In this article, we present visual maps as a way of visually representing qualitative data to improve rigor and analysis in process research. Visual representation of data is an essential element of scientific discourse, and historically scholars have put a great deal of effort into finding creative and efficient ways of visually representing quantitative data. Nevertheless, despite endeavors to integrate visual methods into organizational and management research, qualitative research still lacks a conceptual grounding of the ontological status of visual representation as well as effective tools to visually display data. We contribute to filling these gaps and start a discussion on qualitative data visualization by proposing Latour’s concept of inscription as a conceptual framework and the use of visual maps as a methodological tool for qualitative process research. We provide an analytical example of how visual mapping could become a methodological tool that enables recognizing patterns, condensing data, and comparing and examining relationships over time that are not necessarily visible independently of their representations. This also enables researchers to make sense of data, improve analysis, and theorize, thus fostering reflexive thinking and facilitating communication.

Despite recent calls for processual analysis of routines creation, little work has been done to investigate the entrepreneurial mechanisms that explain the creation and adoption of new routines. This paper provides a processual contribution to the study of organizational routines by proposing a model for routine creation, based on an analysis of collective entrepreneurial actions. Using an entrepreneurial bricolage lens, we show how agents, during the creation of new routines, develop mechanisms to adapt firm processes, enact external constraints and validate novel practices. Our analysis is based on a three-year collaborative study in a French biotechnology firm. We develop a processual model of routine creation comprising three phases: scanning, performing and adopting. The model provides new insights into the interplay between artefacts and entrepreneurial actions in the creation of new routines.

In this article, we explore how non-strategy tools – which we call ‘occupational’ because they emerge from actors’ daily work – allow managers to strategize. Specifically, we focus on the crafting process of such tools, or what we call the strategy tooling process. We take an organizational bricolage perspective to identify the resources that practitioners draw upon in the tool crafting process and the types of dialogues they engage in. Empirically, we draw upon our comparison of two longitudinal case studies to identify a process model of collective bricolage. Combining the literature on collective bricolage with strategy tools allows to cast light on the emergence of strategy from the bottom up. Our contributions are twofold. First, we identify different categories of repertoires and dialogues and highlight their dynamic interactions in the process of bricolage. Second, our study of dialogues broadens the practice perspective on tools beyond the discursive turn. This paper is also relevant for managerial practice at a time when a growing interest in a participatory approach to strategy requires an understanding of how occupational tools help carry out strategy at the operational level.