Variation is a key element of analysis in phenomenography (Richardson, 1999). Variation does not refer to the individual who experiences the phenomenon or to the difference of his or her individual story from others or to possible differences in background, but to the variations of the experience under study. One individual may present a number of variations of experience within the one story. The point of phenomenography is to distinguish the qualitatively different and relatively limited ways in which a phenomenon is experienced (Richardson, 1999).
By generating meaning statements, it was possible to start mapping the dimensions of variation. Thus, for example, ‘control’ was a common theme in the narratives with the construct experienced in distinct ways. In some instances, the meaning had to do with control over people, while in others it was the control over ideas. The concept of ‘impact’ also serves to illustrate the point of dimensions of variation in that impact could be differentiated at the individual, organisational or cultural level. Further, it could exhibit in physiological, psychological or social ways. The aim was to pay attention to explicit and implicit variations.
Once the meaning statements were developed, grouped and regrouped, they were subsequently populated by utterances from all of the manuscripts using both the NVivo codes and the transcripts themselves as sources. Although a time-consuming process, this enabled each meaning statement to be illustrated and expanded and also tested for those that proved less sustainable in terms of evidence. Although the working data set was reduced from over 100,000 words to 70,000, for the sake of brevity and
to protect identity the full data set is not reproduced here. Instead, an extract from the collated meaning statements is presented in Table 16. The populated meaning statements were instrumental in identifying variations in the ways participants experienced the phenomenon and in informing the next stage of the process, defining the architecture that would describe the phenomenon comprehensively.
Table 16
Extract of Meaning Statements with Utterances for Research Question 1 Destructive leadership is perceived to be a pattern of harmful behaviour
Categorya
P11. A few things came to mind; one is in some of the work I’ve done previously around leadership and management—that crab-pot
mentality where people crawl on top of each other to get to the top. While you might be seen by others as doing great things, you’ve in fact done something to someone else along the way that isn’t a positive thing…In order for someone to gain a position or gain notoriety, they don’t care about their colleagues around them and build up together. If you think of the crabs coming out of the pot, you’ve actually got to keep some down to stand on them. There’s also going to be a scrambling at different levels so that whoever it is that makes it to the top...there might be various crabs that make it to the top.
B3
P2. For me it was destroying. It nearly destroyed my confidence, had me questioning my experiences…I felt that it could have destroyed relationships, personal and professional. Every aspect of my day, every minute of my day was consumed by just surviving at times and just managing at times.
B3
P5. To me, it means you’re in a context where things haven’t been working well and you have a decline. You are in amongst it and suffer from the culture or the poor leadership, and you’re then making changes or enacting a vision which counteracts those negative influences, and start to push forward and turn things around.
B3
P1. …there are other instances where she has, a few cases, where she has isolated and then tried to remove teachers from the school. [Name] would be a classic example of it. [Name] would be another classic example of it. She’s used pretty much the same modus operandi with me.
B3
P7. Not to that degree…the people were very cautious. It was like, if this person liked you everything was fine, but if they didn’t like you they could make your life difficult.
B3
P9. Interestingly, when he was appointed to the position, several people who had worked with him who knew me said, ‘Watch out. He’s very nasty’.
B3
P10. Things just get worse and worse. B3
P12. There’s a total pattern to it. I don’t think it’s not that the large decisions are made, because they have to be made so visibly, especially in the schools that I’ve been in, which have been
[organisation] schools. The issue is that it’s an ongoing dishonesty in a day-to-day way. You’re slowly getting more on what has
disheartened with the process and with the institution and the structure.
B3
P14. She then began an email war with the director. She sent emails, I think four or five times, every day. Threatening emails, abusive, harassing emails for I think more than 18 months.
B3
P15. I think just the way she dealt with crisis after crisis, probably reinforced her aggression and coarseness. Then she just continued to use that style. The subtleties underneath of dividing and breaking down the systems that were there aren’t really tangible. They just sort of happened and people were unhappy and lots of things were going on.
B3
P6. That went on across the primary and secondary and with the office staff in terms of his remarks about me and the way he directed staff and positioned staff and the way he set up expectations that hadn’t been discussed with me, which is not a good position to be in when you are the principal. Things like ‘What’s the matter’ and ‘How do you feel about Leonie as a principal’, but said with a tone that was down-putting and just flat out derogatory comments or insults.
B3
P13. There was a general fear, I think. I was not aware of it when I first went there. I went there quite magnanimous and thinking there was no issues there at all...But I certainly was shocked. Well I had that initial time at Waterfall, which was just typical of what he did to people. He put down people in front of other principals. And he was renowned for it. And particularly secondary principals. I think it was a culture of fear, loathing would be probably true of some people.
B3
a B3 = proactive responses to the phenomenon.
While Table 16 is an abbreviated extract of one meaning statement on one research question, all 75 meaning statements were populated in this way. Any meaning
statement that did not ultimately elicit a significant number of quotations was eliminated from the set. In contrast to coding at multiple nodes, determining the most appropriate meaning statement for each quotation and assigning that utterance to that one statement had the added benefit of highlighting distinctions within and between categories. Relevant utterances from across the full data set were used in the final step of the analysis, presented in Chapter 5.