Data
We collected data from multiple sources to ensure coverage throughout
the study period and to enable triangulation across different types of
data (Gibbert et al., 2008). Data sources include field participation
and observation, OSMS documents and survey reports, secondary
documentation for each case, and interviews. We began observing and
discussing how makers and maker spaces responded to the pandemic in
March 2020. Over the coming months, members of our team participated in
virtual conferences, maker space workgroups, and OSMS activities
(Cavalcanti et al., 2021). See Appendix B for additional details about
our data collection.
We collected archival data in the form of secondary documents to inform
our understanding of how self-organizing activities evolved throughout
2020. Types of documents collected include news and blog articles
containing interviews and timelines, websites, summary reports
containing stories and statistics, instructions about PPE designs and
volunteer procedures, workflow process documents and tools such as web
forms and spreadsheets, governance documents such as policies and
meeting minutes, and crowdfunding campaigns with chronological updates.
We also compiled lists of organizations involved with PPE efforts in
each city based on the OSMS roster of local response groups, web and
media searches, and with input and vetting from initial contacts who
were key organizers in each case. These lists provided an important
starting point from which we developed our understanding of networks
nodes and formation prior to beginning our interviews. Table 1
summarizes the data collection according to source and case study.
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We developed an extensive protocol to conduct structured interviews
remotely using Zoom to screen-share our instrument in Qualtrics. Our
questions were informed by social network theory (new and existing ties,
individual and organizational interactions, key events, etc.) and the
entrepreneurial crisis response literature (compassion organizing,
response effectiveness, etc.). We piloted the interview instrument with
four subject matter experts in North American cities outside our sample
to refine the protocol while also gaining additional understanding of
the general phenomenon. Pilot interviews lasted 109 minutes on average.
We recruited informants across different organizations beginning with a
few primary contacts who acted as key organizers in each city, then
identified potential new informants using a combination of snowballing
and emailing other contacts on our organization lists. Informants
represented PPE producers, PPE recipients such as clinicians, as well as
some people who acted in multiple roles or brokered contacts between
people in different roles. Overall, we conducted 36 interviews with 35
informants across the four cases. Interviews occurred between December
10, 2020 and March 13, 2021 and lasted an average of 83.3 minutes. We
conducted 31 structured interviews using the Qualtrics instrument and
five shorter semi-structured interviews when that instrument was not
feasible given time constraints for the informant. Interviews were
recorded and transcribed using Otter.ai for a total of 1290 pages of
transcriptions.