Method: Statoil Case Study

2.7.1 Overview

A single, holistic case study of Statoil was conducted. A holistic case study is

characterised by the use of one unit of analysis, typically completed using a qualitative approach (Yin 2012, 7). The study focused on one particular firm, which provided a sufficient amount of in-depth information within the time constraints of the project. As discussed below in Sections 2.7.2 and 2.7.6, whilst multiple case studies would have been preferable, a single case study was conducted due to Statoil being the only company that was willing to be interviewed.

The case study consisted of two parts: a document review and an elite interview. The document review focused on company-specific literature relating to the case study company and the elite interview was conducted with an employee that has a key strategic role in deciding the company’s ICP.

2.7.2 Why Statoil?

Statoil was chosen to be the subject of the case study for several reasons. Firstly, it was one of the companies included in the sample that was to be used for the econometric analysis. Secondly, it is a company known for actively wishing to be transparent in relation to internal climate policy. Thirdly, and most importantly, Statoil was chosen for reasons of accessibility: it was the only company that had a senior employee (one with policy decision-making powers) that was willing to meet and discuss their ICP.

2.7.3 Document Review

The document review section of this case study entailed a review of publicly available information directly related to Statoil climate policy. In the planning of this project, it was hoped that it would be possible to obtain internal ICP documentation from Statoil.

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However, this information was not available for reasons of competition. This issue if further discussed in the ‘Challenges and Limitations’ section (Section 2.7.6).

There were two key reasons for completing this document review. The first reason was to help inform and phrase the questions to be used in the elite interview section of the case study. The second reason was in order to be able to compare the pricing calculation information disclosed by the interviewee with any relevant policies outlined and

demonstrated within the company documentation.

The review of each document was undertaken in the same structured manner as used for the general literature review (see Section 2.6.2).

2.7.4 Elite Interview

The interview was conducted with an employee that holds a key decision-making role in Statoil’s sustainability policy, which includes ICP. It was agreed with the interviewee that they would be kept anonymous.

The interview was of an elite nature as it was conducted with an interviewee who was

“given special, nonstandardized treatment” (Dexter 2006, 18). Such nonstandardized treatment of the interviewee included “letting the interviewee introduce…his notions of what he regards as relevant, instead of relying upon the investigator’s notions of

relevance” (Dexter 2006, 18).

The questions were open-ended and centred on encouraging the interviewee to explain how he understood the calculation process to be and the reasons behind the decisions within the internal price calculations. The interview was semi-structured in order to provide an outline for the interviewer but also to allow flexibility in the interviewee’s responses. The interview was designed in such a way in order to create the possibility for new perspectives to be introduced that had not previously been considered within the research project. The interview guide is included in Appendix 1.

The interview was recorded following receipt of written consent from the interviewee that this could be done. It was also agreed that if any direct quotations were included in the project, these would be looked over by the interviewee prior to publishing. The interviewer wrote-up notes immediately following the interview. The interview lasted 1

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hour. See Section 2.11 for further discussion of the ethical issues linked to the case study.

2.7.5 Analysis of Data

The narrative data collected from the case study was integrated and analysed through a word table (see Table 5 in Chapter 5, Section 5.5.1). This table was split into two columns (one for each sub-method: document review and elite interview) and the data was organised into rows of ‘themes’. These themes were identified in order to allow a similar “pattern-matching logic” that could be applied both when analysing the case study findings and also when integrating the overall project findings in Chapter 7 (Yin 2012, 16). In other words, by structuring the table in such a way, this allowed for easier integration of the mixed methods findings as the project continued.

2.7.6 Challenges and Limitations of the Case Study

A central challenge to completing the case study was finding a company from the CDP 2015a list that had an employee, in a strategic role, who was willing to be interviewed.

Many companies were contacted (around 30-40) but the only one that responded was Statoil. As such, after extensive efforts to find interviewees from more than one company, it was accepted that only a single case study could be completed within the time constraints of this project.

It is understandable that firms may not have wanted to discuss potentially confidential information with a person from outside of the company. This reason is particularly plausible as a key motivation for this research was that the publicly available information on the exact calculation of ICP is unclear: it could be that this lack of clarity was a conscious strategic decision made by firms. Many of the firms that are using ICP are well-known global entities that may wish to keep any form of detailed pricing or cost information hidden from competitors. As such, this may have led to potential interviewees being unwilling to participate as a case study for this research project.

Another limitation of the case study was that it was not possible to obtain internal company policy documentation relating to Statoil’s ICP. It was hoped that this would be

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possible to obtain after conducting the interview with the company employee. However, access to such information was not possible, under the discretion of the company, due to similar competition reasons as those outlined above. As such, this meant that external (publicly-available) and internal company publications could not be compared.

However, it was still possible to cross-verify the information from the external documentation with the information provided in the interview.

Another potential limitation of the case study was that the interviewee and the company documents could have been “echoing the same institutional “mantra”” rather than the company’s actual practices (Yin 2012, 13). Such repetition could have arisen

purposefully, from the interviewee’s anticipation of the pre-planned interview, or

unconsciously, from the interviewee repeatedly speaking to representatives from outside the company. This validity issue was mitigated by reading as much of the company documentation as possible prior to conducting the interview. This enabled certain interviewee statements to be anticipated and also for questions to be incorporated within the interview guide that sought to reveal the calculation decisions that are made in practice (rather than just in theory).