(2013) The visual dimension in organizing, organization, and organization research: Core ideas, current developments, and promising avenues. Academy of Management Annals, 7 (1). pp. 489-555. ISSN 1941-6520 This version is available at: http://epub.wu.ac.at/4991/ Available in ePub WU : April 2016 ePub WU , the institutional repository of the WU Vienna University of Economics and Business, is provided by the University Library and the IT-Services. The aim is to enable open access to the scholarly output of the WU.This document is the version accepted for publication and -in case of peer review -incorporates referee comments. There are minor differences between this and the publisher version which could however affect a citation. Abstract. With the unprecedented rise in the use of visuals, and its undeniable omnipresence in organizational contexts, as well as in the individual's everyday life, organization and management science has recently started to pay closer attention to the to date under-theorized 'visual mode' of discourse and meaning construction. Building primarily on insights from the phenomenological tradition in organization theory and from social semiotics, this article sets out to consolidate previous scholarly efforts and to sketch a fertile future research agenda. After briefly exploring the workings of visuals, we introduce the methodological and theoretical 'roots' of visual studies in a number of disciplines that have a long-standing tradition of incorporating the visual. We then continue by extensively reviewing work in the field of organization and management studies: More specifically, we present five distinct approaches to feature visuals in research designs and to include the visual dimension in scholarly inquiry. Subsequently, we outline, in some detail, promising avenues for future research, and close with a reflection on the impact of visualization on scientific practice itself.
The authors acknowledge financial support from the Danish Research Council (DFF-1327-00030). Eva Boxenbaum also acknowledges support from the French National Research Agency (ANR-14-CE29-0008). We wish to thank SCANCOR for providing an excellent working environment during our sabbaticals. Dennis Jancsary also thanks the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs at Harvard University for its support.
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