Beyond the Visible, the Material and the Performative: Shifting Perspectives on the Visual in Organization Studies

Abstract

Visual organizational research has burgeoned over the past decade. Despite an initially hesitant engagement with visuality in organization and management studies, it is now only proper to speak of a ‘visual turn’ in this domain of scholarly inquiry. We wish to take the opportunity provided by the Perspectives format to engage with prominent work published in Organization Studies, in appreciation of the diversity of approaches to the visual in organizational research, and highlight some generative tensions across this body of work. In particular, we have scrutinized six articles based on their treatment of signification (how the visual mode enables meaning-making and meaning-sharing in and around organizations), manifestation (how visual organizational artefacts and their properties relate to affordances) and implication (how visualization practices produce organizational outcomes). Inspired by the frictions and gaps across these articles, we developed three distinct perspective shifts that highlight the importance of the invisible, the immaterial and the performance within visualization. We conclude with a comparative matrix that maps different conceptualizations of visualization, and suggest opportunities for future research based on how we see the field of visual organizational studies evolving.

“What is going on in the ‘big tent’?” Current developments in (new) institutional theory and performance measurement and management research

“…Parker, 2016). This is a shortcoming, as visual artefacts “can become resources for institutional dynamics when they act as communicative spaces for a continuous negotiation of institutional values and social orders” (Quattrone et al. , 2021).…”

“…Relevance to PMM research: Quattrone et al. ’s (2021) point on the role of visual artefacts as communicative spaces is of particular relevance when looking at the organisational effects of PMM systems and practices.…”

Space and the Dynamic Between Openness and Closure: Open strategizing in the TV series Borgen

“…Thus, fiction can hold real power over people by shaping how they make sense of organizations. Visuality (Quattrone, Ronzani, Jancsary, & Höllerer, 2021) and particularly visual fiction dramatized through visual means, such as TV or film, has additional expressive power because it portrays and attempts to understand behaviour where life is being lived, without the airbrushing rendered by high-grade abstractions of theory, even if the status of such representations is complex and ambiguous (Holt & Zundel, 2014;Zundel, Holt, & Cornelissen, 2013). Furthermore, visual fiction is a vehicle for understanding organizational space since space is often seen solely as a platform of organizational life and has thus remained relatively difficult to textualize (Panayiotou & Kafiris, 2011).…”

Grand Challenges and Business Education: Dealing with Barriers to Learning and Uncomfortable Knowledge

“…Visuals and images can be instrumental for the engagement with grand challenge topics in virtue of how they can "speak" to us and sensitize us to issues in a more direct manner compared to other semiotic resources, such as text or numbers (Ronzani & Gatzweiler, 2021;Quattrone, Ronzani, Jancsary, & Höllerer, 2021;Barberá-Tomás, Castelló, de Bakker, & Zietsma, 2019). For instance, interactive visuals haven been shown to work as powerful engines for the engagement with the sustainable development indicators by bringing to life abstract and technical concepts, and prompt collective problem identification and action (Bandola-Gill, Grek, & Ronzani, 2021).…”

“…For instance, interactive visuals haven been shown to work as powerful engines for the engagement with the sustainable development indicators by bringing to life abstract and technical concepts, and prompt collective problem identification and action (Bandola-Gill, Grek, & Ronzani, 2021). Visuals can also connote objects, actions, and relationships in ways that appeal to the senses and people's imagination, thereby allowing the construction of novel and potentially unexpected visibilities on social and organizational phenomena that can generate reflection (Quattrone et al, 2021). Visual artifacts, data visualizations, and artworks can be evocative and, while "they may not serve immediate organizational purposes, [they may] invite enquiry and reflection by de-familiarizing organizational members' habitual conceptualizations" (Barry & Meisiek, 2010, p. 1505.…”