Page - (000204) - in Knowledge and Networks

198 Research Design and Methods To capture the developments at the federal and state levels of analysis, we adopted an embedded case study design (Yin, 2009) centered on two regions—Stuttgart and Berlin—that were (and still are) embedded in the broader, very dynamic national context of electromobility in Germany. Taking Pettigrew’s (1990) advice to “go for polar types” (p. 275), we chose the most dissimilar regional cases in order to ensure adequate variance across the existing regional knowledge bases and the present dependence on the automotive industry. The Stuttgart region is Germany’s leading automotive cluster, with its extraordinary competence in the traditional engineering of parts and components of the internal combustion engine. Original equipment manufacturers as well as several leading first- and second-tier suppliers have their headquarters there. It is also a region already analyzed for path dependence and pos- sible lock-in (Fuchs, 2010; Fuchs & Wassermann, 2005; Kaiser, 2007; Strambach & Klement, 2013). At the other extreme, we opted for the capital region of Berlin, which is characterized by a substandard number of industrial jobs, particularly in the automotive sector. However, Berlin is widely seen as a hot spot for the creative industries (Lange, Kalandides, Stöber, & Mieg, 2008), including alternative means of transportation and mobility. At the onset of the developments in the field of elec- tromobility, the socioeconomic conditions of these two metropolitan regions dif- fered significantly.2 The study covered a period of more than 4 years starting in summer 2007, when the political agenda-setting gained momentum, and ending in early 2012, when both regions were selected as electromobility showcases, a federal program that funds large-scale regional demonstration projects to consolidate inno- vative elements of electromobility and make them visible internationally. These projects may be considered as an advance indication that the contours of the new field were becoming fairly clear. Unexceptionally for case study research, our inquiry draws on multiple sources of evidence (Eisenhardt, 1989). The main sources of data are 27 semistructured interviews conducted by the second author with representatives of relevant groups of actors at the national level (3 interviews) and regional level (16 in the Berlin region, 8 in the Stuttgart region) in mid-2011. At the national level representatives of participating federal authorities were interviewed. At the regional level the inter- viewees were experts from regional companies, regional institutions, local adminis- trations, and research organizations. The average interview length was 67 min. Twenty interviews were conducted face to face on-site; seven interviews had to take place by telephone. A semistructured guideline was used throughout all interviews to achieve a degree of uniformity concerning the subject matter discussed. Nonetheless, all interviewees were given ample space to express their own experi- ences and assessments. To elicit personal accounts and chronological narratives, for 2 For instance, two major players in the German automotive industry, Bosch and Daimler, together employ more than 100,000 people in the Stuttgart region, a number exceeding that of all industrial workplaces in the Berlin region. J. Sydow and F. Koll