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The critical incident technique (CIT) is widely used in many disciplines; however, scholars have acknowledged challenges associated with analyzing qualitative data when using this technique. Therefore, the purpose of this article is to address the data analysis issues that have been raised by introducing some different contemporary ways of analyzing qualitative critical incident data drawn from recent dissertations conducted in the human resource development (HRD) field.

This article describes and illustrates different contemporary qualitative re-storying and cross-incident analysis approaches with examples drawn from previously and recently conducted qualitative HRD dissertations that have used the CIT.

Qualitative CIT analysis comprises two processes: re-storying and cross-incident analysis. The narrative inquiry–based re-storying approaches the authors illustrate include poetic narrative and dramatic emplotting. The analytical approaches we illustrate for cross-incident analysis include thematic assertion, grounded theory, and post-structural analysis/assemblages. The use of the aforementioned approaches offers researchers contemporary tools that can deepen meaning and understanding of qualitative CIT data, which address challenges that have been acknowledged regarding the difficulty of analyzing CIT data.

The different contemporary qualitative approaches that we have introduced and illustrated in this study provide researchers using the CIT with additional tools to address the challenges of analyzing qualitative CIT data, specifically with regard to data reduction of lengthy narrative transcripts through re-storying as well as cross-incident analyses that can substantially deepen meaning, as well as build new theory and problematize the data through existing theory.

A strength of the CIT is its focus on actual events that have occurred from which reasoning, behaviors, and decision-making can be examined to develop more informed practices.

The CIT is a very popular and flexible method for collecting data that is widely used in many disciplines. However, data analysis can be especially difficult given the volume of narrative qualitative data that can result from data collection. This paper describes and illustrates different contemporary approaches analyzing qualitative CIT data, specifically the processes of re-storying and cross-incident analysis, to address these concerns in the literature as well as to enhance and further evolve the use of the CIT method.

The purpose of this paper is to offer a reconceptualization of the critical incident technique (CIT) and affirm its utility in management and organization studies.

Utilizing a case study from a leadership context, the paper applies the CIT to explore various leadership behaviours in the context of nonprofit boards in Canada. Semi-structured critical incident interviews were used to collect behavioural data from 53 participants – board chairs, board directors, and executive directors – from 18 diverse nonprofit organizations in Alberta, Canada.

While exploiting the benefits of a typicality of events, in some instances the authors were able to validate aspects of transformational leadership theory, in other instances the authors found that theory falls short in explaining the relationships between organizational actors. The authors argue that the CIT potentially offers the kind of “thick description” that is particularly useful in theory building in the field.

Drawing on interview material, the authors suggest that incidents can be classified based on frequency of occurrence and their salience to organizational actors, and explore the utility of this distinction for broader theory building purposes.

Principally, the paper proposes that this method of investigation is under-utilized by organization and management researchers. Given the need for thick description in the field, the authors suggest that the approach outlined generates exceptionally rich data that can illuminate multiple organizational phenomena.

The role of nonprofit boards is of major importance for those organizations and the clients that they serve. This paper shed new light on the leadership dynamics at the top of these organizations and therefore can help to guide improved practice by those in board and senior management positions.

The CIT is a well-established technique. However, it is timely to revisit it as a core technique in qualitative research and promote its greater use by researchers. In addition, the authors offer a novel view of incidents as typical, atypical, prototypical or archetypal of organizational phenomena that extends the analytical value of the approach in new directions.

The traditional critical incident technique (CIT) and variants of the same have frequently been applied in service research for several decades. The technique has often been used to capture data on and analyse both negative and positive critical incidents. While one technique displays hosts of critical incidents in benchmark‐type series (SIT), another variant describes the dynamism in one discrete critical incident and a third the dynamism of the configuration of critical incidents (SPAT). In this article the different variants are discussed in relation to psychological theory focusing on the concepts of time, history and memory. To be able to analyse the criticality from the individual customer’s perspective, we argue that one must understand the significance of critical incidents in the light of human memory mechanisms and judgement processes. The discussion forms the basis for suggesting a new, tentative framework for analysing the criticality of critical incidents. We call this criticality critical incident technique (CCIT).

The aim of this paper is to compare the use of critical incident technique (CIT) for gathering student feedback in higher education (HE) with the more traditional and commonly used questionnaire survey method.

The investigation involved a critical evaluation of the standard self‐completion, multi‐question “tick‐box” quantitative survey questionnaire traditionally employed to collect student feedback in HE, against the more qualitative critical incident technique that was tested within the HE context. This evaluation was supported by a review of the extant literature to determine the advantages and disadvantages of both feedback methods and a comparison of the data gathered from university students using both survey instruments. Conclusions were then drawn regarding the value of both methods. The criteria used for the comparison were the design and administration of the survey instruments, analysis and quality of the data collected, and finally, the potential usefulness of the data to HE managers.

The main issue regarding suitability of approach is resource utilisation. The CIT questionnaire is much quicker and easier to design than the traditional questionnaire, asking only a small number of questions. However, completion, input and analysis of the CIT questionnaire take longer than the standard tick‐box questionnaire. The richness of the data more than compensates for these drawbacks. In principle, the qualitative critical incident technique should be used to complement the existing methods of gathering student feedback in order to find out what is significant to students. However, in practice, it is more likely that managers within HE will continue to use the more traditional survey questionnaire, because of the limited resources available to them.

Not only is CIT a method that can be used by researchers in the education sector nationally and internationally, to gather rich and useful data about the student experience but it may also be useful for gathering information from other stakeholders.

The paper is the first to use CIT to gather feedback from students on their university experience. It proposes that, in order to obtain valid and reliable data on which to base service provision decisions, university management should consider using this qualitative technique in combination with more traditional quantitative methods of gathering student feedback.

The critical incident technique (CIT) provides a means to produce rich cultural information from organizational members in an effort to describe the organization’s culture. Very few published studies have used CIT to diagnose culture. In combination with other methods, CIT can be an integral element of a larger study of an organization’s culture. In this study, CIT was used in a US acute care hospital that had recently occupied a new $181 million replacement hospital having an emphasis on patient‐centered care and a healing environment. Individual CIT “stories” supplied rich detail about the hospital’s culture, providing opportunities to communicate how people behave with respect to the culture. Consequently, CIT results provide specific information on what people do that supports the culture and what they do that works against the culture.

The purpose of this paper is to develop an understanding of factors that impinge on managerial decision‐making processes regarding employee access to structured training and development (T&D) opportunities that are at least partially funded by the firm.

Semi‐structured interviews incorporating the Critical Incident Technique (CIT) were conducted with 14 managers of medium‐sized enterprises based in Perth, Western Australia. The interviews explored decisions managers have actually made regarding employee access to T&D and yielded 42 useable critical incidents that served as the unit of analysis.

There were three key findings: first, employee access to T&D was initiated primarily by managers; employees did not exhibit developmental proactivity. Regulatory requirements and performance deficits were the main factors triggering T&D. Second, decisions regarding employee access to T&D were influenced by a wider range of factors than the decision making factors that commonly feature in literature that discusses “barriers” to T&D in SMEs. Third, decision makers tended to neglect the evaluation phase of the decision making process and engaged in post‐decisional justification.

The study holds a number of lessons that are based on an analysis of the authors' experiences of using the CIT. The lessons are potentially important for researchers who will be using the technique to study similar topics in the years ahead.

This study addresses the lack of research into factors that affect managers' decisions when they consider providing employee access to firm‐sponsored structured T&D opportunities. It also assesses the effectiveness of the CIT as a tool for studying managerial decision‐making processes regarding employee access to T&D opportunities.

This article promotes the versatility and usefulness of critical incident technique (CIT) as a method for addressing organizational problems and challenges.

A brief overview of CIT is provided and a worked example is given from the author's professional experience. A process map is outlined to assist organizations plan the course of a CIT intervention.

CIT is a practical tool that can be used by organizational members to resolve a diverse range of issues across any industry.

CIT has tended towards a three‐question approach to guide the intervention process and analyze the issue at hand. This paper proposes that practitioners need to address a fourth question. The fourth question is designed to help organizations prioritize a proposed CIT intervention.

This paper aims to explore satisfactory and dissatisfactory student‐professor encounters in higher education from a student's perspective. The critical incident technique (CIT) is used to categorise positive and negative student‐professor interactions and to reveal quality dimensions of professors.

An exploratory study using an online application of the well‐established CIT method was conducted. The study took place at a large European university. A total of 96 students took part in the study on a voluntary basis and reported 164 incidents. Respondents were aged between 19 and 24 years (x=23.2) and slightly more female students (52 per cent) filled in the online CIT questionnaire than male students (48 per cent). On average, every student provided 1.7 incidents.

The results of the critical incident sorting process support previous classification systems that used three major groups to thoroughly represent the domain of (un)satisfactory student‐professor encounters. The results of the CIT study also revealed ten quality dimensions of professors, corroborating previous research in this area.

Owing to the exploratory nature of the study and the scope and size of its student sample, the results outlined are tentative in nature. The research study also only investigates the experiences of one stakeholder group.

Gaining knowledge of students' classroom experiences should be beneficial for professors to design their teaching programmes. Based on the results, universities might consider the introduction of student contracts or student satisfaction guarantees to manage student expectations effectively.

The paper was the first to successfully apply an online version of the CIT techniques to the issue of higher education services. This paper shows that the CIT method is a useful tool for exploring student‐professor encounters in higher education. The paper has hopefully opened up an area of research and methodology that could reap considerable further benefits for researchers interested in this area.

Presents the current state of the methodological discussion on the measurement of perceived service quality. Describes two approaches ‐ attribute‐based methods and the sequential incident technique (SIT). Outlines the concept and basic assumptions of SIT describes an empirical SIT study applied to measure the quality of perception of guests in club resort. Suggests that the SIT is a valuable complement to the traditional mix of quality measurement methods. Discusses a number of limitations of this method and sets out some managerial implications.

A range of wine retailers identified critical incidents that had occurred with their suppliers. The resulting classification of the problems differed from previous consumer studies by revealing primarily outcome problems, such as timeliness of delivery or delivery of complete order, rather than process‐based problems. The critical incident technique provided sufficient information to evaluate the suppliers’ recovery strategies. The effectiveness of recovery strategies was influenced by whether the problem was solved and the time and number of calls required to solve the problem. A major implication for managers in this industry was to anticipate potential difficulties and inform their customers. This proactive strategy would improve relationships with buyers and reduce defections.