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Interviews will be undertaken to disentangle the cognitive components of cultural
change. This will lead to a refinement of the code which will then be adjusted to
textual data about (the change of) Mafia action until a stage of theoretical satura-
tion is reached.
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Finally, the mechanisms of transformation of Mafia type organisations and their
adaptation to different environments need to be specified. To explicitly specify the
mechanisms of Mafia migration or the conditions which foster the emergence of
Mafia type organisation, data from different regions such as the Netherlands and
Germany is under investigation. This will then lead to further refinement of the
code.
These examples demonstrate how the development of an ontology facilitates the proc-
ess of
theoretical
coding. First empirical fieldwork enables the identification of core
concepts of the domain. The explicit specification of an ontology allows to identify
open questions. This stimulates an iterative process of gradually refining verbal con-
cepts into a formal explicit specification of micro-mechanisms. Moreover, the ontol-
ogy provides a platform for a triangulation of various empirical methods and data
sources.
4.2
Stylised Facts: An Example of the Contribution to Theoretical Sensitivity
The second example will shed light on how simulation experiments contribute to the
formulation of theoretical statements, resulting from simulation results. Here empha-
sis will be put on the concept of stylised facts.
The term stylised facts had been coined by [27] in macroeconomic growth theory.
[11] demonstrated that it can be applied beyond economic analysis to the evaluation
of simulation results. The central tenet of stylised facts is “to offer a way to identify
and communicate key observations that demanded scientific explanation” [11:2.2].
For this purpose 'stylised facts' denote stable patterns that can be found throughout
many contexts. Thus details of concrete empirical cases are left out in favour of a
broad description of tendencies that have been proven as robust patterns that can be
discerned in a certain class of phenomena. This can be used for a cross-validation to
check whether the micro assumptions put in a simulation model reveal broad patterns
in the simulation results that are characteristic for the field of investigation [28]. With
regard to the question of what is a theory in a Grounded Theory approach, this pro-
vides an additional source of credibility: If the transformation of the description of a
certain field case into a source code of a simulation model generates simulation re-
sults which are consistent with broad patterns that can be found in a number of con-
texts, then this would be an indicator of a theoretic insight generated by the inductive
process. In the following this will be illustrated at a concrete example.
The example is a model that investigates the escalation of ethno-nationalist tensions
into open violence. The evidence has been drawn from the case of the former Yugosla-
via. The puzzling question is how and why neighbourhood relations between people
with different ethnic background changed from good and peaceful relations to traumatic
violence. A simulation model has been developed to study the dynamics of the escala-
tion of tensions into violence. Model assumptions had been based on the empirical
