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It is now 15 years since the Journal of European Industrial Training published its first monograph on repertory grid technique (Volume 4 Number 2, 1980). Since that time many changes have occurred in both the use and the application of grids. Aims to bring the reader up to date with developments which have taken place in the application and analysis of repertory grid technique. Unlike the initial monograph, places greater emphasis on practicalities of completing a grid and the different types of analysis possible than on the applications of the grid. After encouragement from Roger Bennett, among others, this revised and expanded monograph capitalizes on the collaboration of the original author, Mark Easterby‐Smith, with Richard Thorpe and David Holman. Their combined experience of the theory and use of repertory grid technique updates the original monograph.

The repertory grid has been established as a psychological technique for a long time, but the last five years have witnessed increasing interest in organisational applications. Many people have felt that it offers an extremely powerful means to quantify peoples' attitudes, feeling and perceptions; others have seen it as a method enabling them to examine their own ideas and values in far greater depth than previous psychological techniques have allowed. The technique has been used with particular success in management training and development providing many applications including those in selection interviewing, in improving potential assessment schemes, and in evaluating development programmes.

Whereas a number of standardised psychological measures exist for the assessment of sex offenders (eg Beckett, 1994), very few such measures are appropriate for use with those with learning disabilities. Measures often use complicated language and concepts, fail to include people with learning disabilities in their standardisation samples and use notions of sex and sexuality that, in many cases, are of little relevance to the lives of people with learning disabilities. In order to help in the psychological formulation of Paul (a sex offender with learning disabilities), a Kelly Repertory Grid (Kelly, 1955) was used. The analysis of the grid provided important information about Paul's sense of self, his attitude towards women and his attitude towards relationships in general. This allowed for a systematic approach to assessment and formulation that might not otherwise have been available. It is proposed as a novel starting point in the process of assessment and formulation in this client group, which fits in well with existing cognitive‐behavioural (CBT) approaches to treatment.

This paper aims to explore online consumers’ perceptions of a trustworthy Web site. Specifically, it analyzes which Web site elements and features online buyers identify as online trust cues signaling e-vendor’s trustworthiness.

This study implemented a repertory grid technique to gain insight into the customers’ perceptions of Web site trustworthiness.

The most frequently identified online trust cues belong to the “Layout”, “Easy to Use” and “Sales” categories. This is in contrast with the traditional views that Web elements related to customers’ privacy and security are leading trust cues. In addition, online shoppers confirmed two trends in e-commerce: the role of social media in developing online trust to e-vendors is increasing and online shopping is associated with entertainment.

Rich data collected from 16 participants of this qualitative study present a challenge for generalizability. A caution should be taken in extending findings to the whole population of online shoppers.

This study proves that the repertory grid technique is a useful method for qualitative market research. This method helped to solicit a list of Web site elements and features that online consumers identified as online trust cues. As buyers refer to those cues when deciding to trust or not to trust an e-vendor with the private and confidential information, businesses could use these research findings in designing Web sites that signal trustworthiness to customers.

This study contributes to the research methodology as it extends the use of the repertory grid technique to the study of online trust cues and collection of data online. It is one of a few qualitative studies of online trust cues.

The psychological analysis of strategic management issues has gained a great deal of momentum in recent years. Much can be learned by entering the black box of strategic thinking of senior executives and bring new insights on how they see, make sense of, and interpret their everyday strategic experiences. This chapter will focus on a powerful cognitive mapping tool called the Repertory Grid Technique and demonstrate how it has been used in the strategy literature along with how a new and more refined application of the technique can enhance the elicitation of complex strategic cognitions for strategy and Board of Directors research.

Many criticisms have been made about the ability of traditional evaluation measures to provide genuinely useful information. They rarely tell the trainer anything he does not already know, and investigation of their objectivity suggests that they frequently do little more than reinforce in the trainer's mind the answers he wishes to hear.

Developments in the social neurosciences over the past two decades have rendered problematic the main knowledge elicitation techniques currently in use by strategy researchers, as a basis for revealing actors’ mental representations of strategic knowledge. Extant elicitation techniques were advanced during an era when cognitive scientists and organizational researchers alike were preoccupied with the basic information of processing limitations of decision makers and means of addressing them, predicated on an outmoded conception of strategists as affect-free, cognitive misers. The need to adapt these techniques to enable the investigation of the emotional content and structure of actors’ mental representations is now a pressing priority for the advancement of theory, research, and practice pertaining to several interrelated areas of strategic management, from dynamic capabilities development, to upper echelons theory, to strategic consensus formation. Accordingly, in this chapter, we report the findings of two studies that investigated the feasibility of adapting the repertory grid, a robust method, widely known and well used in strategic management, for this purpose. Study 1 elicited a series of commonly mentioned strategic issues (the elements) from a sample of senior managers similar in composition to the sample recruited to the second study. Study 2 participants evaluated the elements elicited in Study 1 in relation to a series of researcher-supplied bipolar attributes (the constructs), based on the well-known affective circumplex model of human emotions. In line with expectations, a series of vector-based multivariate analyses revealed a number of interesting similarities and variations among participants in terms of the basic structure and emotional salience of the issues under consideration.

This paper presents a new constructivist model of knowledge development in a case study that illustrates how a group of postgraduate students defined and evaluated effective postgraduate supervision. This new model is based on “personal construct theory” and “repertory grid technology” which is combined with interviews and group discussion. It is argued that this approach leads to a more meaningful interpretation of results and facilitates formative evaluation and professional development of supervisors. In this case study we discuss details of our evaluation method and its benefits and limitations. We explain how this approach enables both supervisors and students to participate actively in research and development activities, to develop their own constructs or theories of effective supervision, and to communicate their suggestions for improvement. Further applications of this constructivist model to postgraduate supervision practice and to research in higher education are suggested.

This paper aims to provide instructions on how to implement an adapted version of the standard repertory grid technique (VARGT). The purpose of which is to provide practitioners with a tool, which enables active engagement by participants in research and clinical practice. This tool has been used effectively with people convicted of stalking offences.

Repertory grids, developed from Kelly’s Personal Construct Theory (1955), had never been used with those who stalk, either clinically or in a research context. Visual and kinaesthetic adaptations were made to standard RGT procedures (Grice, 2002; Tan and Hunter, 2002), for use in a mixed methods research study (Wheatley, 2019, p. 77) due to expected challenges in engaging with this group. This manuscript presents theoretical underpinnings and step-by-step instructions for practical application.

The VARGT is easy to administer and produces rich data, in both qualitative and quantitative formats. This adapted approach encourages active participation and an interpreted therapeutic collaboration (Wheatley et al., 2020).

This novel technique has engaged men convicted of stalking offences collaboratively in research activities and showed potential for its use as a clinical tool. This instructional technical paper allows the technique to be replicated.

This novel technique has engaged men convicted of stalking offences collaboratively in research activities and showed potential for its use as a clinical tool. This instructional technical paper allows the technique to be replicated.

In his article titled, “The theory of the business,” Peter Drucker suggests that organizations need to frequently challenge the assumptions underlying their theory of the business (TOB) in order to assure that it remains viable. Accordingly, the purpose of this paper is to introduce the repertory grid technique (RGT) and illustrate how it can be used as a strategic planning tool to surface the assumptions underlying an organization's TOB.

The RGT's merits as a planning tool are demonstrated through a case study involving the president of a Pittsburgh‐based financial services organization. Specifically, this case study describes how the RGT and the organization's competitors were used to surface the assumptions underlying the organization's TOB.

The paper describes how the assumptions surfaced from this case study can be used to challenge the organization's TOB. Furthermore, guidance is offered as to how the RGT can be integrated into an organization's strategic planning process and a list of resources that one can refer to for further information concerning the RGT is provided.

While the RGT has been used by scholars as a research tool and various authors have suggested that it can be used to address various organizational challenges (e.g., implementing a new system), no one to date has demonstrated its value as a strategic planning tool. Consequently, the paper is a valuable resource for practitioners, as well as academics and consultants who provide strategic planning services to organizations.