promised a summary report upon the completion of the project.
We contacted forty-five executives and thirty-five of them agreed
to participate. Of the latter, seventeen were the executives who
attended the executive programs at the management school and
the remaining eighteen were recommended by other CEOs and the
consulting firm.
The first author conducted the interviews, mostly at the inter-
viewees’ business offices, according to the interview guideline (see
the appendix to this chapter). The interviews lasted from 60 to 150
minutes, with an average length of about 80 minutes. All except one
participant agreed to be tape-recorded. Detailed notes were taken
during the interview for the one that was not tape-recorded.
A typical interview started with the participant briefly describing
his/her personal experience as well as the history of the firm, including
major business areas, total sales, the profit, and the number of
employees. Following this ‘‘warming-up’’ introduction, interviewees
were asked whether they had a management philosophy and, if so, to
describe it. If they gave a ‘‘no’’ answer or could not say exactly what
their philosophy was, the interviewer would ask them to list some
general principles that they had followed in running their business or
managing their company. All but four participants stated that they had
a personal management philosophy and went on to provide examples
of the philosophy. After that, they were asked to reflect on the sources
of their management philosophy. Finally, the interviewer summarized
the whole interview, and asked the participants for any additional
comments or complementary information.
Content analysis
The first author and an assistant listened to the taped interviews
and took detailed written notes. The final notes of all interviews con-
tained more than 100,000 words. The contents of the interview
notes were summarized in three tables: company backgrounds, inter-
viewee backgrounds, and key interview topics including philoso-
phical notions of management. Content analysis for participants’
management philosophies was performed by the first author and a
research assistant. It had two steps. The first involved identifying and
recording distinct philosophical sayings by the business executives
and the second involved sorting those sayings into theme categories.
242 Zhi-xue Zhanget al.