Res7
Scientist (not manager)
21/06/12 49 minutes, transcribed 13 (P)
PRU, sub-department 4, Res8
Scientist (not manager)
21/06/12 41 minutes, transcribed 14 (P)
PRU, sub-department 4, ResMan5
Research manager (manager)
29/06/12 51 minutes, transcribed 15 (P)
PRU, sub-department 4, Res9
Scientist (not manager)
29/06/12 51 minutes, transcribed 16 (P)
PRU, sub-department 4, Res10
Scientist (not manager)
29/06/12 56 minutes, transcribed 17 (P)
PRU, PRU HR Partner 1 HR Partner 08/01/13 57 minutes, transcribed 18 PRU, sub-department 5
(SCR dept.), ResMan6
Research manager (manager)
17/01/13 44 minutes, transcribed 19
Corporate HR, CorpHR 4
HR Manager 06/02/13 59 minutes, transcribed 20
Protein Research PRU HR Partner 3
HR Partner 11/02/13 57 minutes, transcribed 21
PRU, sub-department 5 (SCR dept.), ResMan7
Research manager (manager)
17/06/13 49 minutes, transcribed 22
PRU, sub-department 5 (SCR dept.), Res14
Scientist (not manager)
18/06/13 46 minutes, transcribed 23
Protein Research Unit, sub-department 5 (SCR department), Res11
Scientist (not manager)
24/06/13 42 minutes, transcribed 24
Protein Research Unit, sub-department 5 (SCR department), Res12
Scientist (not manager)
24/06/13 53 minutes, transcribed 25
Protein Research Unit, sub-department 5 (SCR
Scientist (not manager)
26/06/13 1 hour and 13 minutes, transcribed
26
department), Res13 Protein Research Unit, sub-department 5 (SCR dept.), ResMan7
Research manager (manager)
26/06/13 46 minutes, transcribed 27
PRU, sub-department 5 (SCR dept.), Group int.
Group interview with three scientists;
Res11-13
28/06/13 1 hour and 23 minutes, transcribed
28
Corporate HR, CorpHR 7
HR consultant 01/08/13 43 minutes, transcribed 29
Corporate HR, CorpHR 3 HR consultant 20/08/13 1 hour 23 minutes, transcribed
30
Corporate HR, CorpHR 10
HR consultant 07/11/13 40 minutes, transcribed 31
Corporate HR, Corp. HR Group int.
Group interview with HR consultants
08/11/13 53 minutes, transcribed 32
PRU, PRU HR Partner 2 HR Partner 29/01/14 45 minutes, transcribed 33 PRU, sub-department 5
(SCR dept.), ResMan7
Research manager (manager)
30/01/14 48 minutes, transcribed 34
Corporate HR, Group int. 2
Group interview with HR consultants
07/02/14 28 minutes, transcribed 35
Table 1. An overview of the 35 interviews that have influenced the writing of this article.
In order to focus the observations, as well as to gain ‘natural access’ to the field, we conducted person-based ‘shadowing’ sequences (Czarniawska, 2007) of five senior scientists of the SCR department, including the research manager. These interventions each lasted one full day on average (two days in the case of the research manager), and gave us access to many types of interactions in which the scientists engaged, for example, in meetings, the laboratory, or while they prepared their work. While gathering this comprehensive data set, we sensed that our long-term affiliation with the case-organization, as well as our familiarity with BioTech’s basic work terminologies, helped us become accepted by the interviewees. The shadowing activities in the SCR
department also came to play an important role by enabling us to formulate relevant and specific questions in the following interviews. Here, scientists were frequently asked to explain the rationale of their practice in detail based on our prior observations. In addition, we realized how the writing of this article relied heavily on our ongoing contact with the SCR department manager (ResMan7) after our stay at the SCR department was completed. We had two follow up meetings with the manager, and they had a significant impact on our framing (and writing) of the case.20 One implication of this is that an elaborate open coding in NVivo became less important to the analytical narrative than did the actors’ accounts and interlinking of the objects of analysis.