Page 56 - Design meets Business:An Ethnographic Study of the Changing Work and Occupations of Creatives

44 Design Meets Business
for example when they shifted between time periods when talking about long lasting projects.
1.7.7. Data analysis at Waag
Data analysis was done concurrently with data collection, and especially took place between February 2015 and February 2016. I used grounded theory techniques to make sense of my data (Strauss & Corbin 1998). To avoid ‘death by data asphyxiation’ (Pettigrew 1990), I used an iterative approach by going back and forth between empirical findings and theore- tical observations (van Maanen et al. 2007). The analysis was collaborative, including regular meetings between the authors in which insights were shared and developed. My data analysis broadly happened in two phases, combining a thematic analysis and a processual analysis.
Thematic analysis. First, I conducted a thematic analysis (Gioia, Corley, Hamilton 2013; Van Maanen 1979). To achieve this, I inductively coded for work activities that informed Waag’s work in innovation projects. The concept of ‘ambiguity’ appeared an important theme when infor- mants talked about Waag’s work, illustrated by the frequent occurrence of words such as ‘vague’, ‘unclear’, ‘messy’ and ‘chaotic’. In the second round of coding, I further explored how this ambiguity related to the work of Waag. I found that Waag created ambiguity around their own position, by constantly adapting their role in projects (something I later labelled as ‘morphing’) as well as ambiguity in creative processes of their clients (part of what I later called ‘activating’). This observation of ‘ambiguity’ brought me to the literature on liminality (especially the work of Turner 1987; Czar- niawska & Mazza 2003; Swan et al. 2015), which showed that liminality is characterized by feelings of ambiguity, freedom and community.
Case narratives. After getting a general feel of the work of Waag, I explored typical examples of Waag’s work to getter a deeper sense of how liminality is facilitated. I selected three of their projects (for motivation and selection of projects see Chapter 4), and developed case narratives (Langley 1999) of each of the projects. This helped me to better understand how the projects chronologically unfolded. At this point, I went back to the literature and especially based on the original work of van Gennep (1960) and organizational studies (e.g. Czwarniawska & Mazza 2003), I identified that liminality is the middle phase of a rite de passage that exists out of three phases, namely ‘separation’, ‘transition’ (liminality) and ‘incorporate’.
Process analysis. Along with developing the case narratives, I conducted a process analysis (Langley 1999) in which I explored, based on van Gennep’s framework, how liminality was facilitated in projects. In