ABSTRACT
This chapter is concerned with the early stages of grounded theory: open coding, and how it has been applied to research into related party regulations. Grounded theory is a phenomenological approach which is concerned with the actions and interactions which are performed to manage or correct a central idea or happening - the phenomenon. The aim for a grounded theory researcher is to construct theory and present theory to the audience, not to regurgitate the original data. Grounding is the embedding of thoughts, ideas and hypothesis in the data. It is the grounding that ensures that the research is rigorous and the resulting theory is solid and valid. Grounded theory consists of various levels of coding: open, axial and selective coding, which seeks to sort and categorise data. Although grounded theory methodology has proved an inspiration and a challenge, it has also proved to be a time consuming and laborious process.
