Chapter 21 Documents as sources of data

Question 1

Characteristics of documents

Answer 1

• can be read/ comprehended
• has not been produced specifically for the purposes of research, although we will also refer to documents that have been generated by researchers
• is preserved so that it becomes available for analysis
• is relevant to the concerns of the business researcher

Question 2

John Scott’s criteria for assessing the quality of documents

Answer 2

• Authenticity. Is the evidence genuine and of unquestionable origin?
• Credibility. Is the evidence free from error and distortion?
• Representativeness. Is the evidence typical of its kind, and, if not, is the extent of its untypicality known?
• Meaning. Is the evidence clear and comprehensible?

Question 3

Ontological status of documents

Answer 3

Docs form a separate reality ( ‘documentary reality’) and they should not be taken to be ‘transparent representations’ of an underlying organizational or social reality

Question 4

Ethnographic content analysis

Answer 4

follows a recursive and reflexive movement between concept development sampling-data, collection-data, coding data, and analysis-interpretation. The aim is to be systematic and analytic but not rigid

Question 5

Semiotics

Answer 5

‘science of signs’; analysis of symbols

Question 6

Connotation

Answer 6

an idea or feeling which a word invokes for a person in addition to its literal or primary meaning.

Question 7

Hermeneutics

Answer 7

the study of interpretation. States that the analyst of a text must seek to bring out the meanings of a text from the perspective of its author. This will entail attention to the social and historical context within which the text was produced.

Question 8

Historical analysis

Answer 8

relates not just to the study of documents from the past but also to the methods that are used to interpret them
- can reduce the ideological biases
that are embedded in ‘current “fashionable” trends in
organization theory and practice
- Understanding of contemporary organizations relies
on having an awareness of how they developed historically.
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