Qualitative Research in Business Communication: A Review and Analysis

Communication researchers, concerned with gathering complete, valid, andreproducible results, are being encouraged to use a group of qualitative researchmethods for studying business communication. The question that intuitivelyarises, then, is whether qualitative methods are increasingly utilized in published business communication research. This paper addresses the call forqualitative research in business communication, describes qualitative researchmethods with examples of business communication articles in which qualitativeand qualitative/quantitative methods were used effectively, and presents ananalysis of research methods used in articles published in three business communication journals during the last four years. The paper concludes withrecommendations for business communication research.