they belonged to a specific regional branch;1 b) they held a specific position. Four regional branches
were selected: one each in northern, central and southern Italy and one in the Roman metropolitan area.
Within each office, the unit of analysis was represented by the employee (operators and directors) who
served in the institutional departments, that are the Workers Department and Companies Department:
the first Department offers its services to workers, the second Department to the companies. Therefore,
we gave priority to those actors working in the core sectors of the organization, dealing with citizens
every day.
This case-study relies on multiple sources of evidence and multiple data collection techniques. First,
we made use of archival data sources such as company documents. Second, we gathered the ‘life-stories’
and experiences of employees inside the organization through interviews. We spent about six months
(January–June 2008) in the regional offices and we directly observed [29] the employees at work. The
interviews were recorded and then transcribed verbatim. In order to link data to the propositions, we
organized it in two ways: first of all, we made a matrix of categories and placed the evidence – extracts
from the life-stories – within these categories, second we put the information into chronological order,
focusing the attention on what the actors did before the implementation of reform and on what the actors
do now. Actually, the life-stories interviews [1] reveal the characteristics of the bureaucrats’ work and
of the organization they belong to, paying special attention to the changes introduced by the reforms.