Interview Guides

In this section I present the overall process of the development of the questions for interviews. I begin with the questions developed for the Sociolog.dx experience that constituted the empirical foundation of ‘Sustainability Innovators and Anchor-Draggers: Results from a Global Expert Study on Sustainable Fashion’, and then turn to the interview guides developed for my

fieldwork, constituting part of the empirical foundation of ‘Unlikely Mediators? The Malleable Concept of Sustainability’, ‘Design Thinking for Organizational Change’ and ‘Capital in Formation: What is at Stake in the Textile and Fashion Industry?’

The questions developed by myself and Esben Rahbek Gjerdrum Pedersen for Sociolog.dx arguably took the form of a survey as much as of an interview. Unlike a survey, however, the questions were generally more open and interactive. The aim of the study was to explore and map the current barriers and opportunities experienced by stakeholders in the field in terms of practising sustainability in the textile and fashion industry. Appendix A of Chapter 6 of this thesis presents an overview of all the stakeholders invited to participate in the study and of the

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36 stakeholders who accepted this invitation. To maintain confidentiality, pseudonyms are used to refer to individual respondents, while, to the fullest extent possible, details are provided about the size of the organizations they are from, the sector they are from (academia, brand, designer, factory, etc.), their position in the industry and cultural backgrounds. The specific questions about the stakeholders’ experiences of challenges and opportunities for practising sustainability in the textile and fashion industry were developed in collaboration with a representative from GfK, the provider of the Sociolog.dx platform. While the GfK representative could not advise on the theoretical and contextual parts of the questions, she was able to advise on which types of questions tend to work well on the platform. (The questions can be seen in Appendix B of Chapter 6). Participants were also encouraged to upload visual material such as pictures,

drawings and webpages to support and visualize the mostly linguistic form of communication in the experiment. Visuality has so far been under-explored and under-theorized in organization and management studies (Bell and Davison, 2013; Stiles, 2014; Styhre, 2010), as such studies have been preoccupied primarily with the ‘linguistic turn’ (Rorty, 1979). Stiles (2014) points to the differences between types of visuals and their use in social research, e.g. the use of images already ‘out there’ in social discourse, such as photographs or advertisements, as opposed to the use of ‘freehand sketch’. Discussing the use of such drawings, Stiles (2014, p. 239) concludes as follows: “Unlike conventional semiotic approaches, asking people to draw and explain their own images and presenting the resulting discourse through the relay principle decentres the

researcher from the role of expert in judging what the drawer is conveying.” Warren (2005) discusses the use of photography in social research, arguing that photographic images, through their iconic and quasi-representational nature, can communicate participants’ views of their worlds with more primacy than language alone, empowering individuals in research. In our research we did not distinguish between images already ‘out there’ and/or drawings and photographs produced by participants themselves, but encouraged both forms of visual

communication. For this particular study we also mainly used the visual material as a ‘hook’ to build conversation.

Using Sociolog.dx to collect data has both advantages and disadvantages. The main advantage for our study was the opportunity to engage a larger group of industry stakeholders from across the world in a single discussion. While participants were presented with the overall framework of the four-day event, the forum also allowed them the freedom to contribute whenever they had time. Another advantage is that, as highlighted by James and Busher (2012), people who tend to

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be shy in face-to-face contexts may feel freer to ‘speak’ and make extensive contributions to conversations in online forums, including expressing views that are either sensitive or unpopular. However, such forums also make it easier for people to distort and disguise their views and perspectives, and this and other factors can lead to misunderstandings. The forum event not only made use of GfK’s platform but was also managed and moderated by GfK.

Moderation by GfK was not optional, due to their owning the platform, and while this had the advantage of there being a neutral moderator it also meant that the discussion was facilitated by a person with no particular expertise in the field of sustainable fashion. On the one hand this contributed to creating an overall relaxed and non-judgmental atmosphere; on the other, it caused discussions to remain at a relatively general level. Not being able to communicate directly with the participants further meant we could not engage with the participants about the pictures, drawings and webpages that they uploaded in the forum (Stiles, 2014, p. 239). Thus, while the moderator would ask participants to elaborate on uploaded visuals, it is my impression that the visuals, because of this particular setup, did not enrich the discussion as much as they could have, not least in a highly visual and aesthetic forum such as the textile and fashion industry. In contrast to the interview guides developed for the fieldwork, the questions for Sociolog.dx did not go through alterations over the course of the event after they had been created. This was mainly due to the need to allow consistency, but also because any such changes would have had to go through GfK and would have added to the already agreed-upon budget.

The Sociolog.dx experience took place just before I embarked upon my fieldwork with InnoTex, and the explorative nature of this experience provided me with a foundation with which to enter the field. On the basis of this research I was able to create an initial map of possible positions on the topic of sustainability in the field of fashion and the relationships between these positions.

The development of interview guides to support my semi-structured interviews with InnoTex were thus based on literature, the Sociolog.dx experience, and, most of all, the initial phase of participant observation. The interview guide took the form of a mind-map of themes to be explored rather than a set of questions to be posed one after another. I felt that this visual organization of my questions encouraged me to focus on my respondents instead of the

questions in my notebook. It also allowed me to bring up new ideas during the interviews and to use various forms of probing to gain a greater understanding of the context and meaning of the responses (Bernard, 2006). The interview guides developed for the semi-structured interviews I

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conducted with InnoTex went through alterations as my research progressed. To begin with, the overall framework consisted of the following themes: 1. background (family and education); 2.

the interviewee’s journey into sustainable fashion; 3. current work (perceived barriers and opportunities); and 4. hopes for the future. Embedded in all of these themes were the topics of design, design thinking and sustainability. As my fieldwork progressed, the ‘background’ theme seemed less important, whereas my questions around the theme of ‘perceived barriers and opportunities’ were further developed over time, becoming more nuanced. Similarly, the interview guides that I developed for my interviews with H&M staff went through alterations both in response to the interviewees’ replies and in response to the progress of the workshops. In the course of time these interviews also took on the additional purpose of gathering feedback for InnoTex in order to prepare for the upcoming workshops. This in turn had an impact on some of the questions asked and the replies given, as my respondents came to see me as part of the InnoTex team rather than as a ‘neutral’ observer. And though this is likely to have inhibited my research with H&M, it did help me to build rapport with InnoTex. The interview guides

developed for research in Shanghai and Hong Kong went through numerous alterations, partly due to our limited knowledge of the context prior to going into the field. We had certain basic expectations, of course, including our anticipation that sustainability would mean something different to a Chinese factory owner, a garment worker and a Western fashion designer (Wang and Juslin, 2010); but while some of our ideas about the context turned out to be ‘true’, many did not. In preparation for the fieldwork we had the opportunity to meet with a group of Chinese scholars, factory owners, and other stakeholders from the industry, allowing us to test our initial interview guide and to gain a better sense of how to approach the context. Over the course of our fieldwork we adapted the interview guide to allow more room for discussions of certifications and standards as well as social responsibility. While we had been warned that Chinese factory owners consider questions about social responsibility to be a very sensitive topic and were advised not to bring up such questions, in many cases, to our surprise, our respondents seemed eager to talk about precisely this topic, though not necessarily thinking about it as an issue of social responsibility but rather in terms of ways to attract workers. The guides we developed took into account the occupations and/or positions of the people whom we would meet. Our fixer also had a significant impact on the development of the interview guides, in many cases also being the one asking the questions and translating the answers. (See Figure 3.4. for an example of an interview guide used in this research.)

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