There is a small but growing body of research that is researching the incidents and usage of
mixed methods in management research. The focus of this paper is the synthesis of six large
scale studies of the use of mixed methods across seven business and management fields. All
six studies aim to discover the extent and current role mixed methods plays in the
business/management fields through a process of systematic review of empirical studies. The
first study was undertaken by Hanson and Grimmer (2005) and focused on three marketing
journals. The second was conducted by Hurmerinta-Peltomaki and Nummela (2006) and
involved the review of articles from four major journals in international business. The third
study investigated the field of strategic management (Molina-Azorin 2009). Molina-Azorin
(2008) has also studied the use of mixed methods in the fields of operations management and
entrepreneurship and joined a colleague to study mixed methods in organizational behaviour
research (Molina-Azorin & Lopez-Fernandez 2009). Grimmer and Hanson (2009) teamed up
again in 2009 to conduct a methodological scan of articles from a journal in the field of
human resource management.