The Use of Grounded Theory in Change Management Research

This paper describes the use of Grounded Theory (GT) for the analysis of collated data on organizational change within a large UK manufacturing company. The paper illustrates how analysis was carried out on the large volume of data gathered during the research. The data was collected through triangulation of observation, interviews and company documentation over a four year period. The description of ‘how’ this data was approached, assembled and then condensed is the contribution this paper makes. The paper describes in detail the steps taken and specifically how the thousands of words were transformed into focused conclusions and recommendations, ultimately generating a grounded model. It emerged that, amongst other benefits tied to the use of ‘partial’ GT, the overlap of data analysis with data collection allowed a head start with the interpretation process. GT was ideally suited to dealing with the qualitative data collected (thousands of pages of field notes, interview transcripts, company documentation). The overall intent of this paper is to add a level of detail to the data analysis stage, specifically when employing GT within a change management research project.