| Case organization | Choose an HO to be used as a case study | The goal was to study a representative organization in terms of the phenomenon | MSF was chosen because is widely acknowledged as a leading HO and it is currently implementing an ERP in its humanitarian missions (field level) worldwide. In addition, MSF is an international coordinating and oversight organization but also possesses five distinct and autonomous operational centers with their own headquarters and field operations. This allowed us to gain insights from an embedded case study of five unique operational centers and decision-making scenarios |
| Data collection | Selection of the interviewees | Respondents were suggested by the project manager of the ERP project across operating units, who also helped set up many of the interviews Relevant respondents were also identified by other respondents (snowballing technique)
| We balanced the perspectives by interviewing employees in a variety of roles and with varying experience. We interviewed workers from both the field and the HQs |
| Interview methods | Flexibility | We rescheduled or shortened meetings to fit interviewees' time We used an open discussion style in the interviews We did face-to-face interviews, Skype interviews, and accepted written answers when there were connection issues in the field
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| Researcher involvement in the study | Data collection involved a long-term engagement of the researchers | Our data collection was undertaken over 4 years with 22 in-depth interviews, two workshops organized by a project manager of MSF's ERP project, significant informal interactions with project participants, and personal participation in the project by one of the researchers |
| Data analysis | Refining concepts through comparison | The scope is to see if the data support categories | We analyzed the collected data on a line-by-line basis and grouped them into codes that summarized our interpretation of the data |
| Triangulation | To ensure triangulation, we compared responses across respondents, locations and secondary data of the organization | We tried to make sure all information used in this study was suggested by multiple respondents in both the same and different locations, namely HQ and field |
| Member validation | Validating research interpretation | We sent the results of our research to interviewees for validation and presented them in the workshops that we organized |