B IOTECNOLOGÍA , A GRICULTURA Y M EDIO A MBIENTE

This section will explain the administration of the case studies and the issues surrounding these.

108 3.5.3.1 Procedures and initial question sets

The case studies were undertaken through interviews with staff at the case study companies, the collating of data provided by the company and the collecting of secondary data. The standard case study protocol was as follows.

1) Identify a potential case study company from the responses to the questionnaires. 2) Contact the respondent by e-mail and/or phone to request a meeting.

3) Collate as much information about the company as possible. 4) Undertake the first interview with the respondent.

5) Analyse the data from the first interview with any further secondary information given by the respondent or found through internet and news searches.

6) Identify further questions and gaps in the information.

7) Arrange a second interview or e-mail the questions to the respondent. 8) Analyse the further questions.

In some cases steps six to eight were repeated, where more information was needed and the respondent was willing to answer further questions. In a number of cases a second person from the company provided information to answer the follow-up questions.

The initial interview questions were split into a number of categories.

1) General introductory questions, which sought to affirm the type of collaboration the company was undertaking and understand to exactly at what level the company was collaborating.

2) Implementation of the collaboration, which focused on exactly how the horizontal partnership had been started and developed.

109

3) General performance enhancements of the collaboration, this section looked at what the company had been aiming to improve by setting up a horizontal collaboration partnership and whether these benefits had been seen.

4) Cost benefits, this section and the subsequent three sections aimed to gain insight into, and quantify the exact benefits that could be attributed to the particular horizontal collaboration, how these came about and whether they were sustainable.

5) Efficiency benefits

6) Customer service benefits 7) Flexibility benefits

8) Future horizontal collaboration practices, this section focused on how companies perceived their horizontal collaboration practices would change and how they would like to use horizontal collaboration to improve their businesses going forward.

3.5.3.2 Selection of cases

The case studies were selected based on the types of horizontal collaboration the respondent had indicated the company was involved in. One of the aims of the case studies was to examine the differences between the ways different types of horizontal collaboration are undertaken. For this reason comparative case studies were undertaken.

Four lists were drawn up representing the respondents that had indicated they were involved in each of the types of collaboration. These lists were then arranged by geographical proximity as it was easier to visit local companies multiple times. Respondents were contacted individually by e-mail or mail asking if they were willing to be interviewed for the research and if no reply or a negative reply was received the next respondent on the list was contacted until two companies on each list had indicated their willingness to be involved in the study.

110

However, one joint venture case was undertaken with help from research contacts overseas, due to the small number of respondents indicating involvement in joint ventures and the reluctance of these to be interviewed.

Finding willing participants undertaking joint procurement, which was the least popular type of collaboration was also difficult and despite contacting every company that indicated they had been involved in this type of collaboration only one respondent was willing to participate in this stage of the research. Therefore, this stage of the research consists of seven case studies rather than eight which had been the target.

3.5.3.3 Analysis of Case Studies

Yin (2008) proposed two basic strategies of case study analysis: within-case analysis and cross-case analysis. Within-case analysis involves the exploration of individual cases, whilst cross-case analysis focuses on identifying the similarities and differences between cases. Eisenhardt (1989) described one of the ways to undertake cross case study analysis as the process of selecting categories or dimensions, and then to look for within-group similarities coupled with intergroup differences. These can then be condensed into a table for easy comparison. This process was undertaken in this research with the different dimensions considered being as follows.

 Type of collaboration being undertaken, including exact resources shared  Type of company and type, size and reasons for choosing particular partners  Reasons for their involvement in this type of collaboration

 Degree of formality involved in the collaboration  Direct cost-related performance enhancements  Indirect cost-related performance enhancements  Efficiency-related performance enhancements

111

 Customer service-related performance enhancements  Flexibility related performance enhancements

 Future outlook for the collaboration

These dimensions provided a simple way to contrast the information obtained from the case studies, allowing for comparisons to be drawn between the ways different types of horizontal collaboration are being undertaken in the logistics industry and the different types of benefits that are being reaped through these different initiatives.