Summary
The primary aim of this article is to offer both students and researchers embarking on inter-firm studies, some practical advice on how to access organisations. This advice draws from experience of fieldwork carried out in a series of studies involving organisational decision making and organisational evolution. In this vein therefore, this paper examines, as an educational instrument, the area of "telephone negotiation" as a special methodological problem of organisational research. The paper deals with a variety of issues concerned with negotiating over the telephone with secretaries/gatekeepers in an attempt to establish effective relationships, whilst increasing the potential success rate in obtaining interviews with respondents. Concluding remarks allude to the development of a flexible and coherent procedure for addressing access issues.
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Extract
'Tell Him I Called.' Some Practical Considerations in Gaining Research Access to Organisations
1. Introduction
It is usually a struggle for students and researchers to obtain research access to organisations (Blum, 1952; Kincaid, and Bright, 1957; Zaltman and Burger, 1975; Raimond, 1993). Too often they falter in their attempts to obtain research interviews with business executives and as a consequence, many do not advance beyond the level of the interviewee's (respondent's) secretary. Indeed, when interviewers call and receive rejections, some feel helpless to do anything about it and therefore turn towards changing their respective research strategies - and in some cases, change their research topics. With this in mind, the secretary - or - for the purposes of this paper - the gatekeeper - can play an important role in the life of a researcher. Indeed, the appointmentmaking function for the business executive or manager, tends to be in the hands of the call receiver (a gatekeeper for the manager) who invariably controls the potential respondent's diary, and can therefore be seen to be directly involved in organisational decision making. In this vein, the gatekeeper can be called upon to deal with various matters (important or otherwise) to lift the burden of pressure placed on the manager. Against this backdrop, when a call is received the gatekeeper knows precisely how to deal with the respective caller and furthermore, how to address most of the caller's needs. In such circumstances, opportunities to progress access to the business manager can be rather limited, resulting in a number of important and critical issues which the researcher should consider - prior to embarking on the process of gaining research access.2. Contextualising Access ProblemsThe inaccessibility to organisations - for research purposes - has a tendency to cause serious limitations in any study (Crosier, 1982; Gill and Johnson, 1991; Marshall and Rossman, 1995). Simi...See the full content of this document
(Copyright 2011)
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