Interviews
Internationalizing the Small and Medium Sized Firm – four cases
Interviews were made with at least two people within each company in order to reduce the possible bias from a, for some reason, very positive or negative CEO or Manager, and the possible event of poor recollection. The format of the interviews can be described as semi structured (Andersen 1998). In order to reduce the problems arising from biased and leading questions from the interviewers, the respondents were given the freedom to describe in his/her own words their experience from the company’s internationalization process. This was also a quite obvious strategy since the purpose was to discuss perceptions and not just mere facts. An interview form was then used as a checklist in order to make sure that every aspect that the authors judged as critical were discussed. When applicable, specific questions were posed to make sure every aspect was covered. Both authors participated in the interviews in order to reduce any personal bias from any of the authors and thereby further secure objectivity (Merriam 1994). Due to geographical distance and/or other practical problems the second interview in some cases were done over telephone/email. Since one of the authors has previously been working for one of the case-companies, he was also one of the interviewed persons. Due to this fact a third person was interviewed at this company in order to reduce any potential bias from the author. Transcripts from the interviews were written down afterwards and sent to the respondents to make sure all their statements were fully understood and not misinterpreted in any way by the authors (Andersen 1998).
