A total of 25 hours of interviews and 15 hours of observations were carried out with
a focal firm and five of its suppliers. A confidentiality agreement was signed with the
company, leaving all information anonymised. The total hours of interviews were split
up between interviewing purchasing personnel on site of the case company
and interviewing suppliers that interacted closely with the case company, which has
also been recently mentioned as raising the validity and reliability of such
inter-organisational studies, as such a method allows multi-perspectival analysis
(Frankel et al., 2005). The former interviews were primarily conducted with a large
portion of the strategic purchasers and a smaller part of the interviews were conducted
with the heads of the purchasing division. The interviews were designed as
semi-structured and open-ended which meant that the pre-prepared interview guide
rarely was followed rigidly. The observations were all thematically centered on
negotiations between purchasers and suppliers. From a participant observational
stance, the general idea was to observe, how purchasers and suppliers were
negotiating, which has also been recently called for in the International Journal of
Physical Distribution and Logistics Management (Pa˚lsson, 2007).