Friday, 30 April 2010

Unit of analysis

The unit of analysis is the project or programme. It's tempting to see the organisation as the unit of analysis but projects vary within organisations though using different technology, suppliers and consultants, and an organisation may have some successful projects and some not. The unit is unlikely to be the team because some teams deal with several different projects, and also some participants who are managers and senior managers see themselves as managers rather than team members - so how would I define a team. Engagement may differ between participants on different projects or programmes in the same organisation, so the project or programme must be the unit of analysis.

I've deliberately chosen (nah! it was pot luck what access I got) a number of cases as instrumental case studies (Stake, 2005), see my blog here, to provide insight to engagement, so the focus is not on the IT product but on the issue of engagement in IT projects and programmes.


STAKE, R. E. (2005) Qualitative case studies. IN DENZIN, N. K. & LINCOLN, Y. S. (Eds.) The Sage handbook of qualitative research. London, Sage Publications.

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