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The use of the elite informants in managerial research is an important, fruitful and yet underdeveloped aspect of methodology. Elite respondents, at many levels of description, are ordinary human beings; at others, anything but ordinary. It follows that a failure to recognise the context of interviewing elites will result in corresponding failure to harvest the potential benefits. Business elites have enormous influence in the creation of the social, financial, cultural and physical environments that shape our experiences as individuals, families and organisations, particularly in today's business driven, consumer society. Therefore understanding how elites can be best approached in social research interviews facilitates not only a better understanding of elites but of the processes by which there environments are shaped and yet there is a paucity of literature concerning elite research methodology. My PhD research did not seek to address this gap but rather focussed on the social context of intuition use by elite Australian leaders in their decision-making and therefore this paper is a reflective piece describing my experience. It may however contribute to the field through a discussion of the rich and insightful descriptions of phenomena that can be elicited from interviews with elites, some challenges and potential pitfalls, and an examination and comparison of the literature with my experience as a Ph.D candidate. Elite respondents were found to be well educated, experienced, highly articulate and intelligent, and familiar with the process of interview. They were confident, operated from a number of power bases and therefore had the potential to manipulate the parameters of the interview space if they wished to protect their interests. Interviewing in such a setting could have been an intimidating experience for me as a nascent researcher. However, the use of the telephone as a mediating device promoting anonymity, and the apparent reversal of typical researcher/researched power relations, facilitated the inclusion of direct, probing and even demanding questions that would otherwise be neither ethical, nor productive in terms of authenticity in typical social research circumstances. The participants responded positively to challenging questions and moreover there was an expectation to 'get down to business' that was seen as consistent with their own business practice and culture. The definition of the term 'elite' is discussed and justified with reference to the aspects of method and methodology that circumscribe the selection of elites in a research design. It is concluded that the Australian business elite interviewed and their context are indeed 'different'. Therefore, in order to maximise the use of such informants should therefore be approached 'differently'. |
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