Telecorp presented some methodological challenges that are familiar to qualitative researchers. On the one hand, I wanted to develop a thick description of workers' communicative practices at the organization. On the other hand, I also wanted to develop a general overview of how the organization communicated. Telecorp's management wanted this as well, since management had become concerned about perceived communication issues across the organization. Compounding these issues was the goal of intruding as little as possible on the organization's work.

In the interest of satisfying these objectives, I designed a case study that would allow me to observe and interview approximately a third of the workers in each functional unit in Midsize City, where Telecorp's corporate offices and the majority of its workforce were located. This study design yielded a less thick description for individual workers than a more bounded case study would have (e.g., a case bounded by a functional group; see Wenger, 1998, for an example). However, it allowed me to examine routine communicative interactions from multiple perspectives. When workers from the NOC and CLEC Provisioning collaborated, for instance, I was able to draw on multiple interviews and observations from both sets of workers – and from third parties – to interpret the collaboration.

DATA COLLECTION

I observed 89 individuals and interviewed 84 of them (the other 5 either left Telecorp before the second observation or were not available for interviews). In addition, I observed five group training sessions.