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This chapter attends to the fact that research has revealed much about the importance of parents in this process, especially their increased instructional roles when their children undertake online courses. However, little is known about how online curriculum vendors construct the parents of their potential enrollees in order to make online learning an appealing option.

This research examined what these testimonials revealed about how such companies conceptualize the beliefs parents of potential students. Inductive narrative theme analysis was used to analyze the testimonials.

The findings of this research revealed a characterization of parents as providers of access to online learning, organizers of schedules around online learning, and leveraging time working online as space to nurture and support their children’s academic development. The major plotline of these testimonials is one where parents solve problems for their children, who are not being successful in school, which resolves anxiety about a child’s previous school performance and their future as students. For the parents, the benefit to this enrollment is increased feelings of efficacy.

This research comments on the role of narrative in educational decision-making in general and has additional potential to inform online teacher work with parents.

The value in this chapter lies in the author’s unique approach to inquiry. Very little research on online learning has looked critically at what vendors promise in online learning.

This paper attempts to answer the research question, “how do senior executives in my organisation make sense of their professional life?” Having reviewed the sensemaking literature, in particular that of the pre‐eminent author in this field, Karl E. Weick, I adopt a phenomenological, interpretist orientation which relies on an ideographic, inductive generation of theory. I situate myself, both as researcher and chief executive of the organisation studied, in the narrative of sensemaking. Using semi‐structured interviews and a combination of grounded theory and template analysis to generate categories, seven themes of sensemaking are tentatively produced which are then compared with Weick's characteristics. The methodological approach is then reflected on, criticised and alternative methodologies are briefly considered. The conclusion reached is that the themes generated by the research may have relevance for sensemaking processes, but that the production of formal theory through social research is problematic.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the English for publication purpose practices of doctoral students in Iran. The overall objective was to explore their motives, hurdles and strategies in academic writing.

This case study draws on a narrative inquiry to explore nine science and engineering doctoral students’ perceptions of academic publication. The data were analyzed through a hybrid process of inductive and deductive thematic analysis.

The qualitative results showed three dominant themes, namely: motives for publication, hurdles to publication and strategies for dealing with these challenges were extracted. The main sources of motives were students’ desire to publish their works for their graduation, improve their resume, satiate the universities’ evaluation system, and finally share their knowledge worldwide. Their hurdles included: political reasons, language-related problems, center-periphery priorities and the lack of academic writing instruction. In order to overcome these hurdles, the participants employed some strategies in academic writing.

Due to qualitative nature of this study, only nine PhD students were recruited and therefore the research results are not intended to render generalizability. Besides, only narratives were employed to collect the required data. Future researchers can use surveys to collect more data.

The findings are discussed within English for academic purposes discourse and some recommendations are provided to alleviate the plights of non-native-English-speaking academic writers.

The methodology and the higher education context in which this paper was conducted are new to the literature.

The purpose of this paper is to focus on the understanding that can be gained about employees' use of voice as a response to organisational change using qualitative research and, in particular, narrative analysis. Narrative analysis of voice can provide insight into why voice is used and how voice differs from resistance.

This paper uses a constructivist approach to study the interpretations of participants and explores the qualitative research interview as a method of data collection that enables participants to report experiences of organisational change. Thematic narrative analysis explores inductive themes that are embedded within participants' stories.

Findings suggest that qualitative research approaches are useful in exploring individual interpretations of voice, such as the forms in which voice is used, reasons why voice is used, and participant reports of management reactions to voice. Findings from the narrative analysis suggests that voice may be confused with resistance in the workplace and is likely to lead to negative reactions from management, even though both the literature and participants differentiate between intentions of voice and resistance to change.

The paper calls for further research concerning employee intentions surrounding the use of voice as well as management perceptions of employees' use of voice.

Qualitative studies can explore differences between voice and resistance through unlocking voices of employees who are marginalised in management literature. Such studies also derive feedback from staff about the effects of change programmes, thus providing managers with information from which communication/participation strategies could be tailored to individual organisations.

The chapter discusses abductive thematic analysis as an innovative qualitative methodology in hospitality and tourism research. The novelty of the abductive approach is to combine the power of both deductive and inductive reasoning: it is possible to initiate the research starting from an existing theoretical, without renouncing to a creative phase where the researcher interprets the phenomenon beyond the words utilized and theorizes dependencies between concepts. The chapter further presents a case study to illustrate how abductive thematic analysis can be applied to study small hospitality and tourism businesses. The chapter further highlights the benefits of adapting thematic analysis to abductive reasoning, which is a paradigmatic position thus adding rigor to hospitality and tourism. The chapter finally highlights future avenues for development of methodology research toward adding further rigor to this novel methodology.

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.

This study aims to contribute to the existing literature by presenting new knowledge about sustainable development goals’ (SDGs) reporting practices through integrated reporting (IR). This paper’s ultimate goal is to dig to light companies’ main approaches to incorporating SDG disclosures into IRs.

This study puts forward both deductive content analysis and an inductive thematic analysis on a sample of worldwide leading IR adopters to assess what SDGs they disclose and how they integrate SDGs into the reports. Meaningful narratives and graphical illustrations are selected, categorised and discussed from a symbolic/substantive legitimacy perspective.

The results of this study highlighted that although a fair number of leading IR adopters addressed SDG issues, their pathways to disclosure were not uniform. In some cases, SDGs inspired substantive changes to internal management and process, communicated through an integrated approach. However, there was a persistent trend of using SDGs as camouflage and symbolic tool to enhance company’s reputation and obtain a licence to operate.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this was the first study that performed a deductive/inductive thematic analysis to engender insight into the most meaningful patterns followed by leading IR reporters worldwide to disclose their contributions to SDGs and address their legitimacy.

This paper aims to examine the socialization of alcohol through a reflective writing task within a social marketing program delivered to adolescents. The aim was to elicit adolescents’ experiences and perceptions of alcohol and investigate cognitions, emotions, attitudes’ and behaviors regarding alcohol.

This study used a qualitative approach in which 1,214 adolescents aged 14 to 16 years were invited to write a story about an experience that involved alcohol. Data were qualitatively coded, and themes were discerned by an inductive analytic process.

Adolescents’ perceptions of alcohol were arranged along a continuum from mere description with little analysis to reasoned reflection and cognition. Qualitatively different socializing agents, learning situations, processes and effects of learning were apparent in the narratives. Family roles influenced adolescents’ perceptions and experiences of alcohol.

This study supports the use of narratives and reflective introspection tasks as methods that uncover insights into the socialization of alcohol among adolescents. Findings provide guidance to social marketers and alcohol educators for future program design. By understanding the continuum of developing socializations toward alcohol, social marketers can effectively engage adolescents and design targeted programs involving key social learning variables that shape adolescents’ perceptions and experiences with alcohol.

Narratives provide a research methodology that can bring consumer voice to inform scenarios that can be delivered in future program design.

The study explores the relational encounters of five higher education tutors and programme leaders, working in collaboration across contrasting institutions: one, a modern, civic university in the Global North, and the other, a parastatal institution in the Global South. The purpose of the study is to deepen the understanding of evolving collegiality within a transnational partnership, stimulated by the COVID-19 pandemic related shift to online teaching and learning.

The inquiry is informed conceptually by the concept of narrative encounter as a site of learning, with inductive, meta-analysis undertaken across our individual reflective narratives.

The narratives reveal three emergent themes: shared purpose, shared responsibility – through focus, routinised dialogue and concreteness; collective and individual risk-taking – through negotiated decision-making; and trust in self and in peers – through reciprocity, caring, duality and building on stable practices.

The data from which this paper is developed and its related central thesis of collegial capital are limited and partial. However, when agility within higher education partnerships is at a premium, this paper is a useful touchstone for further reflection.

The paper seeks to further the concept of collegiality and collegial capital, a dialogical affordance which enabled the partnership to build on previous collaborative successes.