of boards as groups), and economic outcomes (such as fluctuations in stock price or profitability as these are outside the scope of this study). Equipped with the research
questions and main lines of enquiry listed above, as well as the boundaries I set for this study, I entered the field to collect data for the main study.
Table 2 Data Sources and Use in the Analysis
Data Source Data Type Use in the Analysis
Interviews September 2018 - March 2019 38 interviews (from 30 to 97 minutes in length).
Five off-the-record conversations at the end of interviews.
Collect detailed information on: 1) how is corporate purpose appreciated;
2) what are the dynamics of director engagement; 3) how do institutional investors contribute to director engagement with corporate purpose;
4) how corporations can create value for society as well as investors Observations February 2019
One investor-day event at one of the thirteen selected companies.
Observation duration: five hours.
One investor-director conference with multiple observations.
Observation duration: three days.
Observe the interactions of directors and investors, how they relate to each other, the topics discussed and how they were discussed. Learn the issues important to both parties in these forums and the tensions that exist around institutional investors and director engagement.
Identify inconsistencies and
consistencies between participants.
Develop an in-depth understanding of the case issues.
Compare and triangulate with data from the interviews and documents.
Documents September 2017- May 2019 Public documents: annual reports, sustainability reports, law and regulatory texts, codes of corporate governance, stewardship codes, industry reports, investor analyses, annual general assembly agendas and results, proxy recommendations.
Confidential documents: investor presentations, Chair presentations, internal strategy documents (excerpts), governance
practitioner articles authored by directors (pre-publication), ESG reviews shared with investors.
Develop detailed contextual understanding of institutional investors and director engagement.
Compare and triangulate with data from the interviews and observations;
compare and complement with field notes to identify themes, issues and patterns.
Identify inconsistencies and
consistencies between participants.
Develop an in-depth understanding of the case issues.
Interviews can have potential bias and quality issues (Brinkmann & Kvale 2015; Parkhe 1993; Yin 2014), due to a combination of factors such as poor definition of questions, inaccuracy of recollection, poor quality of transcription, poor quality of interviewer, interruptions during the interview, reflexivity on the part of the interviewee who might say simply what the interviewer wants to hear, inappropriate location or malfunction of the recording device. As the interviewer, I was expected to be knowledgeable, structured, clear, sensitive, open and critical (Brinkmann & Kvale 2015; Flick 2014), even more so given the elite status of participants in this study. I took great care to develop and display these
competences. Given the problems and limitations of interviews, and driven by my interest in reporting direct, first-hand accounts of the participants in action (Borneman & Hammoudi 2009; Schwandt 2015), I also carried out participant observations. I considered the
appropriate time to negotiate access to observations not to be at the outset of the study, but rather as the research gained momentum and I built rapport and trust with the participants. I started to lay the foundations for access to observations in December 2018, and between February and March 2019 I conducted two observations which allowed me to immerse myself ‘deeply into the processes themselves, collecting fine-grained data’ (Langley 1999, p.
691). The interview-observation combination is a strength of case-study research (Tilba &
McNulty 2012; Parkhe 1993; Yin 2014), and the opportunity to observe investors and directors interact on the topic of this thesis helped to deepen my understanding of how
investors view director engagement, how valuable it is to them, what the issues are when they engage with investee companies, and how directors think, feel and behave on the topic of corporate purpose, what tensions exist and what the outcomes of engagement might be.
Through this combination I aimed to improve the credibility and reliability of my data, enhance data trustworthiness (Shah & Corley 2006), and maximise the potential for
epistemological data validity (Parkhe 1993), potentially leading to a more rigorous data analysis. The combination of interviews, observations and documents also supported me in the conclusions I eventually drew from this study (Stake 1995).
In the interest of clarity and rigour, when describing the data collection process it is considered important to elaborate on the researcher’s position on the insider-outsider continuum (Aguinis & Solarino 2019), as this can affect the data collection in terms of accessibility and interpretation. In this study I positioned myself as both an insider and an outsider researcher (Evered & Louis 1981; Gioia & Chittipedi 1991). Given my professional background in executive management, and my short yet intense experience in the field of corporate governance, I considered myself an insider, yet I also remained an outsider with no pre-existing relationship with any participant. The insider perspective helped me to develop understanding and empathy for the tensions that emerged during the study around director engagement with corporate purpose. It also facilitated access, as participants learned through my support network and through contact with me that I was not ‘just’ a doctoral student but also a management and governance practitioner. Hence, I believe that the insider perspective contributed to the generation of rich data during this study. The outsider perspective played a role in the participants’ perception of me as a neutral, ‘academic’ party carrying out a
scientific enquiry, something a number of directors mentioned during the interviews, for instance when they openly yet confidentially shared with me names of people and companies in their examples, justifying their openness with the fact that ‘you are an academic and not a competitor’. The outsider perspective also helped me to remain true to self-reflexivity and conduct a more objective data collection process and analysis, almost giving me the lens of a newcomer in a group of old-timers (Evered & Louis 1981). The combination of the insider-
outsider perspective allowed me both proximity and detachment, subjectivity and objectivity, a dual role which I played throughout the study.
Data collection took place between February 2018 and March 2019 following a strategy infirmed by Stake (1995). This included the identification of potential participants (both organisations and individuals), addressing access issues, participant selection, the
identification of potential meetings or gatherings I could observe, the collection of documents (including those giving access to confidential information), and the collection of data through these primary and secondary sources. To secure participants in this study I conceptualised and followed a three-step process, featuring participant identification, access and selection, although at times the phases ran in parallel. Figure 6 below offers a graphic representation of the phases. Since ‘collectives do not act, only people do’ (Rousseau 1985, cited in Bridoux &
Stoelhorst 2016, p. 231), identification refers to the process of first pinpointing the organisations (namely context organisations, investors and companies), followed by
individuals within those organisations. Selection refers to the process of converting identified individuals into selected participants.
Figure 6 Participant Identification and Selection Phases
Given the well-known difficulties of access in this type of scientific enquiry, I conceptualised access as an intermediary phase between identification and selection and referred to it as the process of gaining access to participants. An identified participant turned into a selected participant once I received a formal, written agreement to an interview and I had conducted the interview.
In designing this study, I remained mindful of the fact that my own presence in the field could ‘create social behaviour in others that would not have occurred ordinarily’ (Miles, Huberman & Saldaña 2014, p. 296). In an effort to minimise my effect on participants and the study setting, I carefully followed the recommendations of Miles, Huberman & Saldaña (2014). For interviews, I clearly outlined to participants the study scope and data collection processes, both in written form (in the Interview Consent Form and the Interview Protocol) and verbally, at the beginning of each interview. I also invited participants to be as direct and as frank as possible with me. Furthermore, I remained “unobtrusive” (Plowman et al. 2007, p.
522) during site visits. During observations, I tried to keep a low profile: I sat at the back of the room, asked no questions during meetings, did not use my recording device, turned off my mobile phone and only interacted with participants during breaks or at the end of the event. Given that the participants in this study were elite professionals, or well-articulated, well-informed participants in formal positions of authority, I faced the possibility of elite bias (Miles, Huberman & Saldaña 2014). To minimise this, I adopted tactics to test and confirm findings through multiple data sources (not only in terms of case organisations but also in terms of a minimum of two participants per company in the case of directors, the core group of participants) and data triangulation, which also enabled me to test for convergence (Parkhe 1993; Yin 2014).
In two companies I was only able to access one director; however, in all others I successfully accessed two directors per company. Furthermore, I was aware that participants might try to depict ‘a socially desirable image of themselves and their firms’ (Miller, Cardinal & Glick 1997, p. 190) and that, when recollecting the past, they might not be able to do so accurately, potentially leading me to false conclusions or inappropriate conceptualisations (Golden 1992;
Wolfe & Jackson 1987). To counteract these problems, and to increase the accuracy of the reports, I followed the approach of Cardinal, Sitkin and Long (2004), Miller, Cardinal and Glick (1997) and Plowman et al. (2007). Firstly, participants had the freedom not to answer a question if they did not wish to do so, or had no experience of the topic of the question.
Secondly, I asked the same set of questions to all participants (context, directors and investors). Thirdly, I complemented the interviews with observations and documentary analysis. In the next sections I describe the primary and secondary data sources of this study.
The rest of this section is organised in two parts: firstly I present an overview of primary data sources; the criteria adopted to identify participants; the process of participant identification;
access issues I faced and how I overcame them; the process of participant selection; and how I negotiated two observations. Secondly, I present the secondary data sources.
Primary Data Sources
Between September 2018 and March 2019, I conducted a total of 38 interviews and two participant observations for the main study. Table 3 presents an overview of the primary data sources of this study.
Table 3 Overview of Primary Data Sources
Interviews Observations
Interview Number
Total 38
Participant Group
Interview Type
Method of Data Capture
Observation Number
Total 2
Participant Group
9 Context Face-to-face Audio recordings Directors
and Investors
22 Directors 21
Face- to- face
1 By email
20 Audio recordings 1
Notes taken
1 Email
1
Directors and Investors
7 Investors 6
Face- to- face
1 By phone
6 Audio recording
1 Notes taken
1
All interviews and observations took place in English, except one interview with a chair who preferred to speak German (I will return to this point). In the following sections I present the two sets of primary data sources.
Interviews
I conducted 38 semi-structured, open-ended interviews in total, grouped by participant:
directors, investors and ‘context’ participants. I wanted to complement the stories told by
directors with those of their investors, and with a set of other participants whom I labelled as
‘context’ participants to gain a more in-depth understanding of each director case (Ma &
Seidl 2018). This process generated nine face-to-face context interviews; 22 face-to-face director interviews (21 with board members of twelve of the thirteen selected companies, and one interview by email with the chair of Company E); seven investor interviews (six face- to- face and one by phone) with seven of the eight selected investing companies. For the
remaining investor (Index Fund A) I carried out an observation (I will return to this point later). I interviewed one individual per investor organisation with the exception of one investor (Asset Manager) where I interviewed two individuals because in this organisation asset management and engagement activities are separate and led by two different
individuals.
In the interviews I addressed the same topics with similar questions ‘to allow meaningful comparisons across interviewees’ (Hajro, Gibson & Pudelko 2017, p. 349). The interview guide included the Interview Consent Form and the Interview Protocol (presented in Appendices 5 and 6 respectively). The Interview Protocol had four sections: corporate purpose, director engagement with corporate purpose, institutional investors and going forward. The first three sections included two questions each, while the fourth section had only one question. Questions focussed on the nature of corporate purpose and the key
governance mechanisms to support it, the dynamics of director engagement with purpose, the role of institutional investors in ensuring corporations can enact their purpose, how investors contributes to director engagement, and future developments with regard to directors and their engagement with purpose. The semi-structured nature of the interviews allowed me to probe comments I found interesting and emerging themes. To probe I asked, for instance,
‘Why do you think that investor X reacted in this way’, or ‘What did you learn from this experience?’, or ‘How has this event changed the way you look at corporate purpose?’ At the end of each interview I asked participants to share anything else they considered important or they wished to add. I concluded the interview by thanking them for their time and insights.
Since all participants were elite professionals and I had researched their careers and their organisations, I did not enquire about their background, role or relationship to the
organisation, as this information is public and part of my preparation ahead of each interview.
Given the complexity of the phenomenon I was studying, I wanted to zoom into director engagement by starting with context interviews, examining the setting or background of the study, followed by director and investor interviews which ran in parallel. Investor interviews helped me to capture rich accounts beyond those of the directors themselves and to build a full rather than a partial story. Since research based only on participants’ own accounts may lack independent verification (Machold & Farquhar 2013; Peck 1995) and be biased, I wanted to capture investor perspectives on director engagement with corporate purpose, or the other side of the director stories. I regarded interviews as ‘communicative events’ (Yeung 2009), rather than ‘interrogations’, a term one chair jokingly used. I reassured him that I was rather looking forward to an interesting discussion, given his background, experience and reputation. I considered interviews an opportunity to engage in an active exchange of information and views, although I made conscious efforts to limit my own views and give ample space to those of the participants. Nonetheless, there were times when an interview turned into a passionate discussion, particularly around possible motives behind institutional investor engagement with boards (an indication that heterogeneity of investors aims and claims could become a case issue) or the aims and claims of the Responsible Business
Initiative (confirming that it represented a key concern for the participant directors). I gave the interviewee free rein on what to say or not to say, mindful of my ethical responsibility towards them and of the privileged position I held as interviewer. I felt honoured by the time participants dedicated to me and to this study, and by the information they shared with me. I constantly felt my responsibility as researcher to guarantee the anonymity of participants and the confidentiality of the information shared. I also felt the responsibility of being a guest in their environment, ensuring I did not disturb their surroundings. My duty of care also came to life, for instance, while travelling, as I noticed I would take greater care of the audio
recording device and signed informed consent forms than of my own passport. This care manifested itself too in the weekly back-ups I executed for all files, ensuring I backed up research material in different hard drives and cyber spaces which I password protected, changing the password every month.
Interviews lasted on average 50 minutes, (with the shortest 30 minutes and the longest 97 minutes), for a total of 2093 minutes (35 hours) of interview recordings. I audio recorded 36 of the 38 interviews. I took notes of one director interview (company B) and one investor interview (SWF Europe), as permission to audio record had not been granted, while one director (chair of company E) participated via email. Immediately after each interview I wrote down in my journal notes, words, peculiarities that came to mind from my still fresh memory. What I observed, and was exposed to, during this study is inseparable from the field-notes I wrote in my journal. Field-notes offered an essential grounding to this study and captured the skeleton of the chain of events as they unfolded, helping me to log my
impressions, identify issues, and to follow up surprises and my own questions or hunches. I wrote field-notes by hand, as the act of writing with pen on paper gave me time to re-live
moments experienced in the field, and to reflect on what I was capturing. At times I also made voice recordings on my iPhone to capture a new action item or idea that came to mind, which I would then write down in my journal as soon as possible. Most interviews took place in Switzerland, between Geneva, Zürich, Basel and Bern, typically at the participant’s office or private conference room. One director interview took place in Germany, one investor interview in the UK, and two interviews (one director and one context interview) took place in cafés as an office location was not available.
I transcribed all but a few interviews within a maximum of 48 hours, to ensure my memory was still vivid, and when not within this window, very soon afterwards. I am a visual person, able to retain the tiniest of details about people, conversations and events, and this visual memory allows me to re-live the events that have taken place. Although I found transcribing tedious, I had promised participants that I would personally transcribe the interview, given the confidentiality of the information they shared and my duty to protect their anonymity, and this undertaking was appreciated by participants. This approach also proved to be a
formidable tool for my memory. Through transcription, word by word, line by line, I could vividly recall details of conversations, whether there were any interruptions (none), the tone of voice of the interviewee and any information they shared with me off the record, as some did (I will return to ‘off the record information’ in the section entitled Unexpected
Opportunities). As previously mentioned, one interview took place in German. In this case I not only transcribed the recording into German, but also translated it into English and back into German to ensure accuracy. This process took five full days as the interviewee spoke German with a Swiss accent, which presented some challenges where I had to double-check the meaning of specific words or expressions.
Participant Identification
In case studies, ‘random selection is neither necessary, nor even preferable’ (Eisenhardt 1989b, p. 537). Given the business elite status of potential participants, to identify (and subsequently select) case participants I adopted a combination of theoretical sampling (Eisenhardt 1989b; Eisenhardt & Graebner 2007; Pratt 2009; Shah & Corley 2006) and convenience sampling (Bezemer et al. 2012; Eisenhardt 1989b; Leblanc & Schwartz 2007;
McNulty & Pettigrew 1999). As noted by McNulty & Pettigrew 1999, ‘for this study it was not practical to select respondents randomly’ as my aim was to identify, access and select participants who could best help to elucidate the phenomenon of director engagement with purpose. The choice of participants had to be based not only on the uniqueness of each case or participant, but also on their potential to contribute answers to the research questions and the development of novel insights into strategic cognition. I focussed on organisations and actors who could best inform the case issues, the research questions and the development of the conceptual framework. By following Eisenhardt and Graebner (2007), who recommend the choice of extreme cases, and Pettigrew (1990) who refers to them as ‘polar types’ (p.
275), I recognised that if I was interested in understanding how institutional investors contribute to director engagement with purpose, I needed to select participants who best illustrate how engagement might occur, thus investors and directors as they represent two sides of the engagement story. I also needed to select participants offering variety in terms of companies, industries, directors, investors, background etc. Furthermore, aiming for extreme cases is deemed ideal for building theory (Pratt 2009, p. 859), an important point given that in this thesis I strived to offer an original contribution to knowledge in the field of strategic cognition. For theoretical sampling I adopted a set of criteria, namely context, company,