The interviews were performed at Skanska’s offices and lasted for 60 to 90 minutes.
Each interview was audio recorded with the permission of the respondents, and field
notes (Bryman and Bell, 2007) were also taken in order to capture what was said before
and after the interview as well as the initial reflections during the interviews. A
semi-structured approach was chosen for the interviews, allowing respondents to freely
answer a number of questions concerning their view on what the supplier and the
contractor have to live up to in order to achieve an efficient contractor-supplier
relationship. They were also asked to describe the methods currently used to evaluate
their suppliers and to explain any ideas they might have for developing the evaluations
further. Furthermore, respondents were asked to define and rank in order of importance
five criteria that the supplier should fulfil and five criteria that the contractor should
fulfil in order to achieve an efficient contractor-supplier relationship. The criteria were
later grouped based on similarity and the total score for each group calculated to provide
an order of importance for an efficient buyer-supplier relationship.