Case study

Mengqi was a full time PhD student. He was starting his first year of study. In the previous summer, he had worked as an intern in the Human Resources department of an organisation which sold various types of insurance to the public. During his time, as an intern, he noticed that the organisation had a high staff turnover. The organisation found it difficult to retain staff and this was costing the company as the hiring process was expensive. In addition, new members of staff also had to go on training courses, which were costly.

Mengqi had also noticed that the issue of high staff turnover was being discussed in the business press. Several recent articles had highlighted this problem for Chinese organisations and the costs they were having to incur, as a result. Indeed, one word that was often discussed in the business press was loyalty. Business leaders were, therefore, interested in ways to develop loyalty within their workforces.

When Menqgi started his PhD, he began to look into this business problem, and specifically the issue of loyalty. He was surprised to learn that there were very few academic papers which had discussed loyalty. In addition, these few papers only mentioned the term in relation to other concepts, such as trust, and no one had solely focused on examining loyalty. Mengqi realised that loyalty represented a new area for academic research.

After speaking with his supervisor, Mengqi, therefore, decided to study loyalty. However, one problem was that there didnt seem to be any appropriate theories which would help him research loyalty. Mengqi had another meeting with his supervisor to discuss this problem. They agreed that Menqi should use a Grounded Theory methodology.

After working as an intern, Mengqi had been able to develop a few contacts at the insurance company. He, therefore, approached the head of Human Resources at the insurance company and asked if he could study loyalty within the corporation. Menqi knew that the Head of Human Resources was concerned about the high staff turnover. After a few weeks, he heard back from her, and she agreed to give Mengqi access to the company.

When Mengqi started his research, he used two forms of data collection. His primary source of data was from semi-structured interviews. In keeping with the Grounded Theory methodology, Mengqi used theoretical sampling. In addition, Mengqi was able to observe a series of meetings. These meetings were between a member of the Human Resources team and employees who had recently resigned from the organisation. At the insurance company, when an employee resigned, they were given the option of having a meeting with a member of the Human Resources team to discuss why they resigned. As Menqgi was allowed to observe these meetings, he found them to be particularly useful and insightful.

Questions

1. What was the business problem that Mengqi wanted to examine?
2. What was the gap in the academic literature that provided Mengqi with his research topic?
3. What is Grounded Theory and why do you think Mengqi decided to choose Grounded Theory as his methodology?
4. Why did Menqi use theoretical sampling as part of his Grounded Theory research?
5. What are the advantages and disadvantages of carrying out Grounded Theory research?