Study II: Children require less gait kinematic adaptations to pull a trolley than to carry a backpack

Theory building starts with selective coding. Selective coding is a process of integrating and refining categories with the goal of building and refining theory (Strauss & Corbin, 1998: 143-147). Selective coding moves the analysis from a potentially large number of codes produced from axial coding to a few theoretical categories, called central categories or core categories that form the foundation of a new or revised theory. Theory emerges basically through finding the relationship between core categories. Selective coding involves integration and abstraction through comparison of coded passages, as well as comparison to the literature. To facilitate this process, I used Atlas-ti to produce various reports of all the text coded with particular subsets of the axial codes. I then read and reread these reports, comparing coded passages to each other both within and across categories for similarities and differences in order to re-group them and identify the core category that they

represent. Going through the memos (in which I had written the possible relationship between categories or concepts) and comparing the coded passages, I built relationship between core categories. For example, I abstracted the “visibility increaser” and

“increaser of discipline” to “disciplining tool” after I went through more codes generated during axial coding that expressed the effect of visibility increase as a disciplining by the management via ERP software. Thus, at this point in time, I had

only one category, disciplining tool (in place of the earlier two categories). Further, I labeled “discipline” as a core category (see figure 3.1) around which two types of ERP images were projected during period 2 in the multinational organization. This core category was related to other categories through the notion of “technological frame”

that I came across during my comparison of the categories with concepts in literature.

Thus, the theoretical framework was about the change in technological frame that occurred across different periods interactively with the exercise of power. The theory that I describe later explains how the change in technological frame interacted with the exercise of power by relating the core categories under the notion of technological frame with the core categories under the notion of exercise of power.

I moved back and forth from selective coding to axial coding. This generated more relationship between codes. For example, take the category “visibility to the top management” (see figure 3.2 on the next page). “Visibility to the top management”

has 12 sub categories. For the sake of explanation, I have exploded the relationship between codes in the sub category of “work break-down” under the category of

“visibility to the top management”. Work breakdown has three members, which are interrelated. For example, management’s intention to gain more visibility into subordinates’ work (coded as “management’s intention for visibility”) led to

management’s interest in embedding a more work break-down view in the software (coded as “management’s interest in work break-down”).

==

When a task was broken down into minute details and coded into the software, it resulted in an increase in the visibility of the subordinates’ task-related action to the superiors (coded as “detailed break-down—visibility”). In figure 3.2, I have not shown all the relationship and connections since my intention is just to make explicit how I used grounded theory method in my study. The abstraction to higher levels and the relationships forms the body of the theory. Further, since my intention was to

understand how the exercise of power leads to the evolution of social consensus about technology and implementation over time, I separated the codes with respect to the

FIGURE 3.2: SAMPLE RELATIONSHIPS WITHIN CATEGORIES OR SUB CATEGORIES

time period in which the described phenomena occurred. For example, in figure 3.1, the category “disciplining tool” is an image of ERP that emerged during a particular time period of ERP implementation in WestIndia. Similarly, during different periods different images of ERP were projected and in turn translated into the software. I assigned the codes into different time periods based on two criteria: a) the time at which the interview was conducted (for example, I had asked most of my interviewees about their image of ERP during each time I interviewed them: I had multiple

interviews of a single individual that spanned nearly the complete span of my fieldwork: see table 3.2), and b) I also separated them based on the time that the speaker (or the author of the text in case of archival data) attached to the image of ERP that they were explaining or the time a particular email or memo was circulated that projected the image of ERP under consideration. This helped me to map the change in the sensemaking of various actors and the processes involved in the evolution of consensus making over time.

3.7 Conclusion

Table 3.4 (on next page) gives the summary of what I have described so far including the theoretical background that I used for formulating my research question.

Given the explanations of how I conducted my field study, in the next chapter, I define and explain the key terms I use in this study—technology frame and cross-cultural context. Further, I illustrate how I used grounded theory to evolve technology frame.

Research perspective Choice

Topic IT-enabled modernization efforts

Overall premise How does the exercise of power affect creation of a working information system from a standard technology package

Ontology Social construction of reality Epistemology Interpretive

Methodological approach Understand the context and process of technology and organizational change through an interpretive field study

Research strategy Qualitative case study overlaid with grounded theory Research methods Interviews, observations, review of archival

Research site -- focal level

Western private multinational manufacturing

organization & local public manufacturing organization in South India – organizational level

Detailed unit of analysis Negotiations around work practices

Theoretical grounding Organizational theories of power; Sociology of technology

Topic IT-enabled modernization efforts

Overall premise How does the exercise of power affect creation of a working information system from a standard technology package

Ontology Social construction of reality Epistemology Interpretive

Methodological approach Understand the context and process of technology and organizational change through an interpretive field study

Research strategy Qualitative case study overlaid with grounded theory Research methods Interviews, observations, review of archival

Research site -- focal level

Western private multinational manufacturing

organization & local public manufacturing organization in South India – organizational level

Detailed unit of analysis Negotiations around work practices

Theoretical grounding Organizational theories of power; Sociology of technology

TABLE 3.4: RESEARCH PERSPECTIVE AND CHOICES (adapted from Walsham 1993)

CHAPTER 4

TECHNOLOGY FRAME IN A CROSS-CULTURAL CONTEXT

The objectives of this chapter are to define and explicate the two key terms I use in my study. The key terms, as the title of this chapter indicate are technology frame and cross-cultural context. I explicate the terms by showing how I abstracted these theoretical concepts from my empirical data. This will reveal how the key terms are grounded (Glaser & Strauss, 1967) in empirical data. In turn, it will also illustrate my use of grounded theory method. In addition to presenting the link between the abstract concepts and the empirical data, I also briefly describe the industrial and institutional environment of the State (especially during 2000-2008) in which the ERP

implementations took place. The expected result is a smooth transition from the abstract world of literature review, research question, and methodology that we dealt with in the previous chapters to the empirical world of implementation case studies that the following two chapters address.