Técnicas constructivas tradicionales a) Cacería y pesca

So far we have pointed out that the Indonesian institutional environment is complex, challenging and different from Western standards. Thus, the interviewers need to adapt their behaviour to the corporate culture on site. The following thus presents a summary of characteristics of the Indonesian corporate culture that may pose a threat to the interview process if not being accounted for. According to CDA Media (2012), the business structure of Indonesian companies often reflects the prevailing cultural norms of society. Due to a strong prevailing cultural belief in hierarchy and superiority and the respect for elders and superiors, Indonesian organisations are hierarchically organised. Decision-making is controlled top down and judgement

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taken by leading staff is not to be questioned by employees who wield less authority. In contrast to European or American practices, initiative and proactive thinking across all layers of the organisation is not welcomed in Indonesian organisations, since this is oftentimes interpreted as an indirect critique of the manager’s judgement and decisions (CDA Media, 2012). The term ‘Bapakism’ describes the Indonesian attitudes towards elders and superiors and serves as a guiding principle for employees across the organisation (CDA Media, 2012). The term is derived from the word ‘Bapak’, which literally means father. There is a felt need to absolutely respect the decisions taken by fathers or elders in general, because their decisions are positively influenced by their life-experiences and thus superior to those decisions taken by younger or less experienced people. In the interview situation, the interviewers need to be prepared that respondents will thus be not likely to question the role and the decisions of his/ her superiors. This especially poses a threat to gaining honest input that is related to understanding whether top management support was an influencing factor on the adoption of e-HRM or not. While on the one hand interviewers need to dig deep into in order to be able to generate meaningful and true data, he or she needs to refrain from pushing the interviewee into a situation where the interviewee feels that his superiors are being criticised, for this might offset the attitudes of the interviewee towards the interview situation. In Indonesia, time is considered to be elastic and business meetings may easily overshoot the scheduled time frames because extensive small-talk like conversations in which business partners get to know each other are important in the Indonesian business culture. Interviewers thus need to be prepared that the meeting may take longer than expected (CDA Media, 2012). Comparably to Japanese and Chinese Business culture, Indonesians find it hard to express their disagreement. A verbal ‘yes’ must not mean that the interviewee agrees with the subject matter (CDA Media, 2012). It is therefore that interviewers should make use of extensive probing techniques. Moreover, interviewers should make sure that the conversational partner has the lion’s share of the speech ration, because that may increase the likelihood that honest answers are triggered. The giving of small gifts is an indigenous Indonesian custom and may help to express the respect towards the business partners (CDA Media, 2012). Lastly, foreign language levels are not as good as compared to those in Singapore and Malaysia and according to CDA Media (2012), occasionally, even senior figures need translators for doing business abroad. Thus, Interviewers must make sure that misunderstandings are prevented through using ‘user-friendly’ English.

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3.10 Trustworthiness of the study

Because, according to Bondarouk (2004), “interviews are as complex as any other social event, and researchers are dependent on the posing of questions and the atmosphere during the conversation” (p. 96), we received interview training prior to the data collection phase, in order to prevent the posing of leading questions that carry the potential to bias the responses. Furthermore, the use of probes has been practiced in order to establish consistency between the interviews and to grasp the real meaning behind the explanations of the interviewees. Every interview was transcribed shortly after the interview had taken place. Whenever possible, we recorded the conversation to guarantee the exact reproduction of the conversation. In the case that recording was not allowed, we took extensive notes which grabbed hold of the most relevant statements and ideas. Because our research aimed at gathering in depth information on the factors that influenced the adoption of e-HRM in Indonesian countries, the interpretations, statements and elaborated thoughts of the informants stood at the heart of the transcriptions. The transcripts therefore comprised of written text and direct citations, disregarding phonetics and international features. Three experienced researchers, of which two are specialised in the field of e-HRM and one in international business, have been involved in the creation of this research paper, which accounts for an increased validity and reliability. Additionally, in order to increase the validity of the data, transcripts have been send back to the case study companies for verification, decreasing the likelihood of interviewee bias or false interpretations.

3.11 Conclusions

This chapter has described the research design and motivated the use of the corresponding research methods. The variables have been operationalized and illustrated in table format. Furthermore, this chapter has described the sampling and data collection efforts of the field research. Additionally, it has been given reason for the choice of Indonesia as the research setting. The cultural setting has been analysed in terms of economic, ethnographic as well as geographic characteristics. Special attention has been attributed to the human resource function in Indonesia as well as institutional influences that may pose a bias towards the observations. This chapter has been closed through summing up implications for the field research that result from the country specific characteristics and contingencies.