I'm a management student focusing on the birth of dynamic capabilities (strategy process research). I've just started data collection. I'm taking a case study approach. At this moment I've managed to negotiate access and have made some preliminarily interviews with project managers (studying engineering firms). My goal is to study how they develop the know-how and tool themselves to bring new services to their customers. I'm facing with the decision to:
1. Take the usual stance of management case studies: which could be characterized of taking reality as it is and then develop a model that explains observations and meanings.
2. Choose a sociological perspective.
I'm favoring the sociological perspective. But, I would not want to miss collecting data that would be important for conducting analysis under the selected perspective. However, I have at best cursory knowledge of some sociological theories. Thus, I might be missing an obvious well suited perspective. I'm obviously interested in a micro-perspective but both interaction and meaning are expected to be significant to developing an understanding of the cases.
Although my is clearly inductive, there are a limited number of aspects that might prove important, namely understandings people make of the situation, resistance to change they may display due to job or role changes, learning new skills, or having their interests threatened, etc. Project managers typically manage units between 5 to 30 people, and they might have a boss or be the boss.
I wonder which theories might be a good fit. Would you please also suggest a good reference on the fundamentals of the theory and perhaps a good exemplar/reference of methodological application.