Face-to-face methods are best suited to the exploratory stages of research when the researcher is trying to get an impression of concepts or situational factors (Sekaran, 2003). Through the face-to-face interview method, the interviewees’ attitudes, feelings, tones and body language can be observed directly (Hill and Wright, 2001). Face-to-face interviews allow the researcher to investigate the respondents’ views, opinions and beliefs more effectively, as the respondents are
given much more freedom in the survey interview (Bryman and Bell, 2007). Face-to-face interviews can collect deep-level details and approaches about guanxi utilization and can allow observation of the interviewee’s attitudes, body language, and rational understanding in relation to guanxi’s functions in someone’s life and work.
After collecting the data, the author followed six stages to carefully manage it. The first stage was to listen to the recordings three times. The second stage was to generate ideas after listening to the records. At this initial stage, it was found that central and provincial government policy was a main influence on them. But it was also interesting that practitioners mentioned guanxi in relation to the emerging main theme of policy. That appeared to be a critical factor too.
The third stage was to transcribe the recordings into Chinese and analyse them in Chinese; especially as the three interviewees of Company B spoke in the Guizhou dialect. The author comes from Guizhou and works in Guangdong, so she can speak in the Guizhou dialect, Cantonese, Mandarin and English. During two interviews, the two languages of Mandarin and the Guizhou dialect were utilized by interviewees. The interviewees of Company A are from different provinces, work in Shenzhen, and can speak both Mandarin and the local dialect. Shenzhen is a pilot city of the policy of reform and is open. Thus, Shenzhen is a city of immigrants. People working in Shenzhen speak mainly Mandarin. So all interviewees of Company A spoke Mandarin to the author. And all interviewees of Company B are from Guizhou province and can speak both languages of Guizhou dialect and Mandarin. The sales director and manager concentrate on business customers who come from different provinces in China. They accordingly speak fluent Mandarin and the Guizhou dialect.
The author made use of whichever language was easier for the interviewees. The CEO of Company B also speaks both Mandarin and the Guizhou dialect fluently.
Interestingly, when the author was with him, when the CEO was facing customers, he spoke Mandarin. He spoke in the Guizhou dialect to the author and when the author interviewed him, he utilized the Guizhou dialect. He was used to using the Guizhou language to communicate with internal staff and Guizhou friends. However, the factory director is a technician. He has been working for Company B for over 10 years, but was not good at speaking Mandarin. It was notable that the Guizhou dialect made him more comfortable to complete the interview. Overall, the author was flexible, aiming to put them at ease to get the fullest answers possible. The sales director of Company B also directly utilized the Guizhou dialect to speak to the author at the second interview. This is the local culture. Where Guizhou people know that the speaker is from Guizhou, they usually use the local language to talk and communicate with each other. The author was born in Guizhou and studied for 16 years from primary school to university. She can fully understand and speak fluently the Guizhou dialect with all interviewees of Company B so as to complete the two interviews and then transcribe them into Chinese. Transcriptions in the Chinese version made the author comfortable to understand and to generate themes. After obtaining the Chinese version of the transcriptions, the following analyses began.
The fourth stage was to print all transcriptions, read them, and mark key words or expression. After the three stages of managing the data and with themes emerging at the fourth stage, the author went back to look at the literature. The analyses continued and check were based on the transcriptions and subsequently compared to the research literature. The fifth stage was to generate categories in the notebook, group similar ideas, and eventually to locate key quotes to illustrate key themes. Then, organizing the analysis was based on key quotations and the key themes. At the final sixth stage, the author translated the Chinese version of the transcription and themes into English. This stage was important. The author made sure that the transcription and themes were translated carefully
and accurately. Although the author knows the Chinese words, old sayings and idioms were not easy to translate into English and care had to be taken.
The process of data management and analyses aimed to ensure a systematic and consistent approach at all stages noted above. The transcriptions in Chinese first enabled the author to become comfortable in understanding the practitioner's views and to generate emerging themes. The author repeatedly listened to the records of interviews. Marking up key words/expressions and locating key quotes helped the author to begin to categorize similar ideas. As part of this process, typical quotations were noted and eventually utilized to illustrate the themes in this thesis. The final stage was to translate transcriptions into English since terminology management is clearly significant for this thesis. The next section will focus on defining key terms.