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Middle managers’ intrapreneurial actions can be a powerful source of organizational adaptation and strategic renewal. Better understanding what drives such intrapreneurial actions is important, yet requires data, which allows testing directional claims. For example, whereas autonomy and supportive leadership might be antecedents to such intrapreneurial behavior, it equally seems possible that firms delegate more autonomy to individuals behaving entrepreneurially (rather than being “lazy”) or that senior managers are more inclined to show support for individuals engaging in entrepreneurial action. Lagged or longitudinal survey evidence to test whether autonomy and leadership support are antecedents of intrapreneurship or consequences, is – like for many other questions in research on strategic responsiveness – hard and expensive to collect. Vignette experiments (also called factorial surveys or conjoint studies) may be a way out – especially when combined with cross-sectional evidence. The present chapter illustrates this approach by studying the relations among autonomy, supportive leadership, and intrapreneurship by means of a vignette experiment and a cross-sectional field survey. The findings suggest that autonomy and supportive leadership are indeed antecedents to intrapreneurial behavior and illustrate the value of vignette experiments for research on strategic responsiveness.

Anchoring vignettes have become a popular method to adjust self-assessed data for systematic differences in reporting behaviour to aid comparability, for example, of cross-country analyses. The method relies on the two fundamental assumptions of response consistency and vignette equivalence. Evidence on the validity of these assumptions is equivocal. This chapter considers the utility of the vignette approach by considering how successful the method is in moving self-assessed reports of health mobility towards objective counterparts. We draw on data from the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE) and undertake pairwise country comparisons of cumulative distributions of self-reports, their objective counterparts and vignette adjusted reports. Comparison of distributions is based on tests for stochastic dominance. Multiple cross-country comparisons are undertaken to assess the consistency of results across contexts and settings. Both non-parametric and parametric approaches to vignette adjustment are considered. In general, we find the anchoring vignette methodology poorly reconciles self-reported data with objective counterparts.

This study aims to further investigate the relationship between perceived adherence to gender norms and binge drinking in college students. Thus, researchers examined college students’ perceptions of adherence to masculine and feminine gender norms when gender and alcohol consumption of a vignette character were manipulated.

Undergraduate participants (N = 368) were randomly assigned to one of four vignette conditions: female moderate drinker, female binge drinker, male moderate drinker, male binge drinker and then surveyed regarding perceptions of the vignette character.

The results of this study indicate that there are significant relationships between the vignette character’s alcohol consumption and perceived adherence to feminine gender norms. The character’s gender, as well as the participant’s own alcohol consumption patterns, also related to perceived adherence to feminine gender norms.

College students’ perceptions of binge drinkers are influenced by gender norms, which has important implications for safe consumption of alcohol. When young men (or young women) are encouraged to drink to avoid appearing too feminine, negative consequences may be more likely. In this study, perceptions of the vignette character’s safety were also found to be related to alcohol consumption of the vignette character, as well as the alcohol consumption of the participant, suggesting that a heavy drinker might not show as much concern for another’s heavy consumption.

Hypothetical vignettes have been used as a research method in the social sciences for many years and are useful for examining and understanding ethical problems in clinical practice, research, and policy. This chapter provides an overview of the value of vignettes in empirical bioethics research, discusses how to develop and utilize vignettes when considering ethics-related research questions, and reviews strategies for evaluating psychometric properties. We provide examples of vignettes and how they have been used in bioethics research, and examine their relevance to advancing bioethics. The chapter concludes with the general strengths and limitations of hypothetical vignettes and how these should be considered.

The authors examine whether or not applicants and recipients of federal disability insurance (DI) inflate their self-assessed health (SAH) problems relative to others. To do this, the authors employ a technique which uses anchoring vignettes. This approach allows them to examine how various cohorts of the population interpret survey questions associated with subjective self-assessments of health. The results of the analysis suggest that DI participants do inflate the severity of a given health problem, but by a small but significant degree. This tendency to exaggerate the severity of disability problems is much more apparent among those with more education (especially those with a college degree). In contrast, racial minorities tend to underestimate severity ratings for a given disability vignette when compared to their white peers.

The purpose of this paper is to examine autobiographical vignettes that are embedded in the annual report letters to shareholders of chief executive officers (CEOs). The aim is to reveal the capacity of this narrative to self-construct leader identity, show how they can help CEOs attain legitimacy and how they help CEOs to exert management control.

The paper is positioned within literature that focuses on the importance of the annual report CEO letter and the strategic use of CEO autobiographical vignettes therein. Three autobiographical vignettes included in letters to shareholders signed by E. Hunter Harrison, CEO of Canadian National Railway (2004, 2005 and 2007), are analysed using close reading techniques. This involved the authors separately reading each vignette by slowing down the reading process to aid understanding of the text’s “inner workings”. Several close readings of each vignette were conducted until a consensus was reached between the authors.

Autobiographical vignettes have strong potential to be used strategically, as rhetorical devices, to help CEOs exert management control, facilitate change, shape leader-follower relationships and sustain self-legitimacy.

This paper is the first within the accounting domain to highlight the potential for autobiographical narrative in a CEO’s annual letter to shareholders to convey corporate information (including strategic intent), to construct leader identity and to exert management control.

The aim of this paper is to suggest and demonstrate how anchoring vignettes, as a survey instrument, can be applied to study quality management (QM) across cultures. Cultural differences may create challenges in QM. Quantitative surveys are commonly used to study QM practices but do not consider the cultural bias in the survey results. An important question is how to study QM so that the results are comparable across cultures. Herein, the use of anchoring vignettes is suggested to reduce the problem of cross-cultural incomparability.

This paper focuses on developing and testing vignettes for studying QM. Based on previous survey studies, two vignettes for each QM dimension are developed. The vignettes are then tested with two pilot tests on the web-based survey platform.

The paper provides a concrete example of how a survey using anchoring vignettes could be designed and used to deal with cultural bias in QM survey Based on hypothetical examples from Swedish and Indian cultures, the results from pilot studies evaluating vignettes are promising and show the applicability of the proposed method. Anchoring vignettes may help to provide more accurate survey results and thereby contribute to understanding of cross-cultural differences in QM practices. One of the challenges is the design of vignettes, which requires high precision and several tests to make the method work.

The paper discusses the potential of using anchoring vignettes to study QM practices across cultures. This may contribute to better understanding of QM practices in an international context, and thereby help improve QM practices in multinational organisations.

The aim of this paper is to gauge the ethical views of male and female final year Accounting students in South Africa and to compare the results with similar studies performed in Australia and Ireland. The study also discusses the desirability of including an ethics course in the Accounting curriculum as a strategy to improve the ethical standing of the accounting profession. The most important self‐reported factor that influenced students’ ethical behaviour was the fear of getting caught. It was recommended that professional accountancy bodies should be more transparent in respect of their disciplinary procedures in order to discourage unethical behaviour. Ethics training initiatives should also address whistleblowing, and whistleblowing should be encouraged. Furthermore, universities should integrate ethics more fully into all courses in the Accounting curriculum of prospective professional accountants.

This exploratory survey aimed to investigate and to explore, using the vignette methodology, community perceptions of mental disorder in a rural area in Greece. The influence of the nature of the problematic behaviour depicted in the vignettes, the gender of the vignette actor and the demographic characteristics of respondents were also examined.A series of vignettes in combination with an open‐ended response format were used. Fifty face‐to‐face interviews were carried out with residents in a rural community area in Crete. A thematic analysis was employed.It was found that the type of symptomatology influenced respondents' reactions. Social environmental factors, childhood experiences and personality characteristics were more likely to be offered as ætiological factors for depression, anxiety and schizophrenia with negative symptoms. In contrast, the positive symptoms of schizophrenia and paranoia were more likely to be attributed to biological factors. The respondents expressed a remarkably reserved attitude towards psychiatrists and use of psychotropic drugs. Psychological assistance and social support were more likely to be recommended as treatment methods. The gender of the vignette actor influenced respondents' reactions in relation to schizophrenia with positive symptoms and schizophrenia with negative symptoms. Respondents' gender and age were found to have no influence.Vignette methodology was proved to be a valuable tool to demonstrate the complexity of lay perceptions concerning mental disorder. Respondents clearly expressed a need for mental health education indicating future implications for interventions in this area.

Recent studies have introduced new productive theoretical orientations to the vignette studies. There is not, however, sufficient analytical discussion on how the vignettes can be used in qualitative interviews for different functions. The paper aims to discuss this issue.

Whatever theoretical framing the researcher decides to apply in qualitative interviews using vignettes, the paper proposes that it is always important to consider in what way the chosen vignettes refer to the object under examination, whether they represent it as clues (metonyms, symptoms, enigmatic traces), as microcosms (icons, metaphors, totems, ideal types, homologies) or as provokers (anomalies, taboos, controversies).

When vignettes are used as clues in interviews, they can be introduced as puzzling traces, tracks or indexes which together with the interview questions carry out the interviewees to metonymic reasoning. When vignettes are used in interviews as microcosms, the interview questions are built so that they encourage the interviewees to consider the vignettes as icons that mimic reality or realities, their actors, situations, acts, events and processes. And when vignettes are used as provokers, they are selected and produced so that they challenge the forms, boundaries, meanings and habits of the well-known and plausible realities of the interviewees.

The paper demonstrates with examples how vignettes function in the interviews as clues, microcosms or provokers and shows why it is important to pay attention to this.