As the research questions indicate, this thesis is primarily a study of how directors engage with purpose and how institutional investors contribute to their engagement. Thus, I am neither concerned with measuring engagement nor with verifying the hypothesis that institutional investors might correlate to engagement. Instead, this thesis revolves around understanding the dynamics of director engagement, how it unfolds, and how investors influence it. Consequently, the research strategy rests on a qualitative approach, in particular, that of the case study. Interpretivist, qualitative studies regard social phenomena as a
construction by social actors through the media of culture, beliefs and language (Bluhm et al.
2010). I regarded this approach as an appropriate choice for this study and considered an in- depth examination of the phenomenon of director engagement in a particular context, and at a particular time, most suited to answer the research questions. Two definitions of qualitative research particularly resonated with me. The first is proposed by Van Maanen (1979), who sees qualitative research as ‘an umbrella term covering an array of interpretative techniques which seek to describe, decode, translate, (…) certain more or less naturally occurring phenomena in the social world’ (p. 520). This definition spoke to me as it highlights the interpretative nature of this type of research, flowing from the philosophical assumptions I adopted, which affected how I interpreted the evidence, into the procedures I used to study director engagement. The second definition is offered by Flick (2014, p. 542), who views qualitative research as ‘interested in analysing the subjective meaning or the social
production of issues, events, or practices by collecting non-standardized data and analysing texts and images rather than numbers and statistics’. This perspective resonated with me for
its emphasis on the subjectivity and social construction character of the phenomenon at the core of this thesis. It situates my role as researcher at the forefront of this study, making my reflexions on the actions I took, and what I observed in the field, a key part of the knowledge I aim to produce. Specifically, I regarded a case-based approach as most useful, as I am exploring a relatively new phenomenon in a context generally not well understood (Bezemer Nicholson & Pugliese 2016; Eisenhardt 1989b; McNulty, Zattoni & Douglas 2013). I also considered a case study approach best-suited to the transitory nature of the phenomenon (Langley 1999) of director engagement, which can never be regarded as complete or ‘be ticked off a list’ (Goodall & Montgomery 2014, p. 399).
I believe the choice of an interpretative, qualitative research strategy is pioneering, in view of the philosophical and methodological approaches predominantly adopted in corporate
governance research, namely positivism and quantitative methodologies based on secondary sources of evidence. Notwithstanding the differences between philosophical and
methodological approaches to the study of governance, I based this study on a comprehensive review of the literature, including studies with different philosophical positioning and/or methodologies, as long as they related to the key concepts of this thesis. The literature review continued throughout the writing of this thesis, from the outset (when I planted the first seeds of what eventually became the scope of the study) to the end (thesis submission), as I made a conscious effort to keep updating, reviewing and understanding the literature before, during and after entering the field. I also intend to keep nurturing my knowledge of this field while waiting for my thesis’s defence and beyond.
As part of the research strategy, I focussed data collection on directors of Swiss listed corporations, institutional investors who are shareholders in the selected corporations and a set of ‘context’ participants (I elaborate on this choice in section The Swiss Context). Before starting the main study, I conducted a pilot study to refine the main lines of enquiry, to test and develop my interviewing skills, and to experience what it would feel like to ‘plunge (…) deeply into the processes themselves’ (Langley 1999, p. 691). The pilot took place in
Switzerland, the UAE and the US, and proved to be very useful in further focussing and defining the boundaries of this case study. Following the pilot, I proceeded with data
collection for the main study in four phases (at times running in parallel). Firstly, I conducted nine semi-structured ‘context’ interviews, and reviewed a multitude of documents to develop an in-depth understanding of the context of Swiss listed corporations. Secondly, I carried out 22 semi-structured interviews with directors of 12 companies, five of which are listed in the Fortune Global 500. Thirdly, I conducted seven semi-structured interviews with Swiss and international institutional investors. Through these interviews, I collected data on the main constructs of the study, namely individual director engagement with purpose and institutional investors. I considered it important to explore the perspectives of directors, investors and context participants, in order to build a story of director engagement which would account for multiple perspectives, rather than those of the directors alone. Fourthly, I collected data on the constructs of interest through two direct observations of directors and investors ‘in action’, in the field. I also used secondary data (a combination of confidential and publicly available documents), including, but not limited to, policy papers, law texts, government white papers and strategy papers, articles of associations, annual reports, governance reports and codes, strategy presentations, investor reports, journal articles (mainly from the Financial Times and The Economist). Being in the field meant that over the last eighteen months I
resided in Switzerland for extended periods of time and also travelled to the UK, the Netherlands and Germany for interviews and observations.
My original contribution to knowledge is in the area of strategic cognition, and I present it in the next section.