In this chapter the methods that were used to collect and analyze the data will be explained, the setting in which the research took place will be described and the participants of the research will be accounted for.
3.1. Data
A mixed methods approach (Lewis et al., 2007) is used as both qualitative and quantitative data are collected and used in the research. However, the qualitative data has more weight.
The qualitative data are both in the form of primary and secondary qualitative data.
Interviews classify as primary qualitative data along with an unrecorded phone conversation. Moreover, books, journal articles, reports, newspaper articles, websites and government publications classify as secondary qualitative data. The secondary qualitative data is used to provide an extensive literature review and partly provides as a theoretical framework for the research. Moreover, in the findings chapter the literature will be brought in to support arguments of respondents. In the discussion part of the thesis, parts of the literature review will be compared to the results of the primary data to see if some similarities or differences can be detected and in order to assess the case for quotas in Iceland. The quantitative data collected are all of secondary nature and are mainly in the form of statistics gotten from reports or previous research and from governmental publications. The quantitative data along with secondary qualitative data will be used to assess the current situation on corporate boards in Iceland with regard to the representation of women on boards so as to set the ground for the context in which the research takes place. It will then further be used when discussing the findings of the study and when concluding on the research. The following section will describe the interview process.
3.2. Interviews
I took a trip to Iceland in the time period form 10 May to 27 May 2012 to collect primary data in the form of interviews. Qualitative research interviews or semi-structured interviews
business community: Five women and four men. Additionally, a phone interview was conducted in the end of July with a contact person within the Ministry of Economic affairs where the main purpose was generating answers concerning sanctions. The interviews were taken with the underlying purpose of gathering data, which would then be analyzed qualitatively in order to get closer to answering the research question (Lewis et al., 2007).
The interviews are used to seek opinions and explanations and explore events in order to extend my understanding of gender related boardroom dynamics and to get an idea about the attitudes towards gender quotas within the Icelandic business community. The interviews will not be used to make generalizations about an entire population because they only cover a small non-representative sample, rather they will be used to get an idea of what the respondents think and feel about the topic. I set out to ask the questions in an open manner in order to reduce the possibility of bias, both interviewer bias and response bias (Thorpe et al., 2008). Furthermore, because of the controversial nature of the research both in terms of gender equality and the measures with which gender equality is reached, and because of the constraints that are put on business owners with the enforcement of such a law I made an attempt to formulate the interview questions in a neutral manner in order to avoid making the interviewees uncomfortable. Next section will explain how the sample was chosen.
3.3. Sampling
A non-probability sample was chosen consisting of nine board members and business people. The sampling method can be described as a purposive sampling as I used my judgment to choose individuals I believed were well suited to help answer the research question and meet the objectives of the research(Lewis et al., 2007). The sampling method can also be described as a snowball sampling where I initially identified one contact and asked that contact to identify other contacts etc. (Lewis et al., 2007). Because this research project deals with issues revolving around the importance of gender balance I set out to have a gender balance among respondents, this was however not entirely reached.
The interviewees, who are not board members are somehow related to the topic, e.g. are stakeholders or former board members. I had a list of questions and themes I wanted to get into although these varied depending on interviewees and development of conversations.
Further, the interviews were all conducted on a one-to-one basis where the interviewer and interviewees met on face-to-face meetings. The duration of the interviews varied quite a lot;
the shortest interview was 27:08 minutes and the longest one was 59:21 minutes. The duration of other seven interviews was somewhere in between although the majority of the interviews were around 40 minutes. Table 1 will show further information about the conduction of the interviews.
Fake name
Date and time of interview
Place of interview
Length of interview in minutes
Gender John 21 May 2012 at
14:00
John’s office 46:38 Male
James 15 May 2012 at 16:00
Cafeteria of James’s workplace
51:02 Male
Mark 22 May 2012 at 11:00
Mark’s home 59:21 minutes Male Brad 16 May 2012 at
09:00
Brad’s office Damaged Male
Daisy 11 May 2012 at 11:00
Daisy’s office 37:54 Female Rose 14 May 2012 at
15:00
Conference room at Rose’s workplace
36:10 Female
Karen 16 May 2012 Conference room at Karen’s workplace
27:09 Female
Jenny 15 May 2012 Conference room at Jenny’s workplace
47:03 Female
Mary 21 May 2012 Mary’s office 42:00 Female
Table 1. Interviewees, time, place and gender.
I considered ethical issues and got the permission from all respondents to record the interviews and highlighted that the respondent had the right to refuse to answer any question. I decided to give all the interviewees fake names (see table 1) to protect their identities because some of them preferred to be anonymous. All interviews were recorded with the consent of the interviewees but unfortunately one recording was largely damaged.
I contacted the interviewee who’s recording got damaged and got confirmations of answers that I found to be of a special importance. In the following section, the approach taken when analyzing the interview will be accounted for.
3.4. Analysis of interviews
The interview recordings were transcribed in Icelandic and thereafter each interview was translated roughly into English to make the analysis more approachable. Thereafter, the transcribed and translated interview text was analyzed and categorized into themes largely corresponding to the themes of the literature review. I attempted to find similarities and differences in the opinions of the respondents as well as to discover dominant attitudes.
After the first level of analysis: the categorization, I did a second level of analysis where I compared the interview text to the literature review. I did this second level of analysis in order to see if the results corresponded to what has already been written on the subject and with the purpose of contextualizing the interview results within the wider field of the study.
The goal is for instance to find out how my results contradict or support previous work in the field and thereby endeavoring to spot how the members of the study perceive quota related issues and opportunities (Ridley, 2008). Moreover, I juxtaposed the interview results with the chapter on the context of Iceland with the purpose of situating the results within the Icelandic context. Next section will deal with the research philosophy of the study.
3.5. Research philosophy
I embrace an interpretivist epistemology because I work under the assumption that the
generalizations. Moreover the understanding of the differences between individuals in their roles as social actors is important in the attempt of generating answers to the research questions. Interpretivist epistemology maintains that the researcher enters the social world of the research subjects, in this study the social world of corporate directors, and attempts to understand the world form their point of view (Lewis et al., 2007). The principles of the interpretivist epistemology upholds that generalizability is not of key importance both because of the multifaceted and unique nature of business situations and also because of the fast changing landscape of the business world. The ontological stance taken in the study is subjectivism or more specifically social constructionism, which follows from the interpretivist tradition (Lewis et al., 2007). The interpretivist position highlights the essentiality of exploring the subjective meanings working behind the actions of social actors in order for the researcher to understand the actions of the social actors. Moreover, the interpretivist ontological view maintains that social reality is comprised of multiple realities, meaning that a single situation may be interpreted in multiple ways when attempting to make sense of the situation. Thus, reality is regarded as context dependent implicating that “each reality is specific to a particular social context” (Risberg, 1999, p.
94). Some of the findings are divided by gender, i.e. the opinions of the men and women will be separated and then later compared. This is done to show if the men and women have different ideas about the topics and if and how they construct gender differently. The following chapter will present the Icelandic context, which will later partly provide as a foundation for findings and discussions.