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11 – 20 of over 23000Amy Wong and Amrik Sohal
This exploratory study investigates the nature of customer evaluations of their service encounters in a retail chain departmental store setting in Victoria, Australia. The focus…
Abstract
This exploratory study investigates the nature of customer evaluations of their service encounters in a retail chain departmental store setting in Victoria, Australia. The focus of the study is to understand how a customer perceives positive and negative encounters with regard to shopping at the retail chain. To accomplish these objectives, data were gathered by means of focus group interviews with customers of four retail stores. These customers were asked to recall positive and negative critical incidents with regard to their shopping experiences at the retail store. The results showed that positive critical incidents foster customer satisfaction, customer loyalty, and repurchase intentions, while negative critical incidents affected customer behaviour and led to customer complaints, reduced willingness to patronise the retail firm, and to the spread of negative word‐of‐mouth behaviour. Using this and additional information gathered in the interviews, implications are drawn regarding both the value of the methodology and the results for managers in this type of retail business.
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Gregory Bott and Dennis Tourish
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.
Abstract
Purpose
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.
Design/methodology/approach
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.
Findings
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.
Research limitations/implications
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.
Practical implications
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.
Social implications
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.
Originality/value
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.
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Bo Edvardsson, Christian Kowalkowski, Tore Strandvik and Päivi Voima
This paper aims to extend understanding of business-to-business relationship dynamics by introducing and discussing the phenomenon of a “negative critical wave” (NCW), defined as…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to extend understanding of business-to-business relationship dynamics by introducing and discussing the phenomenon of a “negative critical wave” (NCW), defined as a disturbance in a relationship that emerges and develops within or beyond individual working relationships.
Design/methodology/approach
The dynamics of working relationships in two manufacturing firms in Finland and Sweden were studied by analysing the narratives of unstructured personal interviews with 16 middle managers and 14 operational executives, who recalled experiences of relevant situations over three years, with emphasis on unexpected disturbances, challenges and problems.
Findings
Respondents discussed 77 NCWs, the development and effect of which proved to depend upon the original “locus”, “magnitude” and “amplitude”, and embedded “energy”. Waves could be distinguished as: “silent compact”, “silent extensive”, “intense compact” or “intense extensive”.
Research limitations/implications
The wave metaphor for relationships dynamics, consistent with but distinct from established notions of “critical time” and “critical incidents” and the associated classification system are a useful starting point for further research into the phenomenon. Though the qualitative methodology achieved richness, the small sample and restricted scope place limits on the objectivity and generalisability of the findings.
Practical implications
The NCW framework offers strategists and managers a holistic understanding of the dynamic process of criticality, synthesising the complexities of relationship dynamics and pointing to ways in which to absorb the energy of negative waves.
Originality/value
More is now known about the domino effects of critical incidents in internal and external business-to-business relationships.
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Worker perceptions of their emotional response to a supervisor, during an incident identified as of critical significance, are described and analyzed in this study. We invited 14…
Abstract
Worker perceptions of their emotional response to a supervisor, during an incident identified as of critical significance, are described and analyzed in this study. We invited 14 participants, aged from 39 to 56 years to share their stories with us in semi-structured interviews. The organizations represented by the workers’ stories included private business government and educational institutions. A grounded-theory approach was adopted to allow key themes to emerge (Locke, 1996). We encouraged participants to allow “buried perspectives” (Hochschild, 1983) to surface: as they interpreted the relational effects of “what happened” in retrospective sense making. As they explored their perceptions of these interactions, participants revealed the complex and disturbing array of emotions and frustrations that lay beneath the veneer of rationality and control they chose to present during the incident. Felt emotions, whether expressed, repressed or edited, were overwhelmingly negative; and awareness of power issues emerged as a key driver in the “feeling rules” (Hochschild, 1983) workers perceived as needing to be observed. Worker tension was seen to be exacerbated by adherence to these rules because “the rules” conflicted with their own personal values and beliefs. Emotional dissonance resulted from this. The role of the organizational community within which workers coped with their experience, and subsequent emotional response, was also explored.
Larry A. Mallak, David M. Lyth, Suzan D. Olson, Susan M. Ulshafer and Frank J. Sardone
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…
Abstract
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.
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Scott R. Swanson, Yinghua Huang and Baoheng Wang
The purpose of this paper is to provide a cross-cultural comparison of Chinese and American hospitality customers who report critical incidents and the resulting influences that…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to provide a cross-cultural comparison of Chinese and American hospitality customers who report critical incidents and the resulting influences that these incidents and recovery efforts had on behavior. Recognizing that hospitality-based organizations are increasingly operating internationally, the study provides insights for managing customer relationships.
Design/methodology/approach
The study utilizes the critical incident technique in conjunction with a structured self-administered questionnaire. The sampling approach resulted in 1,146 usable responses.
Findings
The results demonstrate statistically significant cultural differences between American and Chinese consumers in terms of reported critical incident types, recovery approaches, and post-incident private voice, public voice, and repurchase intention.
Research limitations/implications
This research uses cultural value scores for China and the USA as a way to explain and discuss the findings. Hofstede's model was not tested and the provided explanations should be viewed with caution.
Practical implications
The results of this research can provide practitioners with guidelines in regards to service recovery tactics, as well as insights into how customers respond to critical incidents across different cultures.
Originality/value
This study adds to the existing literature by investigating empirically critical incident types, recovery tactics, and the consumer post-encounter behaviors of public voice (i.e. complaining), private voice (i.e. negative word-of-mouth, positive word-of-mouth), and repurchase intention in China and the USA.
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Sarah Anne Eckert and Melodie Miller
The purpose of this paper is to examine the effectiveness of using structured reflection via the critical incident analysis method to develop multicultural awareness and…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to examine the effectiveness of using structured reflection via the critical incident analysis method to develop multicultural awareness and intercultural empathy in undergraduate-level pre-service teachers. This research is important, given the striking demographic mismatch between students and teachers in US schools.
Design/methodology/approach
This study adopts a convergent parallel mixed methods research design that combines both qualitative analysis of completed written critical incident analysis assignments and quantitative analysis of responses from a brief survey.
Findings
In most cases, engaging with the critical incident analysis method did lead participants reexamine their own experiences and develop a better understanding of their own biases and actions. While students followed different pathways with the assignment, participants were able to better understand the crucial role that teachers play in creating a space that values and welcomes diversity for the benefit of all students.
Originality/value
This study diverges from future research on the critical incident analysis method by asking students to examine specific moments from their past in the process of deep, targeted self-reflection.
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Maria Holmlund‐Rytkönen and Tore Strandvik
One of the causes of change in business relationships comes from incidents that deviate in a positive or negative way from the expected and normal relationship pattern. This…
Abstract
Purpose
One of the causes of change in business relationships comes from incidents that deviate in a positive or negative way from the expected and normal relationship pattern. This introduces the concept of stress that captures the effect of negatively deviating incidents in business relationships.
Design/methodology/approach
Presents a technique, the negative critical incident mapping (NCIM), for measuring this kind of stress. The technique is used in an industrial service and a business service setting to measure stress in a dyadic manner.
Findings
The results show that not only were all studied relationships burdened with stress to a varying extent but there were also substantial differences in the degree and content of stress. The relationships showed significant differences when seller‐buyer pairs of stress perceptions were matched. Operator‐level perceptions of stress in the relationships corresponded better than manager‐level perceptions. Research and management implications from the new relationship stress concept conclude the paper.
Originality/value
The new relationship‐stress concept is useful for relationship‐dissolution and relationship‐strength researchers since it reveals a hidden risk factor to a business relationship that complements current understanding. For managers the value lies in being able to diagnose relationships at risk of being lost or to detect fundamental relationship problems.
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Bernd Stauss and Bernhard Weinlich
Presents the current state of the methodological discussion on the measurement of perceived service quality. Describes two approaches ‐ attribute‐based methods and the sequential…
Abstract
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.
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