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representative and will inevitably remain open. Furthermore, following the relational ontology, they can only make sense as perceived/observed by the reader and thereby the relevance of conducted research – whether quantitative or qualitative – is always ‘co-constructed between reader and the text as he/she engages in a virtual dialogue with the script’ (Wright & Ehnert, 2010: 121). It follows that research findings within social sciences are inevitably tentative (Donmoyer, 2000: 52).
Thus, while the search for universal patterns of societal phenomena is to no purpose, social sciences can contribute to their understanding and they can challenge the latter by pointing towards the contingency of (re)occurring patterns. In other words, social sciences have
‘contributed to the reflexive analysis and discussion of values and interests, which is the prerequisite for an enlightened political, economic, and cultural development in any society’
(Flyvbjerg, 2006). Consequently, when studying trusting processes in PPPs the attempt is not to produce statistical generalizable and valid conclusions as aimed for within a positivistic paradigm and natural sciences. Still, the objective is to produce meaningful and useful knowledge that can inform and be transferred by researchers, managers and decision-makers and eventually challenge current practices and taken-for-granted assumptions.
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appropriate or diagnostic’ (Kramer, 2012: 21). Still, I was, of course, clear about my focus on trust and control as well as the interest in the development over time (Lyon, Möllering, &
Saunders, 2012: 11). Also, I had some predefined themes that I extracted from existing literature on PPPs, background material on the PPPs (e.g. Power Point presentations, homepages), expert interviews within the PPP field, contracts from the identified PPPs and pilot interviews with PPP managers. These themes were mainly used to get the interviewee talking and get an impression of their interpretations of different structural influences (if they were experienced to have any influence at all) as well as their evaluation of the other’s trustworthiness when thinking back in time. Yet, they also helped me to ‘question’ the interviewees’ recounts and ask for the eventual absent in their answers. An example of the interview guide can be found in Appendix A.
A challenge with regard to the interview method was that reflective reasoning about trusting (or distrusting) might be implicit rather than readily available to the interviewee. Thus, as pointed out by a range of trust researchers, it is rare that we are aware of the trust we place in others.
Often, we first become aware of it when we are disappointed (Luhmann 2001). Therefore, I aimed to pose ‘what if’ and ‘why (not)’ questions so as to provoke the other to react on the existence of alternatives (or the denial of the same). Thereby, I aimed at challenging taken-for-granted structures and/or trust, encouraging the interviewees to specify why exactly they were expecting the other to act in a certain way.
To give some examples: When the interviewee told me about the usual procedure when meeting with his or her counterpart, I would ask what would happen, if the counterpart did not show up or proposed a different way of doing things. The interviewee could than say that this indeed was possible because of A and B, or that this was unthinkable because of C and D. This might require a ‘why (not)’ question, but usually this technique worked quite well to get access to the reflexive reasons and perceptions behind the interviewees’ expectations. However, such a provoking technique could clearly lead to the perception of a rather naïve interviewee scrutinizing the most simple working procedures. Also, while it clearly led interviewees to reflect about less explicit reasons and structures, it is still far from exhaustive.
Another ‘limitation’ of the interview is indeed the questioning at one point in time – and thereby its dependence on selective memories about earlier trusting processes. In most of the cases, I only conducted one interview per person and used about one hour as to ask about the partnership
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processes, letting them reflect about earlier developments, their continuation and alterations. In other words, the limits of the interview did not keep the interviewees from referring to the processual journey, the experiences as they emerged, continued or altered. Also, the aim was not process tracing in terms of revealing what actually happened. Still, the interviews only allowed explorations of momentary interpretations of earlier processes, alterations and continuations.
Observations
Thus, despite well-developed interview techniques, there are still some limitations with regard to getting access to the taken-for-grantedness of structures as well as less reflected experiences of trust (Münschner & Kühlmann, 2012). Therefore, I chose to additionally conduct observations in PPP steering group meetings where all involved managers would be participating and discuss the state and progress of the partnership. While most managers knew me at that time, I asked for the chance to briefly introduce myself at the beginning of the meeting, rather than being introduced. Thereby, I was able to highlight that my focus was on getting to know the processes, rather than exploring the specific discussions and using potentially sensitive and confidential data. Also, I aimed to reduce eventual ‘curiosity’ and enable a quick transition to their usual meeting procedures (although my attendance, of course, inevitably interrupts some of the taken-for-grantedness).
The observations were not used as primary sources for the analysis, given the difficulty of interpreting trusting defined as a state of mind rather than an attitude. Rather, they supplied the interviews with impressions about the ongoing coordinating procedures. Hence, while the observation provided useful insights into the practical coping with each other and not least improved my understanding of the ongoing partnership processes, it was throughout the interviews that making sense of the latter took place. I was, however, only able to do observations in the two Danish cases while in the two German cases I had to settle with interviews (more on the case selection in the subsequent section).
The researcher’s role
It remains to elaborate briefly on the researcher’s role. With regards to the observations, it has already been indicated that my attendance of course was recognized and may have influenced the participators’ behaviour in a certain way. Yet, I was not given a lot of attention throughout the meetings and when asked about that in the interviews, the managers were not aware of any difference. With regard to my ability to interpret the observations, I am of course not inside the
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ongoing processes and can only interpret from within my own understanding thereof. As such, I may indeed have ‘overseen’ the meaning of certain dialogues upon which I otherwise could have followed up. In the same vein I could ascribe meanings to behaviours that were not interpreted by the participating managers. The latter was however clarified throughout the interviews. In one of the steering group meetings I for example recognized that it was the private middle manager who was leading the meeting and felt that the public middle manager was somehow holding back. This was however nothing the two managers were actively thinking about, yet, the holding back observation was not by chance, as became clear during the interviews.
Turning to the interviews, my role was generally more active. It was not only about framing an over-all perspective, but in an interview situation the researcher also enters a dialogic process with the interviewee. Thereby he/she may aim to influence the answers more or less strongly, however, at the end it is, of course, the interviewee who relates to the asked questions. But let me specify three of the challenges that I experienced when interviewing and aiming towards exploring trusting processes in PPPs.
First, the subject of inter-organizational trust clearly was a sensitive topic, challenging the interviewees to reflect about processes and experiences that they were not used to in their everyday copings. Furthermore, the focus on the perception/experience of ‘the other’ also raised cautiousness as to how I would deal with the interviews in my writings. For the purpose of minimising such scepticism, I assured confidentiality to all the interviewees which clearly helped to open up their answers. An interesting experience was that many of the managers, once they agreed, seemed to welcome these interviews (or better conversations) for a change from the practical-oriented every-day management.
Second, and closely related to the above, the taken-for-grantedness that accompanied many of the trusting processes was clearly interrupted by the interviews and by, at times provoking questions. Thereby, the interviews interrupted not only the every-day life, but also challenged otherwise non-reflected ways of doing things that also seemed to influence the understanding of the interviewees. This is reflected by reactions such as ‘this is an awful self-evaluation that you force me to do here…’ (with a smile on his/her face) or ‘[i]t is good to be asked about this because it is important to refresh what I should answer next time they confront me with a critique’.
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Third and finally, the focus on interpretations also led to a double – or even fourfold- interpretative process where (1) the interviewee did present his/her interpretation of the differing trusting processes by (2) relating them to my questions (as interpreted by him/her), yet, (3) at the end it was my relating to their interpretations that provided the analysis and now (4) it is you, the reader, (hopefully) making sense of the analysed. The interview situation is illustrated in Figure 3. Please note that this is, of course, a simplification and leaves out to highlight the inherent embeddedness of the process and not least the co-creation of the findings with the reader. Furthermore, although there is no ‘correct’ and ‘wrong’ of these interpretations, I still aimed to (re)create the complexity of trusting processes as experienced by the interviewees.
Therefore I presented my initial findings to some of the earlier interviewed managers who provided me with useful feedback which I in turn used as inspiration (not ‘truth’) to reflect about the interpretations.
Figure 3: Interviews and interpretations