Registros de la prevención y control de riesgos

I transcribed each of the forty interviews within two weeks of the interviews occurring so as to minimise any loss of the depth of meaning which was conveyed by respondents. I found that this was a very useful way to re-

familiarize myself with the raw data. Whilst transcribing, I annotated transcripts with any other information which I picked up on my visit regarding ‘the feel’ of the organization (Parker, 2000: 238) and the emotional tone (Rowlands and Handy, 2012) of the interview, remarks which I had noted in my research diary immediately after interviewing. Transcribing also gave me the opportunity to think about initial codes, identifying the themes that respondents were talking about. After all interviews were transcribed and my field notes and research diary were written up the primary data ran to 514 pages (approximately 250,000 words). It was roughly at this time that I realised that the data did not support the original research proposal (and my original analytic preconceptions) and that members’ self and organizational understandings were hugely informed by the dynamics of organizational control and autonomy. In that sense then, regarding the theorization of contestations over control and autonomy which this project has become, the data was coded firstly without trying to fit it into any analytic preconceptions about control and autonomy (see Braun and Clarke, 2006: 83- 84). Rather, the research questions evolved through the coding process (Braun and Clarke, 2006). I considered using the software programme N*Vivo, yet after attending the two-day training course I decided that it was not suited to the rich contextual data I had collected18.

Analysis was an ongoing iterative process of working with the data, seeking patterns and meanings, and tacking back and forth between the data and

18 _{For two main reasons: Firstly, I realized that N*Vivo was very attuned to quantifying}

qualitative findings as it equates significance by the frequency a particular answer is returned (Crowley et al. (2002) and Welsh (2002) have also argued this point) and secondly the coding of each chunk of data stripped out the all-important context (also found by Prein et al. (1995) and Dohan and Sanchez-Jankowski (1998)). For thorough studies on the merits of using computer- assisted qualitative data analysis programs see Miles and Weitzman (1996) and Atherton and Elsmore (2007).

the literature, paying particular attention to the types of language, narrative and story-telling devices (Czarniawska, 1999; Gabriel, 2000; Watson, 2009), especially moral storytelling (Alvesson, 2003) which respondents used when explaining their life worlds to me. Moral stories were central to respondents’ self-understandings of the contestations regarding moral ownership of the lifeboating service and this will become evident throughout the subsequent chapters. I also paid heed to the emotional tone of the transcripts and the ways in which individuals expressed themselves. Throughout the research the primary data collection instrument (semi-structured interview questions) had been updated and renewed so that when a set of assumptions surfaced I could check and cross-check these with other respondents. In this sense, the data collection and analysis were ‘irrevocably mated’ to each other (Rosen, 1991:1). As I have stated above, analyzing the data had thus been ongoing since the data was in the process of collection (cf. Ezzy, 2002). Once I realized that the data did not support the original research focus of cellularity, coding for (new) themes was originally inductive, in that I did not specifically try and fit the data into a pre- existing coding frame (Braun and Clarke, 2006). Data was read repeatedly, memo’d and annotated, then categorised into clusters, topics, ideas and questions, which were then brought back to the data whilst I simultaneously engaged with the literature on control and autonomy. Engagement with the literature at this juncture enhanced my analytic capability as it sensitized me to the more subtle and nuanced features of the data (Tuckett, 2005).

In this way, the analysis became more deductive as I started generating initial codes for the specific research questions I was concurrently drawing up.

This process in itself was part of the analysis as I was organizing my data into meaningful groups (Tuckett, 2005). Broadly following Braun and Clarke (2006), I then began to collate the numerous codes – coxswain, community, culture, control, autonomy, individual identity, organizational identity, identification, meaning, family, leadership, volunteering, danger – into clusters, and in doing so considered how these codes could combine to form overarching themes. A great deal of time was spent thinking about the relationships between codes, between themes, and between different levels of themes. I should emphatically state that my themes did not ‘emerge’ from the data. I played an active role of identifying these themes as of interest. As I thought about and worked with the data, I actively created these links/patterns/themes as I understood them to be (cf. Ely et al., 1997) and went back to the data with these ‘hunches to see whether they held up’ (Hutchinson and Rodman, 1989: 315). As Ely et al. drolly contend:

The language of themes emerging can be misinterpreted to mean that themes ‘reside’ in the data, and if we just look hard enough they will ‘emerge’ like Venus on the half shell. If themes ‘reside’ anywhere, they reside in our heads from our thinking about our data and creating links as we understand them. (1997: 205)

The iterative process explained above, combined with the reflexive demands brought on by the writing-up process brought to the forefront the four themes of A1 thick volunteering, A2 perilous volunteering, B1 community and B2 offshore, around which I have organized the empirical themes and subsequent

two findings chapters. The four inter-related themes are not of equal weighting, with the subsidiary (2) theme partly explaining the main theme. It is worth underlining the point that all these analytical and theoretical breakthroughs were made throughout the writing-up process. Chapters were drafted, reflected upon, re-drafted, edited, advices sought and incorporated and in some cases re-written. The bibliography did indeed ‘take on a nasty and spiteful life of its own’ (Grey, 2005: 4). Yet it was only in the course of writing up (March 2012 – June 2013) did the thesis as it now stands take its shape.

3.3 Conclusion

In this chapter I have sought to describe and elucidate some of the complexities and distinctiveness of the RNLI by explaining some of its key features. The institution is in many respects very unusual – it relies on volunteers to endure dangerous and mentally, physically and emotionally sickening situations in order to achieve its goal – and, along with other distinctive qualities – its history, non- governmental status and organizing processes – arguably makes for a ‘strategic research arena’ (Anteby, 2008:205) in which to examine how work, organizational meaning and identity are controlled when work is unpaid. The thick volunteering identified at the RNLI, coupled with its dangerous nature, opens up a theoretical distinction as it makes for a particularly complicated dynamic.

The early history of the institution, particularly its establishment by a Quaker in 1824, perhaps led to it becoming a certain type of value-driven organization, concerned with Quaker values such as moral voice, community

mindedness, volunteerism and social responsibility. No doubt its dominant ideology was reinforced as a result of its autonomous non-state, charitable status. Reflecting back on Windsor’s view that Quaker-established organizations espoused a ‘fatherly benevolence predicated on a view that they knew what was right and good for people’ (Windsor, 1980: 3, emphasis added) could well explain some of the traces of the early history which clearly remain to this day. Part of the current ongoing dynamic between HQ and local stations regarding control and autonomy is a constant interplay of ‘who is the rightful expert?’ and ‘who has the right to speak for what and for whom?’, questions that, in all probability, dominated discussions within the early independent stations of the early eighteenth century. Throughout the history of the RNLI, the embedding process of Royal Navy personnel and procedures is also evident, adding an element of culture-in-structure to the organization. Typical aspects of hierarchical cultural control are manifest throughout the modern organization in the form of the official vision and values statement and the volunteer commitment policy. I have presented these and noted how they must be treated with a degree of circumspection because, amongst other things, management- espoused values are not necessarily shared by all organization members.

The second part of this chapter presented the methodological aspects of my empirical research at the RNLI. This qualitative research followed an interpretive social constructionist perspective with the aim of Verstehen (Weber, 1946), that is, an in-depth understanding of the meaning of the concept for those involved. Selection of research sites was guided by a theoretical sample (Glaser and Strauss, 1967; Eisenhardt, 1989) which I drew up in order to create better

possibilities for capturing any regional specificities; but I must stress that I do not seek or claim generalizability on the basis of this sample, which may or may not have been representative. Primary data collection was by semi-structured interviews, through participant observation and sitting-in as an observer on a five day training course aimed at station leaders. Analysis of the data broadly followed Braun and Clarke (2006), and I played an active role in identifying the themes of thick volunteering, perilous volunteering, community and offshore, the first two of which are presented as findings in the next chapter.

‘Commitment is an act, not a word’ (John Paul Sartre 1905-1980)

CHAPTER 4: THE INTERPLAY OF THICK VOLUNTEERING AND