[In]visible [in]tangibles: Visual portraits of the business élite

The Visual Dimension in Organizing, Organization, and Organization Research: Core Ideas, Current Developments, and Promising Avenues

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. Su...

Visual Management Studies: Empirical and Theoretical Approaches*

Abstract: The field of visual research in management studies is developing rapidly and has reached a point of maturity where it is useful to bring together and evaluate existing work in this area and to critically assess its current impact and future prospects. Visual research is broadly defined to encompass a variety of forms, including pictures, graphs, film, web pages and architecture. It also incorporates work from several sub-disciplines (organization studies, marketing, accounting, human resources, tourism and IT), and includes research based on pre-existing visual material and studies that use researcher-generated visual data. The authors begin by considering the growing recognition of the visual turn in management research as a counterweight to the linguistic turn, while also discussing reasons for resistance to visual approaches. Next, they review research that uses visual methods to study management and organization and suggest that visual management studies may be categorized according to whether methods used are empirically driven or theory based. This categorization highlights the philosophical, theoretical and interdisciplinary underpinnings of visual management studies. It also enables the visual to be accorded a status equivalent to linguistic meaning, through dispelling the realist assumptions that have impeded analytical development of visual management studies to date.

Impression Management in Sustainability Reports: An Empirical Investigation of the Use of Graphs

Abstract: The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether firms use graphs in their sustainability reports in order to present a more favorable view of their social and environmental performance. Further, because prior research indicates that companies use social and environmental disclosure as a tool to reduce their exposure to social and political pressures (the legitimacy argument), we also examine whether differences in the extent of impression management are associated with differences in social and environmental performance. Based on an analysis of graphs in sustainability reports for a sample of 77 U.S. companies for 2006, we find considerable evidence of favorable selectivity bias in the choice of items graphed, and moderate evidence that where distortion in graphing occurs, it also has a favorable bias. Our results regarding the relation between impression management and performance are mixed. Whereas we find that graphs of social items in sustainability reports for companies with worse socia...

Using Photographs to Research Organizations: Evidence, Considerations, and Application in a Field Study

Abstract: Despite calls for more visual methodologies in organizational research, the use of photographs remains sparse. Organizational research could benefit from the inclusion of photographs to track contemporary change processes in an organization and change processes over time, as well as to incorporate diverse voices within organizations, to name a few advantages. To further understanding, the authors identify researcher choices related to the use of photographs in organizational research, clarify the advantages and disadvantages of these choices, and discuss ethical and other special considerations of the use of photographs. They highlight several organizational areas of research, primarily related to the management discipline, that could benefit from the inclusion of photographs. Finally, the authors describe how they used photographs in a study of one organization and specifically how their intended research design with photographs changed over the course of the study as well as how photographs helped to de...

Visualising accounting: an interdisciplinary review and synthesis

Abstract: This paper offers the first wide-ranging review and synthesis of visual research in accounting. It aims to shape, order and evaluate the field for the first time. Visual forms are important to accounting because of their power and their ubiquity in an increasingly visual society. Visual forms constitute representation (incremental information) or construction (impression management) or both. The paper defines the visual broadly to include pictures, photographs, film, architecture, diagrams, advertisements and web pages that appear in a wide variety of documentary and geographical locations. It encompasses papers that examine a wide range of issues (from impression management, visual rhetoric, professional identity, gender and diversity to corporate social responsibility, intellectual capital, myth and religion). First is an overview of the ‘visual turn’ in contemporary society, critical thought and accounting. The second part brings together for the first time a wide range of work on the visual in account...

The Strength of Weak Ties

Abstract: Analysis of social networks is suggested as a tool for linking micro and macro levels of sociological theory. The procedure is illustrated by elaboration of the macro implications of one aspect of small-scale interaction: the strength of dyadic ties. It is argued that the degree of overlap of two individuals' friendship networks varies directly with the strength of their tie to one another. The impact of this principle on diffusion of influence and information, mobility opportunity, and community organization is explored. Stress is laid on the cohesive power of weak ties. Most network models deal, implicitly, with strong ties, thus confining their applicability to small, well-defined groups. Emphasis on weak ties lends itself to discussion of relations between groups and to analysis of segments of social structure not easily defined in terms of primary groups.

Judgment Under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases

Abstract: This article described three heuristics that are employed in making judgements under uncertainty: (i) representativeness, which is usually employed when people are asked to judge the probability that an object or event A belongs to class or process B; (ii) availability of instances or scenarios, which is often employed when people are asked to assess the frequency of a class or the plausibility of a particular development; and (iii) adjustment from an anchor, which is usually employed in numerical prediction when a relevant value is available. These heuristics are highly economical and usually effective, but they lead to systematic and predictable errors. A better understanding of these heuristics and of the biases to which they lead could improve judgements and decisions in situations of uncertainty.

The Promise of Entrepreneurship as a Field of Research

Abstract: To date, the phenomenon of entrepreneurship has lacked a conceptual framework. In this note we draw upon previous research conducted in the different social science disciplines and applied fields of business to create a conceptual framework for the field. With this framework we explain a set of empirical phenomena and predict a set of outcomes not explained or predicted by conceptual frameworks already in existence in other fields.

Handbook of Theory and Research for the Sociology of Education

Abstract: The first of its kind, this handbook synthesizes major advances in the sociology of education over the past several decades. It incorporates both a systematic review of significant theoretical and empirical work and challenging original contributions by distinguished American, English, and French sociologists. In his introduction, John G. Richardson traces the development of the sociology of education and reviews the important classical European works in which this discipline is grounded. Each chapter, devoted to a major topic in the field, provides both a review of the literature and an exposition of an original thesis. The inclusion of subjects outside traditional sociological concern--such as the historical foundations of education and the sociology of special education--gives an interdisciplinary scope that enhances the volume's usefulness.

Naming and Necessity

Abstract: I hope that some people see some connection between the two topics in the title. If not, anyway, such connections will be developed in the course of these talks. Furthermore, because of the use of tools involving reference and necessity in analytic philosophy today, our views on these topics really have wide-ranging implications for other problems in philosophy that traditionally might be thought far-removed, like arguments over the mind-body problem or the so-called ‘identity thesis’. Materialism, in this form, often now gets involved in very intricate ways in questions about what is necessary or contingent in identity of properties — questions like that. So, it is really very important to philosophers who may want to work in many domains to get clear about these concepts. Maybe I will say something about the mind-body problem in the course of these talks. I want to talk also at some point (I don’t know if I can get it in) about substances and natural kinds.