Interpretive acts: New vistas in qualitative research in business communication. A guest editorial.

This special issue of The Journal of Business Communication reflects the influences of several forces that are slowly but surely building momentum within the journal, the Association for Business Communication, and our field. The idea began with a panel entitled "Qualitative Research Methods and Theories: Evolving Practices for Management Communication" at the Association's 65th Annual Convention held in Atlanta, Georgia last year. The panel, which was chaired by Kitty Locker and included Kathryn Rentz, Gail Fann Thomas, JoAnne Yates, and myself, was well attended, suggesting that it spoke to a growing need for dialogue around the topic of qualitative research.

A threshold question for the special issue was one that is addressed in the preface to every volume on qualitative research (e.g., Lindlof, 1996; van Maanen, 1983): What is qualitative research, and more particularly, what is qualitative research in the context of our discipline? Van Mannen (1983) offered this now-famous definition:

The label qualitative methods has no precise meaning in any of the social sciences. It is at best an umbrella term covering an array of interpretive techniques which seek to describe, decode, translate and otherwise come to terms with the meaning, not the frequency, of certain more or less naturally occurring phenomena in the social world.... (p. 9)

Narrowing this broad definition is necessary for any collection that purports to address the subject of qualitative research. Even papers that attempt to overview qualitative research in a particular domain of practice (e.g., Tucker, Powell, & Meyer, 1995) will inevitably highlight some kinds of research activities and topics, while giving less attention to others. Ulijn (2000), for instance, noted that Tucker, Powell and Meyer's survey of then-extant qualitative research in journals of business and management communication did not include discourse analysis, a method common in European research. The focus adopted for this special issue, of course, has also led to exclusions, though its scope has widened to include studies influenced by European theories and methods and is thus in line with trends in research in organizational communication and management studies in Europe and the US.

Our title, "Interpretive Acts," and the details of our call for papers, which asked researchers to draw concepts and techniques from domains of scholarship ranging from rhetorical studies and narrative theory to literary criticism and cultural studies, suggests the focus of this special issue. Like our panel, our call spoke to the background in literary and social theory of many of the members of ABC, noted by Yates (1993) as being one of our strengths. In this respect, the special issue takes into account and parallels the linguistic turn in organizational theory (Mauws & Phillips, 1995; see also Alvesson & Skoldberg, 2000, reviewed in this volume). This perspective understands language not simply as an instrument or tool for accomplishing particular managerial objectives, but as the very means for producing identity (Cheney & Christensen, 2001) and organization itself (Putnam & Pacanowsky, 1983; Smircich & Stubbart, 1985).

Consistent with this expanded sense of the role of language and symbolic systems in organization and management, contemporary qualitative methods for addressing the wide range of phenomena of communicative expressions known as "texts" have multiplied, expanding to embrace a variety and diversity almost as rich as these texts themselves. The review process for the special issue has yielded studies that bracket a range of social phenomena of interest to business communication researchers and, at the same time, exemplify different methods, and combinations of methods, for capturing and analyzing data of various sorts. The "interpretive acts" embodied in each of these studies provide new twists on theories already known in our field (e.g., narrative theory, structuration theory), but also enter territories, perhaps unknown, that business communication researchers may find stimulating and provocative.

The issue begins with a paper by JoAnne Yates and Wanda Orlikowski, which demonstrates the structuring effects of genre systems in communicative interaction in business settings, especially as related to electronic media. First, the authors describe their theory of genre and genre systems, showing how they sequence and coordinate the various dimensions of multi-party interchanges within the firm. Then, they illustrate their theory with examples from a high-technology company, which used a collaborative software program application designed to enhance teamwork. Their study relies on data bases (posted messages) created by three teams over seven months, as well as on interviews with team members conducted at various points in the study. The interviews guided the researchers' understanding and interpretation of the genre systems they identified. The study shows that genre systems enacted within the collaborative software application structured the teams' expectations and interactions along several dimensions of communication. Moreover, these genre systems also had consequences for the teams' existing communicative practices, sometimes simply reinforcing or enhancing, but sometimes transforming, old expectations and behaviors. The authors suggest that deliberate, as opposed to habitual, use of genre systems will heighten awareness of their consequences and offer significant opportunities to enhance their positive impacts, especially where teams are experimenting with and transitioning to new media.

Ellen O'Connor also studied a high-tech firm, but focused on the startup phase of the company and the stories employed by the founder that were critical to creating the company and protecting its very existence. Like Yates and Orlikowski, O'Connor applies concepts drawn from literary theory to organizing processes. The power of narrative theory as an explanatory lens has not been lost on researchers in professional and business communication (see, e.g., Perkins & Blyler, 1999; Rentz, 1992). Nevertheless, O'Connor offers a fresh application of this theory by showing its particular usefulness when applied to entrepreneurship and the beginning phases of organization. A participant-observer in the company she studied, O'Connor employed ethnographic and grounded-theory methodologies. Based on data collected over ten months, she developed an interesting and useful typology of stories. The study describes the interaction among three levels of story (personal, generic, and situational), which had interconnecting and sometimes contradictory plotlines. O'Connor demonstrates that narrative sensemaking involves more than the ability to tell a good story; it also requires managing "story traffic." That is, entrepreneurs must be able to manage interconnected plots and adjust their own stories to fit other plotlines over which they have no control. From a practical perspective, O'Connor suggests that the narrative competence of the founder is integrally tied to the success of an entrepreneurial venture.

Teresa Carter's study captures the lived experience of mid-career women, providing insight and discovery by "unscrambling [the] social processes" (van Maanen, 1983, p. 15) involved in mentoring relationships related to work. Using phenomenological methods of heuristic inquiry derived from Moustakas (1990), Carter engaged nine mid-career women in dialogue as co-researchers in her study to explore the transformative learning women experienced through talking with mentors about their work. Carter gathered data by telephone, through interviews and e-mails, and through diary entries provided to the researcher by participants over the six months of the study. Oral materials were transcribed, and the data were coded according to methods of grounded-theory building. Her research process encouraged mutual respect and learning, as she and the women reflected together on the ways in which talk had facilitated periods of transition in their careers. Linking theory related to dyadic developmental relationships in work-rel ated contexts, learning, and women's psychological and psychosocial development, Carter shows that dialogue with mentors is critical to transformational learning. Her findings suggest the need to broaden conventional, functionalist understandings of managerial communication as a means to accomplish organizational goals. As Carter demonstrates, work-related communication also serves developmental functions, especially for women managers, whose identities as women and as managers may be substantially affected by talk.