Issue 1, June 2016
The Grounded Theory Perspective: Its Origins and Growth
By Barney G. Glaser PhD, Hon PhD The book is about the origins and growth of grounded theory (GT) as developed and written by Barney G. Glaser. It is not written to compete or compare with other QDA methods. The competition with other perspectives is up to the reader to write up, if he so desires. My goal in this paper is to write up the GT perspective clearly and historically to date so it can be used by others in research and the rhetorical wrestle between different perspectives. As GT spreads throughout the world a clear view of the GT perspective is constantly needed and requested from me by researchers for doing GT and for trying to explain the method to others, particularly supervisors and peer reviewers. There is an immense amount of writings on aspects of the GT perspective, often mixed with other perspectives, thus confusing its use. I trust this paper will help clarify GT’s perspective with no remodeling. I am not saying that GT is better than other methodologies. I am just saying the GT method stands on its own and produces excellent conceptual theory. Let other QDA methodologies stand on their own as they wish. This paper will just show the difference in methodologies, as the reader may see. It is not written to correct other methodologies. I have written many books on the GT perspective. I trust this paper will bring most of the GT perspectives under one cover. GT emerged as a fledgling methodology when analyzing the data on dying in hospitals, (Awareness of Dying, 1965). Awareness Context theory took the world of research by storm. We were constantly asked how we did it. In 1967 we published our beginning formulations of GT in The Discovery of Grounded Theory: Strategies for Qualitative Research by Glaser and Strauss. It was our first attempt to write a method that closed the gap between theory and method. We focused on procedures for grounding theory not on verification of theory. We called the methodology Grounded Theory. We put to rest the 100% focus on the verifying of grand theory which was all conjectured. We discovered that GT provided us with relevant predictions, explanations, interpretations and applications that fit. It was our explanations that were the beginning of codifying GT as a methodology. The key elements of the theory were that the concepts in the theory should have fit and relevance. So many concepts in the world of social research were conjectural, that is reified and not relevant to the area or the participants. To gain fit and relevance the concepts had to be based on data in the field and be relevant to the participants. In short, they had to be grounded. They also had to be conceptual so that they could be integrated by a theoretical code into a conceptual theory. The theoretical code that seemed to fit the dying study was context theory. The total product was an emergent grounded theory of Awareness Contexts. How to generate grounded concepts for a grounded theory needed to be articulated. So, I wrote a paper explaining how to generate grounded patterns to be named as concepts. It was the “The Constant Comparative Method of Qualitative Analysis” published in 1965 in Social Problems. It dealt with the comparing of data from different respondents to find interchangeable indicators which showed a grounded pattern. This became a GT procedure to generate enough concepts for a theory. In generating the concepts,...Mastering Everyday Life in Ordinary Housing for People with Psychiatric Disabilities...
Rosita Brolin, David Brunt, Mikael Rask, Susanne Syrén, Anna Sandgren Linnaeus University, Sweden Abstract The aim of this study was to develop a classic grounded theory about people who have psychiatric disabilities and live in ordinary housing with housing support. Interviews and observations during the interviews were analyzed, and secondary analyses of data from previous studies were performed. The impossible mission in everyday life emerged as the main concern and mastering everyday life as the pattern of behavior through which they deal with this concern. Mastering everyday life can be seen as a process, which involves identifying, organizing, tackling, challenging and boosting. Before the process is started, avoiding is used to deal with the main concern. The community support worker, providing housing support, constitutes an important facilitator during the process, and the continuity of housing support is a prerequisite for the process to succeed. If the process mastering everyday life is interrupted by, for example, changes in housing support, the strategy of avoiding is used. Keywords: grounded theory, housing support, impossible mission, mastering, psychiatric disabilities Introduction The focus of this study is on people who have psychiatric disabilities and live in ordinary housing with housing support. Internationally, the provision of housing and housing support, which has replaced inpatient care for people with psychiatric disabilities, varies greatly (Fakhoury, Murray, A., Shepherd, G., & Priebe, 2002). In Sweden, the mental health reform in 1995, led to the development of two community-based housing support models for people with psychiatric disabilities: supported housing facilities, and housing support in the individual’s own apartment or house, in this paper termed “ordinary housing” (Brunt, 2002). A psychiatric disability is defined by the Swedish National Board of Health and Welfare (2006) as a lasting psychiatric condition (> 2 years) that involves not being able to manage everyday life on one’s own. The most common diagnoses among people with psychiatric disabilities in Sweden are psychosis, affective disorders, and neuropsychiatric disabilities (Swedish National Board of Health and Welfare, 2012). The needs for care and support that have been identified among people with psychiatric disabilities are related to universal human needs as, for example, activities of daily living, social relationships, physical health, information, household chores, food and personal finances (Kulhara et al., 2010; Ochoa et al., 2003; Zahid & Ohaeri, 2013). People with psychiatric disabilities have expressed a desire to have a housing situation that satisfies their desire to live similar to what other people do (Warren & Bell, 2000), and ordinary housing is preferred to supported housing (Forchuk, Nelson, & Hall, 2006; Harvey, Killackey, Groves, & Herrman, 2012; Tsai, Bond, Salyers, Godfrey, & Davis, 2010). Approximately 17 000 people with psychiatric disabilities receive housing support in ordinary housing in Sweden (Swedish National Board of Health and Welfare, 2011). Housing support consists of practical and social support with the aim of facilitating for the individual to manage his/her daily life (Swedish National Board of Health and Welfare, 2010). It is a scheduled multi-faceted support, which is based on mutual interaction between the resident and the community support worker providing housing support, termed hereafter the “supporter”, and includes activities in and outside the home (Andersson, 2009). International research into residents’ satisfaction with their housing situation has revealed that important factors for satisfaction with housing situation are security and privacy, choice and proximity (Tsemberis, Rogers, Rodis, Dushuttle, & Skryha, 2003), and the ability to have control (Nelson, Sylvestre, Aubry, George, & Trainor, 2007). The importance of security and privacy was confirmed in...Collective Inclusioning: A Grounded Theory of a Bottom-Up Approach to Innovation and Leading...
Michal Lysek, Halmstad University, Sweden Abstract This paper is a grounded theory study of how leaders (e.g., entrepreneurs, managers, etc.) engage people in challenging undertakings (e.g., innovation) that require everyone’s commitment to such a degree that they would have to go beyond what could be reasonably expected in order to succeed. Company leaders sometimes wonder why their employees no longer show the same responsibility towards their work, and why they are more concerned with internal politics than solving customer problems. It is because company leaders no longer apply collective inclusioning to the same extent as they did in the past. Collective inclusioning can be applied in four ways by convincing, afinitizing, goal congruencing, and engaging. It can lead to fostering strong units of people for taking on challenging undertakings. Collective inclusioning is a complementing theory to other strategic management and leading theories. It offers a new perspective on how to implement a bottom-up approach to innovation. Keywords: afinitizing, convincing, engaging, goal congruencing, innovating. Introduction HMS Industrial Networks AB is a Swedish company providing product solutions to connect different devices, such as robots, control systems, motors, and sensors, to different industrial networks. HMS was founded in 1988. In 1994/1995 their Anybus product was invented. In the following years, the Anybus became an innovation, and HMS became a market leader in the industrial communication industry (Lysek, Danilovic, & Liu, 2016). Despite HMS’ success within the industrial communication industry (“Frost & Sullivan,” 2013), I was more curious about the first decade of the company’s history. I began to wonder what could have been the main concern of the people who had been working for HMS between 1988 and 1999/2000 and helped the company overcome all of its challenges. By the time the core variable emerged, I had discovered what had been of most importance to both managers and employees at HMS during these years. I also discovered that a good salary was not the main reason for people staying with HMS during all these years. Money was not everything. One employee, employed by HMS before 1999/2000 told me that, “We all wanted to finish our projects on time and we all wanted our company to succeed. I do not have any specific benefits from it today, but I have a job that I like a lot”. By the time the core variable emerged, I realized that HMS’ employees could not explain exactly why they had struggled so hard in the past to make HMS succeed, despite not having a good salary, or owning any company shares. People may wonder why someone would invest so much time and work into a company that, in fact, was not theirs. I argue that the answer lies within this core variable, which explains the behavior of HMS’ managers and how they were able to increase their employee’s level of commitment to fulfilling the company’s goals and their own entrepreneurial dreams. Methodology This study was perormed at HMS Industrial Networks AB, where I have been employed since June 2012. I began my Ph.D. studies within innovation sciences in January 2014. My employment has allowed me to engage more closely with HMS’ employees. Discovering the main concern of people in a social environment is the main reason for using classic grounded theory (Holton & Walsh, 2017; Hartman, 2001; Glaser, 1978, 1998; Glaser & Strauss, 1967). I used classic grounded theory for this study to discover the main concern of the people employed by HMS between 1988 and 1999/2000....Trust Testing in Care Pathways for Neurodevelopmental Disorders: A Grounded Theory Study...
Gustaf Waxegard, Linnaeus University, Sweden Hans Thulesius, Lund University, Sweden Abstract Building care pathways for the expansive, heterogeneous, and complex field of neurodevelopmental disorders (ND) is challenging. This classic grounded theory study conceptualizes problems encountered and resolved by professionals in the unpacking—diagnosis and work up—of ND. A care pathway for ND in children and adolescents was observed for six years. Data include interviews, documentation of a dialogue-conference devoted to the ND care pathway, 100+ hours of participant observations, and coding of stakeholder actions. Trust testing explores whether professional unpacking collaboration can occur without being “stuck with the buck” and if other professionals can be approached to solve own unpacking priorities. ND complexity, scarce resources, and diverging stakeholder interests undermine the ability to make selfless collaborative professional choices in the care pathway. ND professionals and managers should pay as much attention to trust issues as they do to structures and patient flows. The trust testing theory may improve the understanding of ND care pathways further as a modified social dilemma framework. Keywords: Care pathways; neurodevelopmental disorders; ADHD; autism; social dilemma. Background In spite of evidence for the need of a more holistic, integrated care pathways for children and youth with neurodevelopmental disorders (ND), including autism spectrum disorders and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, putting inter-agency care pathways into practice has proved problematic (Evans & Baker, 2012; Kirby & Thomas, 2011; Salmon & Kirby, 2008). Support for the necessity of cooperation and coordination between professional stakeholders with regard to ND comes from multiple sources such as the experiences of parents and families (King, Cathers, King, & Rosenbaum, 2001; Miller, Condin, McKellin, Shaw, Klassen, & Sheps, 2009; Singh et al., 2010), behavioral genetics, which shows a great deal of overlap between different ND diagnoses (Posthuma & Polderman, 2013; Rommelse, Franke, Altink, et al., 2009; Rommelse, Franke, Geurts, Hartman, & Buitelaar, 2010; Ronald, Larsson, Anckarsäter, & Lichtenstein, 2014; Ronald, Simonoff, Kuntsi, Asherson, & Plomin, 2008), research on comorbidity (Gillberg et al., 2004; Leyfer et al., 2006; Yoshida & Uchiyama, 2004), the framework of developmental psychopathology (Rutter, 2013c; Schmidt & Petermann, 2009), preventive research and increased awareness of the need for early identification of ND (Daniels, Halladay, Shih, Elder, & Dawson, 2014; Gillberg, 2010; Halperin, Bédard, & Curchack-Lichtin, 2012), high and increasing prevalence rates (Baron-Cohen et al., 2009; Gillberg, Cederlund, Lamberg, & Zeijlon, 2006; Polanczyk, De Lima, Horta, Biederman, & Rohde, 2007; Willcutt, 2012), and the chronicity and multiple life domains affected by ND (Barkley, 2002; Barkley, Fischer, Smallish, & Fletcher, 2002; Rutter, 2013a; Turgay et al., 2012; Wolraich et al., 2005). The formation of integrated care pathways is no new phenomenon (Campbell, Hotchkiss, Bradshaw, & Porteous, 1998) and is encouraged by governments and health care policymakers across the world. Various theoretical frameworks have been invoked to deal with challenges to integrating care, among these stakeholder theory (Agle et al., 2008; Phillips, Freeman, & Wicks, 2003), complex adaptive systems theory (Brown, 2006; McDaniel Jr, Lanham, & Anderson, 2009), theories of organizational culture (Dodek, Cahill, & Heyland, 2010; Schein, 2006), health care system ecology (Ahgren, 2010), network theory (Mur-Veeman, Hardy, Steenbergen, & Wistow, 2003; Scott & Hofmeyer, 2007), resource dependence theory and institutional theory (Guo & Acar, 2005; Van Raak, Paulus, & Mur-Veeman, 2005). To our knowledge, few of these theories have been employed to analyze ND care pathways. As to ND, different scholars propose different vehicles as the best integrating force to achieve successful care pathways, such as locally agreed professional guidelines (Blew &...Book Review: Heeding The Cry for Help
Kara Vander Linden, Saybrook University, USA Glaser, B. G. (2016). The Cry for Help: Preserving the Autonomy doing GT Research. Mill Valley, CA: Sociology Press In The Cry for Help, Glaser (2016) articulated four main points. First, the use of classic grounded theory (CGT) is growing worldwide. Second, there are increasing numbers of novice researchers seeking support. Third, help needs to be provided to strengthen the position CGT is gaining worldwide. However, this help should preserve the autonomy of the novice researcher and come from mentors experienced in using and mentoring CGT. The final point is a call for help from Glaser to “senior mentors” to answer the cries from help from novice researchers for their sake and to continue to strengthen the growth of CGT worldwide. As a mentor to numerous novice researchers in classic grounded theory (CGT), I was honored at the request to review Glaser’s new book The Cry for Help. As it was explained to me, The Cry for Help is about GT novice researchers, what they are “crying for,” and how they can best be helped. What I expected was a book about common areas where novice researchers “cry for help” and the answers to those problem areas. However, what I discovered was a book more suited for mentors of those novice researchers than for the novice researchers themselves. Thus, the book was written for me, and those like me, who answer The Cry for Help. In The Cry for Help, Glaser (2016) made four main points. First, the use of CGT is growing worldwide. Second, with this growth, there are increasing numbers of novice researchers who are seeking support and mentoring in CGT. Third, help for novice researchers needs to be provided to strengthen the position CGT is gaining worldwide. On this third point Glaser touched on two important aspects of the help needed. First, the help must preserve the autonomy of the novice researcher and second, the help needs to come from the right mentor, specifically a mentor who is experienced in using and mentoring CGT. Glaser referred to these as “senior mentors.” It is these “senior mentors” to whom this book is directed. This can be seen in the final point which Glaser articulated by saying “So, I ask my colleagues at the senior mentor level to answer these cries for help as best they can for the valuable bigger picture as well as for the novice’s research” (2016, p. 89). Each of these points will be discussed in greater detail. The use of CGT is spreading worldwide. Glaser (2016) explained that CGT is now being used in China, Japan, Portugal, Philippines, Bangladesh, Iran, Iraq, Australia, North and South America, and all of Europe. Glaser’s books are being translated into more languages and Glaser and others are being invited to speak and give workshops around the world. I have seen this myself as I have friends and colleagues doing, teaching, and presenting on CGT from Japan, to Europe, to the Philippines and throughout the US. Another colleague of mine has worked on the translation of Glaser’s books. CGT is also spreading across many fields and disciplines from healthcare to education to management and the social sciences. Increasing numbers of doctoral students are selecting CGT as the methodology for their dissertation research; however, in so doing, many of these doctoral students are setting themselves up for conflict within more QDA dominated departments. Unless doctoral students can find one of the few departments,...