ABSTRACT
The two opening chapters set out the theoretical and conceptual contexts that underpin our research and presented a discussion of these general conceptual issues as they relate and apply to the workforce remodelling agenda in England. This chapter provides an account of the research process and some of the issues that arose from it. Given the issues being researched, and the time at which the fi eldwork was conducted, the investigation was clearly politically sensitive. This chapter refl ects on how this context impacted on the ways in which the project changed and developed over its two-year lifetime. In doing so the rationale for the research and the diffi culties encountered during the fi eldwork are discussed, and an account of the theoretical framework for the data analysis is developed.
