Qualitative Research in Organizations and Management: An

International Journal
Exploring the visual in organizations and management
Jane Davison Christine McLean Samantha Warren
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GUEST EDITORIAL Exploring the

visual
Exploring the visual in
organizations and management
Jane Davison 5
School of Management, Royal Holloway, University of London, Egham, UK
Christine McLean
Manchester Business School, University of Manchester, Manchester, UK, and
Samantha Warren
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Essex Business School, University of Essex, Colchester, UK

Abstract
Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to discuss how “the visual” might be conceptualised more
broadly as a useful development of qualitative methodologies for organizational research. The paper
introduces the articles that form the basis of this special issue of QROM, including a review of related
studies that discuss the analysis of organizational visuals, as well as extant literature that develops a
methodological agenda for visual organizational researchers.
Design/methodology/approach – The Guest Editors’ conceptual arguments are advanced through
a literature review approach.
Findings – The Guest Editors conclude that studying “the visual” holds great potential for
qualitative organizational researchers and show how this field is fast developing around a number of
interesting image-based issues in organizational life.
Research limitations/implications – A future research agenda is articulated and the special issue
that this paper introduces is intended to serve as a “showcase” and inspiration for qualitative
researchers in organizations and management studies.
Originality/value – This issue of QROM is the first collection of visual research articles addressing
business and management research. The Guest Editors’ introduction to it seeks to frame its contents in
contemporary interdisciplinary debates drawn from the wider social sciences and the arts.
Keywords Organizations, Management, Organizational performance, Photographs, Image,
Management education, Visual research
Paper type Conceptual paper

Introduction: “the visual” and qualitative research in organizations

In this special issue we see how a plethora of visual elements underlie the everyday
practices of organizing and management. These go beyond those which we normally
associate with pictures and images such as marketing, advertising and promotional
imagery, to include organizational leaflets and brochures, training films, organizational
photography, drawings, art and architecture. We could extend the list further to focus
on those practices of imagining which go beyond both conventional notions of the
visual and also beyond text, such as reports, accounts and schedules, tables and
graphs, project management diagrams and strategic plans, as well as lines on the floor
and various signs on the walls of organizational places and spaces (e.g. health
Qualitative Research in Organizations
and safety signs). There are therefore a myriad of images, visuals and signs which and Management: An International
intervene in many areas of our organizational lives. Exploring the roles they can play in Journal
Vol. 7 No. 1, 2012
constructing and performing organizational worlds and in creating particular pp. 5-15
openings and closings and news spaces and forms of action requires conceptual r Emerald Group Publishing Limited
1746-5648
development and review – a process which we hope to further through the publication DOI 10.1108/17465641211223528
 QROM of this special issue. For instance, a short walk along the “communication” corridor of a
7,1 newspaper production factory provides a wealth of images, visuals, plans, figures and
graphs (Alcadipani and Hassard, 2011). Such visuals encapsulate a myriad of colours,
pictures, intensities and emotions as they present and represent many different aspects
of production, communication, health and safety, team-working and future strategies of
the organization. These images are tightly entangled within the complex organizing
6 and managing practices which underlie this printing process with traces and relations
extending out in many directions. For the production director, the boards not only “do
the talking”, but they also provide a focus for meetings to discuss key performance
indicators and how to “improve” the business. Becoming sensitive to the different
issues and aspects which underlie these complex organizational worlds requires
further development of our conceptual, theoretical language and methodological
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approaches which go beyond text. We need ideas, tools and approaches which allow us
to trace and captures the role that images may play in performing organizations and
constructing truths, in creating and presupposing ideas of rationality and reason,
heterogeneity, multiplicity and alterity, which lies behind apparent occurrences of
stability and durability.
An emphasis on qualitative approaches is especially pertinent given the realm of
the visual presents special theoretical challenges due to its essential plurality,
ambiguity of meanings and the subjectivity of its interpretation (Mitchell, 1994). Unlike
words or numbers, visual media such as pictures and photographs are especially
resistant to translation into quantitative terms, although studies have used forms of
content analysis that attempt to quantify pictures and people or objects they might
represent, which can be useful in enabling the statistical examination of large samples
of data – as, for example, in the study of representations of gender by Benschop and
Meihuizen (2002). Indeed visual media are not necessarily representational, and may be
abstract or consist of collage, or of conflations of the abstract and the representational
meaning. Thus they are well suited to analysis by means of qualitative theories and
methods, such as those employed in the papers of this special issue.
The role of the visual has been strangely neglected in organizational and
management research despite its pervasiveness and despite having a healthy
provenance in the arts and social sciences more generally – for example, in philosophy
(Barthes, 1977; Baudrillard, 1981), sociology (Foucault, 1966), psychoanalysis (Lacan,
1988) and cultural theory (Berger, 1972; Mitchell, 1986, 1994, 2005; Sontag, 1971).
Visual images in business, management and organizational research are often
dismissed as trivial, constituting decoration, insubstantial rhetoric, illusion, or at best,
partially reliable information (Davison and Warren, 2009). The meaning of visual
images – organizational or otherwise – is often enigmatic, ambiguous and subjective,
hence the sense of disorientation often experienced before a visual artifact denoted as
“Untitled” (Davison and Warren, 2009). In philosophical terms, the signifier and the
signified of the visual are bound together (Barthes, 1977), while yet remaining
referential, unlike music. Visual images resist theory (Mitchell, 1994). The visual also
resists definition, and includes images presented to the eye as well as mental pictures
behind the eye; it includes two-dimensional artifacts as well as three-dimensional space
such as that of architecture or of fashion (Davison and Warren, 2009).
In recent years, however, there has been a surge of interest in the field (Bell and
Davison, 2012), evidenced by an expanding array of special journal issues (Accounting,
Organization and Society, 1996; Organization, 2004; Accounting, Auditing &
Accountability Journal, 2009), books and edited collections (Bell, 2008; Puyou et al.,
 2011; Schroeder, 2002; Styhre, 2010; Bell et al., 2013). Additionally, there have been Exploring the
initiatives by research networks (e.g. the European Institute for Advanced Studies in visual
Management) workshops on aesthetics, art and management, on Imag[in]ing business,
and on architecture and fashion), and by research funding bodies (e.g. the UK
Economic and Social Research Council) Building Capacity in Visual Methods
programme, and Seminar Series and Researcher Development Initiative in conjunction
with the inVisio research network (International Network for Visual Studies in 7
Organisations, www.in-visio.org).
While interest in the visual is thus expanding within management and
organizational studies, research is still limited and requires more theoretical,
conceptual and methodological development. More broadly, in fields of visual and
cultural studies, there has also been a call to further enhance our theoretical and
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empirical foundations. For instance, Elkins (2003) suggests that this area needs to be
“denser with theories and strategies” but also more reflexive, “more attentive to
neighbouring and distant disciplines, more vigilant about its own sense of visuality,
less predictable in its politics and less routine in its choice of subjects” (Elkins, 2003,
p. 65). Thus, this special issue seeks to take some small steps in this direction as the
first journal issue in the organization and management research literature dedicated
to visual studies and qualitative methodologies. It brings together a collection of
innovative papers using qualitative methods ranging from “snaplogs” to experimental
visual online collage, together with reviews of the recently published books by Bell
(2008) and Puyou et al. (2011) noted above.

Beyond text: visual methods and methodology

Within qualitative visual theory and method it is possible to see a division between
those studies which tend to focus on pre-existing visual material and those which
generate visual material for the purposes of the research, whether by the researcher, or
by the research participants (Bell and Davison, 2012; Bryman and Bell, 2011; Warren,
2009). The first category would include, for example, semiotic analyses of photographs
in graduate recruitment brochures (Hancock, 2005), in annual reports (Davison, 2007,
2008; Graves et al., 1996; Preston et al., 1996) or in the media more generally (Davison,
2009, 2010). The second category would include methods of visual elicitation, such as
photo-elicitation, where research participants take workplace photographs as subjects
for discussion (Warren, 2002), or create drawings to represent their organizations,
then used as a basis for interview or discussion (Vince and Broussine, 1996). Whilst
the papers in this volume fall into both categories as further discussed below, here
we introduce the collection through a different methodological theme – that of the
utility of the visual, in other words “What does the visual really add?”
Many of the papers in this issue address how visuals have been incorporated into
studies of the research setting. They critically examine how they are used and created
during the methodological process in order to draw out the contribution of the visual
over more traditional qualitative methods. Slutskaya et al.’s exploration of “dirty work”
among butchers in the UK (Vol. 7, pp. 16-33), demonstrates how photographs are a
medium that allow the expression of sentiments that would otherwise uncomfortably
transgress class and gender norms. This adds a practical and useful dimension to how
images work “in the field” which has hitherto been dealt with in fairly vague terms by
organizational scholars. For example, Parker (2009) talks about the image as the “third
party” in interview settings, and Warren (2005) has argued that ownership and agenda
setting are important characteristics in raising participants’ voices in research.
 QROM Slutskaya et al.’s candid account of the struggle to get male, working class research
7,1 participants to “open up” to them as middle-class academics adds some practical meat
to these more abstract and conceptual bones. They explain how asking the butchers to
take photographs of “a working day” allowed them to (re)perform their work in a
richer, emotive and more aesthetic sense during interviews since they were cast in the
role of “expert”, shifting power dynamics often under-recognized in qualitative
8 research practice (Warren, 2005). We often forget that following ethical protocols,
adjusting the timing and spacing of interviews (as indeed practised by Slutskaya et al.)
and ensuring anonymity – in other words being “good” researchers – is not enough to
mitigate the local micro-politics of actually doing interviews as embodied, socio-
culturally emplaced human beings (see Riach, 2009).
This notion of performance is the central theme in Steyaert et al.’s thought-
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provoking paper about modes of dissemination that call for “more active audiencing”
(Vol. 7, pp. 34-53) and the pivotal role visuals can play in this. Despite several decades
of arguing that organization is a state of always “becoming” (e.g. Chia, 1996) and in
constant flux (Law, 2004), our methods tend to pin down rather than open up
“organization as it happens” (Vol. 7, pp. 34-53). What is particularly striking about the
examples of multimedia, audio-visual, filmic artifacts they exemplify, is the
juxtaposition of images with one another to both draw us in and then rupture the
interpretation we might begin to form. Likewise, Bramming et al. (Vol. 7, pp. 54-71)
contribute to the performativity debate by extending the method of photo-elicitation to
incorporate diary keeping and focus groups. They argue that in so doing, they are
working toward a method which allows the field to “talk back”. Following
Czarniawska, they question where the field begins and ends and critique early visual
organizational research for adopting “common sense understandings of the photo as a
depiction or representation of an organizational reality”. Thus, as we discuss further
below, Bramming et al. try to reconceptualize what it means to “use” the visual and go
on to discuss it is potential as a performative method. Rather than the image itself
being the site of analysis, which can – if we are not careful – come to stand for the
research phenomenon, it is instead the image-in-use to which we should pay attention.
Page and Gaggiotti (Vol. 7, pp. 72-85) bring this performativity into the classroom,
which is perhaps the most important site for experimenting with modes of inquiry –
since it is where we, and our students begin to learn the craft of research. Using the
example of a module on organizational change management, Page and Gaggiotti take
us through their students’ reactions to using, selecting and audiencing visuals that
speak to them about the challenges of business ethics. Foregrounding the affective
power of the visual artifacts the students produced, they show how through their
ambiguity, visuals open up complexity – and in a similar way to the method described
in Slutskaya et al.’s paper outlined above – generate richer thinking and expression,
otherwise curtailed by power relations and contextual custom. Here we can trace
parallels with research carried out using participatory arts methodologies that aim to
surface hidden perspectives, often among marginalized groups (see e.g. O’Neill, 2008).
We tend to think students are disinterested in reflection, but perhaps we are just asking
them the wrong questions – in words instead of pictures. The idea that students might be
taught according to the principles of “videocy” rather than literacy is a central theme in
Bell’s (2008) book on Reading Management and Organization in Film, reviewed in this
issue (Vol. 7, pp. 128-32) and this offers fruitful avenues for further pedagogical research.
It is audiencing, rather than the production of visuals, that Warren addresses in her
paper (Vol. 7, pp. 86-104) investigating the social mechanics of Sievers’ “Social Photo
 Matrix”. Using a psychoanalytical method to surface the collective “organization in the Exploring the
mind” (Armstrong, 2007) participants in the matrix contribute photographs they have visual
taken on a particular research theme, and then voice their associations to each others’
images. While recognizing the useful contribution psychoanalysis makes to qualitative
understandings of organizational life, Warren draws on media studies to bring in the
social and situational dynamics of viewing in groups, enriching the potential of the
technique. A different analytical framework for dealing with viewing is proposed by 9
Campbell (Vol. 7, pp. 105-24) who recognizes the importance of the “strategic image”
(Schroeder, 2002) as “the aesthetic ambassador for the organization” (Campbell, Vol. 7,
pp. 105-24). In order to make sense of how this process works, she extends Derrida’s
deconstruction from its roots in literary criticism to “problematize not solutionize” the
image – rather than making sense of what an image means, her approach seeks to
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“complicate the obviousness of the image” (Campbell, Vol. 7, pp. 105-24) – introducing
oscillation into the image, opening up possibilities rather than closing down meaning
as we discuss further below.
(Re)conceptualizing the visual
The above discussion indicates a growing interest in the use of visual techniques and
approaches for qualitative data collection and analysis within organizational research.
However, the visual is important not only in terms of methods, but also through our
conceptual thinking and empirical studies in practice. Authors who provide an
overview of visual and culture studies often develop a framework of categories and
labels to indicate specific periods, areas and clusters of study demonstrating that “the
visual” as a category is one whose meaning shifts over time and in relation to historical
socio-technical contexts (Dikovitskaya, 2002; Elkins, 2003; Barnhurst et al., 2004). In
addition to highlighting the different perspectives, subjects of study and theoretical
frameworks, these overviews also raise many questions relating to the disciplinary
foundations and historical roots of visual studies. For example, Elkins (2003) presents a
three-way split between developments in cultural studies[1], visual culture[2] and
visual studies. In contrast, Barnhurst et al. (2004) describes the links between visual studies
and the field of communications studies and how this relates to many alliances with
different disciplinary groups, journals and societies. Finally, Dikovitskaya (2005) seeks to
explore the developments and controversies concerning visual and cultural studies. For
instance, she describes how the focus on the visual has been seen as a challenge to
traditional notions of reading and literacy with a focus on visual signs and semiotics:
The literary text consists of visible signs, so that the alphabet and mode of inscription become
an issue and the researcher has to think about and analyze writing as a system of images.
Beyond this graphic level, there is a realm of virtual visuality in literature implied by the text
that contains images, inscriptions and projections of space. Visual Culture also refers to this
world of internal visualization that appeals to imagination, memory and fantasy. The study of
Visual Culture allows all those aspects to come into view: one begins to look at and actually
examine the process of visualizing literary texts (Dikovitskaya, 2005, p. 248).
Other writers such as Mitchell (1986, 1994, 2005) have been seen as key authors within
the visual field and have used both terms within their work (i.e. visual culture and
visual studies). However, Herbert (cited in Dikovitskaya, 2002) raises the tension
between these two areas of study. He suggests that visual culture has a tendency to
focus on human products with a distinct visual aspect, while visual studies seeks
to focus on the study of visual artifacts and objects in order to open up the constant
and productive tension between the two underlying concepts (the social human “being”
 QROM and material “art”)[3]. These overviews raise some interesting themes relating to the
7,1 development of specific terms and disciplinary labels, as well as debates on the
assemblage and specific repetitions of disciplinary practices and approaches (namely, a
growth in disciplinary frameworks associated with visual culture and visual studies
and new journals, groups and teaching developments).
However, for our specific purposes here, it is important to consider how an
10 increased focus on the visual has opened up a diversity of thinking and new empirical
objects which enable the exploration of complex interfaces between the visual, culture
and organizations. This takes us beyond a focus on visual studies connected to art and
art history, to those including technology and digital media, science, medicine and law
(Sturken and Cartwright, 2009), education, religion and politics, to name but a few.
Within the management field, interest in visual qualitative research has emerged in
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accounting (Davison, 2007-2010; Davison and Warren, 2009; Graves et al., 1996; Preston
et al., 1996; Quattrone, 2009), advertising (Schroeder, 2002, 2008) and organization
studies (Dale and Burrell, 2008; Hancock, 2005; Vince and Warren 2012; Warren, 2002,
2005, 2008)
In a similar vein, the papers within this special issue provide a wide range of
perspectives and approaches to the visual and combine different ideas and interdisciplinary
thinking from a wealth of research fields and domains. For instance, many of the
papers within this special issue seek to reconceptualize the visual in terms of a
research method, but they also question how the visual is incorporated into the
research in terms of the methodological, theoretical and conceptual thinking.
This includes a mutual desire shared by many of the authors to shift away from a
traditional representational approach. This is particularly apparent within the paper
by Bramming et al. (Vol. 7, pp. 54-71), who call for a shift towards a non-
representational approach with a focus on performativity and process (Butler, 1993;
Thrift, 2008; Latour, 2005)[4]. This thought is echoed in both the papers by Campbell
(Vol. 7, pp. 105-24) and Steyaert et al. who draw upon the work of Derrida to explore
different conceptualizations of the visual. In this vein, Campbell illustrates how Derrida
enables a shift from a logocentric approach through examples from advertising. Within
the paper she describes how such an approach, with a focus on the conceptions of
totality, rationality and the “ideal” of internally coherent, singular and consistent
truths, may serve to trivialize or eliminate the other and alterity. This concern with
difference and alterity connects to the way in which certain papers seek to avoid an
excessive desire for centring, coherence and a singular view of reality in the ways in
which we develop methodological and conceptual approaches to the visuals and
images. As suggested by Cooper (1998, p. 108), the unknowable and excessive can
provide the sources of energy and possibilities which underlies the “flux and flow of
unfinished, heteromorphic organisms” (Law, 2004, p. 117). This has also been raised
more generally within visual and cultural studies with concerns about the conception
of the visual as a disembodied image, disconnected from their histories and
social contexts, or as Latour (2005) would describe, a shift towards a “double click
phenomena” of information without transformation.
This concern with otherness, alterity and difference in visual studies therefore
raises many additional questions. For example, when examining the visual and images,
how can we explore the many complex and different relations, mediations and
associations (e.g. signs, traces and images) involved in creating presences and absences
which underlie organizational practices and processes. This includes the role they may
play in creating what can be seen and what cannot, or what can be accounted for, and
 what cannot, as well as accounts which can never be total or universal (e.g. seen from Exploring the
one place) as what is visible in one account, can be invisible in others (Höpfl and visual
Matilal, 2009). Also how can absences be seen to act? (Law and Mol, 2002;
Hetherington, 2004), and what role may they play in producing the “object” which is
never unique and simple? (Law and Singleton, 2005). For if nothing travels without
chains that sustain them (Latour, 2005) how can we trace the many and complex
relations that serve to produce different possibilities while constraining others[5]? 11
Thus, rather than focusing on homogeneity, singularity and durability, how can we
understand stability and change in terms of multiplicity, difference and otherness?
(McLean, 2012). Such an analysis can provide further insights into how we conduct
visual studies of organizing and highlights the theoretical and methodological
implications of engaging in rich and in-depth empirical studies.
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Steyaert et al. (Vol. 7, pp. 34-53) further this debate within their review of the role of
films and multimedia projects by exploring the performative practices of visualization
and the processual and heterogeneous dimensions of organizing. They examine how
certain visual practices may both conceal and reveal certain traces and how some
aspects may become visible while others fade into the background. By drawing on the
work of Latour, Hermant, Shannon and Reed and a film by Trinh Minh-ha, they outline
the potential of visual approaches for engaging in the multiplicity and heterogeneity of
organizing, histories and memories. This resonates with Campbell’s desire to open up
further interpretations “lost in time” in order to access shadows of what is not seen or
said, and those gaps and silences unexplored. Furthermore, both the papers by
Bramming et al. and Slutskaya et al. highlight how certain visual practices through
photo elicitation open up new conversations and dialogues within settings in which
materiality, senses and thoughts are closely entangled. Not only does this emphasize
the role of visual studies in terms of data collection as already discussed, but also how
the authors seek to rethink the ways in which they conceptualize the visual and its
performative role in relation to practices of organizing and the production of accounts.
Finally, Page and Gaggiotti (Vol. 7, pp. 72-85) highlight the performative role of visual
practices in bringing certain ethical dimensions into spaces which opens them up for
different forms of reflection. The alternative modes of visual-based enunciation serve
to evoke a different set of emotions, sense of engagement, and new possibilities for
engaging with the ethics of business practices. Through their research into the role of
visual images in student learning they explore how understanding, ethics and
organizational change may be re-imagined through different forms of visual, verbal,
textual images and interactions.
To conclude, each of the papers in this special issue opens up many different lines
of thought and possibilities in relation to the ways in which we understand the visual
conceptually, theoretically and methodologically. As a collection, they provide
innovative and insightful contributions to the area of visual studies. Furthermore, we
hope to have shown how qualitative research might be usefully extended through the
use of image-based research and greater attention to the visual as a subject of study.
Notes
1. Cultural studies is often associated with developments within the UK in the 1950s (Hoggart,
1958; Williams, 1958), 1970s and 1980s (Hall, 1980) as combined further with sociological
approaches, art history, film studies, anthropology, gender studies, journalism, etc.
2. Visual culture is linked to cultural studies but during the 1970s there was an increased focus on
the visual aspects, especially within the USA. For Elkins, this area of study particularly began
 QROM to take hold during the 1990s. While various theorists are connected with this approach certain
writers are particularly prominent including Barthes, Walter Benjamin, Foucault and Lacan.
7,1
3. For example Elkins describes how the apparent split between visual culture and visual
studies was welcomed by some, as it allowed them to “escape” certain connotations
associated with notions of cultural analysis.
4. Science and Technology Studies have explored through many different examples and
12 illustrations the many different practices and processes which make things “visible” or
“present” within science and technology (Lynch and Woolgar, 1990).
5. Images such as signs, inscriptions and figures can be seen as mediators in performing and
constraining different forms of actions and acts of engagements within organizations
(Latour, 2005; Jones et al., 2004).
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 About the Guest Editors Exploring the
Jane Davison is a Professor of Accounting at Royal Holloway, University of London and a
chartered accountant (ICAEW) with City of London auditing experience within a major firm.
visual
She also has research interests in the fine arts and is a founding member of the International
Network for Visual Studies in Organizations (www.in-visio.org).
Christine McLean is a Senior Lecturer in Organization Studies at Manchester Business
School, University of Manchester. Her teaching areas include Social Studies of Technology and 15
Organising, Research Methodology, and Actor Network Theory. These overlap with her research
work in which she has a keen interest in the ways in which we understand the role of objects with
respect to the organising process and the process of visualisation. She is a founding member of
the International Network for Visual Studies in Organizations (www.in-visio.org).
Samantha Warren is Professor in Management at Essex Business School, University of Essex
Downloaded by UNIVERSITY OF HONG KONG At 07:38 31 January 2016 (PT)

and has been using visual methodologies to research organizational issues for over a decade. She
is a founding member of the International Network for Visual Studies in Organizations (www.
in-visio.org) and her research interests span organizational and professional identity, aesthetics,
materiality and space at work and the role of smell in workplace life. Samantha Warren is the
corresponding author and can be contacted at: swarren@essex.ac.uk

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