Page 168 - Design meets Business:An Ethnographic Study of the Changing Work and Occupations of Creatives

156 Design Meets Business
First period of data collection (May 2014 – July 2014)
Source Details
Interviews 31 interviews with creative workers Second period of data collection (May 2015 – February 2016)
Source
Interviews
(Participant) observations
Archival data
Table 4.2
Details
In total, 27 interviews were performed: - 18 interviews with creative workers
- 9 interviews with clients
In total, 14 observations were carried out: - 4 organizational meetings
- 4 workshops
- 6 videos
In total, 21 documents were gathered: - 7 general documents
- 7 project reports
- 2 presentations
- 5 videos
Sources of data collection
practices contributed to the facilitation of liminality. Data analysis was collaborative, as we repetitively discussed our findings. To ensure quali- tative rigor, we peer reviewed our initial interpretations (Gioia et al. 2013) and did a member check (Patton 2002) with Waag, where we presented our interpretations. They recognized our descriptions of their work and their feedback helped to validate key insights.
Thematic analysis. We initially identified themes using open coding and also by drawing upon existing concepts where possible (Gioia et al. 2013). Our coding was inspired by our initial observation that Waag’s creative workers were intentionally ambiguous in their behaviors, which brought their clients out of their comfort zones. Interviewees described their experiences working with Waag using terms like ‘vague’, ‘unclear’ and ‘unfathomable’. In her field notes, the first author also found empirical evidence suggesting feelings of ambiguity. With help of the other authors, the first author coded the data in search of activities performed by Waag’s creative workers and more general what contributed to the ‘vague’ image and perception of Waag. Coding for the creative workers’ activities led to a list of first order themes, which are visible in Table 4.3. Based on principles of axial coding (Gioia et al. 2013; van Maanen 1979), together we clustered