Estado social

The opening networking event, the workshop and the consultations with sector experts and associate heads allowed the Eco-Innovation Pilot Programme service providing team to select six firms from the metals fabrication and tooling/precision engineering sub-sectors. From here, these six firms embarked on the Eco-Innovation Pilot Programme, which was meant to take managers through several phases that were to last 12 months. The programme commenced with a number of initial one-on-one meetings with firm CEO's and managers to further understand their current business strategy and model. Thereafter the team began a process to refine and develop a better understanding of how firm leaders perceived and managed sustainability risks and opportunities. The next phase of the programme was to develop and apply a new business model that would be shaped by an eco-innovation business strategy that incorporated sustainability throughout the firms' decision-making and operations (see Figure 1 for phases and Appendix A for full phase descriptions).

Figure 5. The Eco-innovation Implementation Process (O’Hare et al., 2014a)

experience of the intervention influenced their sustainability decision-making. My initial intention here was to explore how their perceptions and decision-making had changed over time. Due to complications and time delays of the programme, after the first interviews had been conducted, I decided to abort the goal of conducting before and after interviews and re-orientated the study by recruiting another six managers from the metals and manufacturing sector. With this new research goal, the study was now focused on understanding how managers in the sector were experiencing sustainability decisions in their firm. With this new approach, the focal point of the study would no longer be the intervention, but rather managers' experience of sustainability tensions and decision-making in the SME context.

This new larger and broad sample of 12 managers brought a diversity of perspectives into the study. Having these two groups also enabled me to notice particular similarities and differences between the two groups (Eisenhardt, 1989). However, there were not sufficient controls in the study to complete a comprehensive comparative study. While the groups were not being compared, this juxtaposition allowed me understand each group more deeply, which Eisenhardt (1989) notes increases the likelihood of reliable theory. While I had concluded that I was only going to interview each manager once, I decided there was utility to interview each group of managers once again, resulting in two rounds of interviews. My justification for this decision was to cross-examine managers’ responses from the two interview rounds in order to increase the validity of my emergent conclusions and produce a robust data set. The second round of interviews took place towards the end of the Eco-innovation programme. This left me with an even more diverse sample of managers, some who had undergone the programme and others who had not. This diverse sampling strategy allowed for further generalisations of the findings (Eisenhardt, 1989) that are discussed in Chapter 5, the Findings section. Eisenhardt (1989) notes that an important aspect of building theory from case studies is the selection process of these cases that are to be studied. The author notes that selecting an appropriate or contextual population assists in controlling factors in a study, which sets a boundary around how much of the study's findings may be generalised. By selecting SME managers in the metals sector in South Africa, some of which were undergoing an intervention process, I constrained their variation size, however, were able to reduce extraneous variation and set limitations on the findings. Eisenhardt

(1989) notes that changes to case studies research may even include adding data sources to the study, which to some may raise the question of whether it is reasonable to add data sources during a study. Eisenhardt (1989) exclaims that yes it is reasonable to do so, as each specific case brings with it, its own unique results and insights, which may present new themes and emergent theory that would have otherwise not been discovered.

The point at which I decided to hold the second round interviews with both groups was approximately ten months later, once the manager's participating in the programme were meant to have decided to either accept or reject an eco-innovation strategy, business model and implementation roadmap prepared by the service providers. The ability to ‘backtrack' allowed me to build on the questions asked in the first interview round (Gioia et al., 2012), which resulted in a series of refined questions. While I was careful not to let past theory influence the data-collection process, in the second round of interviews I employed several theoretical constructs in order to probe into particular tensions. Eisenhardt (1989) remarks that while such a strategy is not typical for theory-building research, it can be useful because it allows the researcher to measure constructs in the context by asking specific questions related to the literature. In turn, if the interrogated constructs turn out to be significant, then there is a firm empirical foundation for theory development. As will be flagged in the Findings section, upon interviewing the Eco-innovation sample, I found out that the managers had had minimal contact with the Eco-innovation service provider team since the initial set of meetings one-year before. The two interview rounds left me with a broad sample of SME managers from the metals and manufacturing sector.

Supplementary to the interviews, I was a participant-observer during the first half of the Eco-Innovation Pilot Programme. As alluded to, this included numerous meetings with sector affiliates and firm leaders, as well as firm workshops that were a part of the programme. Eisenhardt (1989) remarks that an important feature of building theory from case studies is the overlap of data analysis and collection, which can be achieved through researchers taking field notes. Acting as a participant-observer provided me with a first-hand observation of how managers were experiencing the programme, which was informally documented and analysed through the engagement.

Most importantly, the opportunity to be a participant and observer during the intervention programme allowed me to build relationships with participating managers, which set a strong foundation for personable interviews that enabled generative dialogue. The Eco-Innovation Pilot Programme facilitator's manual for the service providers also provided essential secondary data that enabled me to get a deeper sense into the context of the programme and the process the managers were undergoing.