Managing Corporate Culture in SMEs – Project topics materials

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Semi-Structured Interview

In a qualitative method, interviews are one of the most important ways of collecting data (Qu & Dumay, 2011). Gubrium and Holstain (2001) mean that there are several different forms of interviews that gather insight to a phenomenon through in-depth interviewing. One of them is the semi-structured interview (cited in Qu and Dumay, 2011). The semistructured interviews contain prepared questions and are designed to get more elaborated answers. The interview guide is also important, since it helps the interviewer to direct the interview towards the topic (Qu & Dumay, 2011). When designing the questions for the interview it is important that they prevent ‘yes’ or ‘no’ answers (Davies, 2007), which in turn lead to more opened answers. This gives the interviewee a chance to contribute with their opinion that is important for the interviewers. “The most common qualitative method is the semi-structured interview” (Alvesson & Deetz, 2000, p. 194).
Before the interviews questions was prepared to both the manager and the employee (Appendix
1). To get a clearer picture of what corporate culture is and how it affects people and organizations, several articles as well as books were reviewed. During the research of the subject it gained and improved knowledge about corporate culture that was necessary to formulate the questions. It also helped the interviewee to explain the meaning of a question that could be hard to answer or understand.
In the beginning of every interview, a definition of corporate culture was given, in order to make the interviewee more aware of the concept of corporate culture. By this it became clear to the interviewee what affects the corporate culture and therefore considering those underlying values when answering the questions. It is worth to start with simple questions, and when you are about to close the interview you could ask the interviewee if there is something that he or she would like to add or explain a answer more into depth (King & Horrocks, 2010).
During the interviews open-ended questions were used. These kinds of questions gives the interviewee the chance to answer with their own words and are very useful when the purpose is to understand the experiences of the interviewee (Fink, 2002). In the end of the interview the answers were summarized, so that nothing was missing or misinterpreted. At the same time the interviewee had a chance to contribute with infor22 mation that might not had been told or missing during the interview. Agreement of further contact if questions would arise after the interview was also made.
The time-range of the interviews was between 23 and 63 minutes and in each of the organizations the managers was the first to be interviewed (Table 3-1). The interviews were made face-to-face and located at each organization. To minimize eventually loss of information all interviews was recorded under approval of the interviewee. The benefits of recording are that it makes it possible to listen back and forth over and over again. King and Horrocks (2010) strongly prefer recording and mean that it is absolutely essential in some methods. It is after all the data compared to theories that will be the basis of finding strategies of how to strengthen the corporate culture, and use it as a competitive advantage. The semi-structured interview was held to give an in-depth and comprehensive picture of the corporate culture within those companies. All the questions are based on the purpose of the report in order to get a closer and more detailed insight in how these corporations manage their corporate culture.

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Interview Guide

Purpose:
Examine the perceptions about corporate culture within SMEs and what they can do to strengthen it in a way that it can become a competitive advantage. The information provided will be used to answer the purpose of this thesis.
Pre-interview preparation:
A significant amount of previous researches, journals and literature will be reviewed to get a clear picture of corporate culture within SMEs. What has been done and what is left? The peoples to be interviewed are both managers and ordinary employees in Swedish SMEs. By choosing from different levels within the company the answers will be given from different angles.
The interviews are about to be scheduled in advanced. They will be held at each company’s location and will last for about 1 hour each.

1 Introduction
1.1 Background
1.2 Problem discussion
1.3 Purpose
2 Frame of Reference .
2.1 Definition of Corporate Culture .
2.1.1 Basic Assumptions
2.1.2 Espoused Values and Norms .
2.1.3 Artefacts .
2.2 Managing Corporate Culture in SMEs .
2.2.1 Implementation of Corporate Culture in SMEs
2.2.2 Changing of Corporate Culture in SMEs
2.3 Corporate Culture as a Strategic Asset in SMEs .
2.3.1 Functional and Dysfunctional Cultures
2.3.2 Strong versus Weak Corporate Culture .
2.3.3 Competitive Advantage in General .
2.3.4 Corporate Culture as a Competitive Advantage
2.3.5 Recruitment, Costs and Employee Development .
3 Method .
3.1 Qualitative Research
3.2 Primary and Secondary data
3.3 Choice of Corporations
3.4 Semi-Structured Interview .
3.4.1 Interview Guide
3.5 Qualitative Data Analysis
4 Empirical Findings
4.1 Willa Nordic AB
4.1.1 Perceptions and Definition of Corporate Culture
4.1.2 Strengthen, Control and Manage Corporate Culture
4.1.3 Corporate Culture as a Strategic Asset and a
Competitive Advantage
4.2 Kuvertteamet i Sverige AB
4.2. 1 Perceptions and Definition of Corporate Culture .
4.3 Bröderna Miller AB
4.3.1 Perceptions and Definition of Corporate Culture
4.3.2 trengthen, Control and Manage Corporate Culture .
4.3.3 Corporate Culture as a Strategic Asset and a
Competitive Advantage .
4.4 Jönköping Airport AB .
5 Analysis
5.1 Perceptions and Definitions of Corporate Culture within SMEs
5.2 Strengthen, Control and Manage Corporate Culture in SMEs
5.3 How to use Corporate Culture as a Strategic Asset and a
Competitive Advantage within SMEs?
6 Conclusion