48 3 Research Method
statements from the interviews conducted in German a translation into English
was necessary. Appendix 8.1 provides an overview of all translated citations with
original and translated statements. All translated quotes are numbered in the text
and the table. Original quotes aren’t numbered.
3.2.2.2 Document Analysis
The selected documents are part of an organization’s corporate communication
and have been published for a certain purpose and audience and researcher should
bear this mind (Flick 2009). Before using a document as a source of data, its quality
has to be assessed. According to Scott (1990) criteria for document quality are:
• Authenticity: Is the origin of the document clear?
• Credibility: Is the document free of errors?
• Representativeness: Is this document typical for this type of documents?
• Meaning: Is the document comprehensible?
Special attention has been given to these criteria and therefore only official annual
reports, sustainability reports, other reports or official communication regarding
the circular economy engagement published directly on the homepage of the
organization have been used to ensure the first criterion authenticity. Since the
selected documents are all part of official corporate communication they also
fulfill the credibility criterion mentioned by Scott (1990). The last two criteria rep-
resentativeness and meaning, were also evaluated and verified when the selection
of documents took place.
The result of the quality assessment showed that all documents initially iden-tified for the study were relevant and of adequate quality for this research project.
3.2.3 Case Analysis
The third step of the process is the case analysis. The activity in this step is a within
case analysis. This enables the researcher to acquire a deeper understanding of each
case and to achieve first preliminary theoretical findings. As second step, a cross
case analysis is conducted. The purpose of this second step is to confirm or contra-
dict the results from step one. Special attention has been given to the description
of how organizations have implemented their circular economy approach and the
impacts and challenges derived from it. The results of the cross case analysis will
be presented in chapter 5.