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Communication scholars have developed many rich and rigorous qualitative methods for capturing, analyzing, and interpreting the communicative aspects of organizing. It is exciting to see these methods brought together in a comprehensive handbook that features both classical approaches and reflections on new forms of data and analysis. Boris Brummans, Bryan Taylor, and Anu Sivunen have put together a truly wonderful resource that I will return to again and again.
This handbook is an authoritative survey of qualitative approaches to organizational communication that summarizes the state of the art and advances new insights and ideas. Its authors span the panoply of takes on qualitative research on organizational communication and are literally an all-star cast. Experienced academics and graduate students alike will benefit from its many perspectives and inquiries into key issues.
This comprehensive handbook has all the ingredients to become the main go-to resource for qualitative research in organizational communication studies. I highly recommend it to anyone who aims to broaden their horizon and expand their methodological tool kit, whether scholars, students, or practitioners.
Organizational communication is not only a discipline, but also a community. It has its meeting places, such as the annual conventions of the National and International Communication Associations. It has its rituals, such as business meetings and award ceremonies during these conferences. Unfortunately, however, the field has few outlets to showcase its research. Management Communication Quarterly is the field’s only flagship journal.
Handbooks capturing a particular segment of a field have become abundant on the academic landscape of late. Publishers have come to favor this form because they’re profitable vehicles, despite the challenging economics of the publishing business. But their proliferation should urge us to ask about the need for any additional ones. That’s the question I brought to reading the Sage Handbook of Qualitative Research in Organizational Communication. Any skepticism I harbored evaporated immediately.
The Sage Handbook of Qualitative Research in Organizational Communication edited by Boris H.J.M. Brummans, Bryan C. Taylor, and Anu Sivunen, is the first of its kind. The 680-page handbook written by 82 scholars offers 34 chapters to trace, explain, and reflect on the approaches, data collection, data analysis, and the future of qualitative research in the field of organizational communication. As Barker noted in the Foreword, “now, we have reached the point at which our qualitative research, our collective work, warrants a handbook” (p. xxviii).
