As the aim of the project, as far as the company and multicultural management team were concerned, was to distil what was the “essence” of Tesco, what part of that essence might lend itself to global integration and what was more vulnerable to local recontextualization (Brannen 2004) and hence an opportunity for learning and reinvigorating Tesco UK. In addition to this overarching aim, we were asked to focus on the following three areas: 1) people and culture, 2) brand management, 3) operational excellence. The identification of key themes that made up the essence of Tesco UK was achieved by adapting traditional ethnographic coding techniques to a team process. This was not an easy feat given the diverse cultural and linguistic challenges posed by a multicultural team of this sort. Each of the nine project team members were asked to code their own fieldnotes first by using open coding considering their data in minute detail while developing initial categories, then to surface recurring themes by using selective coding around core concepts. We then pooled all of the themes that were surfaced by the nine team members. This came to an initial thirty-four themes which we then discussed, defined, and sorted integrating themes and subthemes until we refined the list into ten overall themes:
1. Customer at the heart of everything 2. Leadership DNA 3. Opportunity to get on 4. Teamwork and collaboration (Intangibles) 5. Work environment (tangibles) 6. Embracing and implementing change 7.“It’s my business” 8. Operational efficiency 9. Trusted brand 10. Respect for facts and insights
On the surface, these themes might appear to be quite generic strategic initiatives for any business. Rather, out of a plethora of initiatives generated by Tesco management, these are the ones that surfaced from the project team’s fieldnotes as being relevant and present on the shop floor. This is an important aspect of the methodology that distinguishes itself from the rather more superficial readings of organizations generated by consulting firms that are unable to leverage insider perspectives on the phenomena under study. These ten themes were derived from complex, deep bodies of in-vivo text generated by a bottom-up inductive process rather than having been given to the project team members in a top-down communication from Tesco executives.Taken in isolation by their titles the themes do not convey the full depth and meaning that the project team members were able to understand through their research. For example, the theme “Opportunity to Get On” may appear to be a key theme in any company, but in the retailing sector, especially in the UK, one of Tesco’s competitive advantages in recruiting and developing staff is seen by employees as a key differentiator from other shops on the high street.
Further, after initially identifying each theme, the project team members carefully and collectively defined and clarified what comprised their essence using in-vivo quotes. For instance, the following was the descriptive essence of the theme, “Opportunity to Get On,”
Variety of jobs and levels for everybody
Staff morale (also pay)
An interesting job
Career development and personal development
Talking about how to develop people in a fair way
Long-term service – employees working at Tesco for a long time (lifetime)
Personal development as well as career development
Powerful message around people development
Leadership by coaching and inclusivity
Our ability to change lives
The process of developing these themes was significant to the subsequent analysis. When listening to induction speeches by Tesco UK management and in subsequent follow-up interviews with various UK managers, during the initial training period, the project team developed an idea of the official version of the company’s values and identity. However, they also often noted that the British managers seemed to rely heavily upon Tesco’s tools and rhetoric without actually engaging their teams or enacting effective people-management skills. The reflexive skills that the project team members had learned to employ in their roles as strategic ethnographers enabled them to go beyond considering the corporate values unproblematically to further analyse, triangulate, and critique them. They were thus able to consider how their reactions to the different Tesco UK managers’ presentations affected how they received their opinions: for example, that they would pay more attention to the presenters with whom they felt a rapport either because of a shared functional identity or point of view, and thus prioritised these managers’ version of events. The process of coming up with the themes was also subject to internal power relations internal to the project team, as some participants wanted to see the corporate values reflected in the themes, while others, having formulated different opinions during the training process, were more ambivalent. This process of discussion and debate made for a more complex image of corporate culture, and, more importantly, one incorporating contradictory discourses. Furthermore, they were able to consider the managers’ views in another context – how these values were experienced at the shop level. For instance, one researcher critiqued the concept of efficiency by saying:
I began putting some labels on products, as I wanted to experience the process for myself. The system was slow for the time given to change the labels and it can be quite frustrating when you do not find the product to match the label.
The project team members thus did not simply develop a managerial image of Tesco, but were able to conduct holistic ethnography (see Moore 2011) to obtain perspectives on the firm from different levels of the organisation.