Top Executives' Work Relationship and Work-Family Balance / Neue Perspektiven der marktorientierten Unternehmensführung (PDF)

3 Basics of the Empirical Studies (S. 71-72)

As outlined before, the empirical part of the taxonomy development procedure consists of a qualitative and a quantitative study. The basics of these studies, concerning both taxonomies, namely the data collection procedures, the samples and the analysis techniques will be outlined in the following. First, in chapter 3.1 the basics of the qualitative study will be outlined, followed by the basics of the quantitative studying in chapter 3.2.

3.1 Qualitative Study

The purpose of the qualitative study within the empirical portion of our taxonomy development process focuses on enriching and elaborating the theory-based frameworks of our taxonomies. The content-related issues concerning top executives’ work relationship and workfamily balance will be outlined in later sections of this thesis (see chapter 3.2.4 and 5). In the following the basics of the qualitative study will be presented, that is to say the data collection and sample (see section 3.1.1) and the content analysis technique used to evaluate and interpret the qualitative data (see section 3.1.2).

3.1.1 Data Collection and Sample

For participant acquisition, we contacted 44 top executives by an initial letter and then telephone solicitations and asked them to give us a personal interview on their work-life balance situation. These top executives were members of the top management, “including CEOs and their immediate subordinates” (Eisenhardt/Bourgeois 1988, p. 739). Thus, in addition to CEOs, our sample includes “the heads of major functions such as sales, engineering, and finance” (Eisenhardt/Bourgeois 1988, p. 739). As an incentive, we offered a detailed personalized report of their personal resources compared with those of other top executives, as well as recommendations for ways they could handle job-related demands and ameliorate their worklife balance situation.

As a result, 42 top

Dr. Eva-Maria Bauer completed her doctoral thesis under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Ruth Stock-Homburg at the department Department of Marketing & Human Resource Management at the Technische Universität Darmstadt.