About the Book
The visual constitutes an increasingly significant element of contemporary organization, as post-industrial societies move towards economies founded on creative and knowledge-intensive industries. The visual has thereby entered into almost every aspect of corporate strategy, operations, and communication; reconfiguring basic notions of management practice and introducing new challenges in the study of organizations.
This volume provides a comprehensive insight into the ways in which organizations and their members visualize their identities and practices and how they are viewed by those who are external to organizations, including researchers.
With contributions from leading academics across the world, The Routledge Companion to Visual Organization is a valuable reference source for students and academics interested in disciplines such as film studies, entrepreneurship, marketing, sociology and most importantly, organizational behaviour.
Table of Contents:
Introduction: Mapping the Field of Visual Organization Part I: Thinking Visually About Organization 1. Between the Visible and Invisible in Organizations 2. The Visual Organization: Barthesian Perspectives 3. The Method of Juxtaposition: Unfolding the Visual Turn in Organization Studies 4. The Limits of Visualization: Occularcentrism and Organization Part II: Strategies of Visual Organization 5. Constructing the Visual Consumer 6. Cultural Production and Consumption of Images in the Marketplace 7. Portraiture and the Construction of Charismatic Leadership 8. The Signs and Semiotics of Advertising 9. Art, Artist and Aesthetics For Visual Organizational Strategy Part III: Visual Methodologies and Methods 10. Methodological Ways of Seeing and Knowing 11. Navigating the Scattered and Fragmented: Visual Rhetoric, Visual Studies and Visual Communication 12. Using Video Ethnography to Study Entrepreneurship 13. Ethnographic Videography and Filmmaking for Consumer Research 14. Drawing as a Method of Organizational Analysis 15. Visual Sociology and Work Organization: An Historical Approach Part IV: Visual Identities and Practices 16. Arts-Based Interventions and Organizational Development: It's what you don't See 17. Towards an Understanding of Corporate Web Identity 18. Visual Workplace Identities: Objects, Emotion and Resistance 19. Managing Operations and Teams Visually 20. Social Media and Organizations 21. Simulated Organizational Realities Part V: Representing Organizations Visually 22. The Organization of Vision within Professions 23. Visual Authenticity and Organizational Sustainability 26. (Seeing) Organizing in Popular Culture: Discipline and Method
About the Author :
Emma Bell is Professor of Management and Organization Studies at Keele Management School, Keele University, UK. Her research is informed by a commitment to understanding cultures and the role of belief systems in management and organization. She also teaches and writes about methods of management research. Her research has been published in journals such as Organization and Human Relations, and she is the author of three books: A Very Short Fairly Interesting and Reasonably Cheap Book About Management Research (2013) with Richard Thorpe; Business Research Methods (2011), with Alan Bryman; and Reading Management and Organization in Film (2008).
Jonathan Schroeder is the William A. Kern Professor of Communications at Rochester Institute of Technology, USA. Prior to this, he was Chair in Marketing at the University of Exeter, UK and has held visiting appointments at a wide range of institutions. He has published widely on branding, communication, identity and visual issues. He is the author of Visual Consumption (Routledge, 2002) and co-editor of Brand Culture (Routledge, 2006). He is editor in chief of Consumption, Markets & Culture and serves on the editorial boards of numerous journals, including, Advertising and Society Review, European Journal of Marketing, Innovative Marketing, Journal of Business Research and Marketing Theory
Samantha Warren is Professor in Management at the University of Essex, UK. She is a leading writer on visual methodologies in organization studies, has co-edited three journal special issues and convened a major international management conference (Standing Conference on Organizational Symbolism) on the theme of ‘Vision’. In 2007 she co-founded inVisio: the International Network for Visual Studies in Organizations and has been the recipient of four recent research grants relating to the sensory dimensions of organization and management. Her published research spans subjects as diverse as organizational aesthetics, the iPod, workforce drug-testing, flash-mobbing as a contemporary organizational form and she is currently working on a project to explore the social role of smell in office contexts
Review :
'This fascinating volume offers deep insights into how the visual plays an increasingly central role in the development of knowledge-intensive organizations within post-industrial societies. A comprehensive guide to how organizations increasingly visualize their identities and practices.'
John Hassard, Professor of Organizational Analysis, University of Manchester, UK
'The field of organization studies has been slow to develop the visual methods used in anthropology, ethnography, and sociology. Visual images are often mistakenly seen as decorative. But we live in an organized world saturated by imagery designed to influence, persuade, motivate, excite, and to sell, with individual and corporate consequences. Our understanding of the power of the visual has become more pressing with developments in online presence, social media, digital photography, and surveillance techniques. The editors also argue that the role of visual imagery in the social construction of our reality has taken second place to language, and they seek to correct this imbalance.
This benchmark volume clearly signals the visual turn in organization studies. It brings together an extraordinarily rich collection of work - ideas, perspectives, lines of enquiry, methodological approaches - that has until now been scattered. At last we have a unique and comprehensive overview of the scope, diversity, and above all the future potential of this exciting and rapidly developing field.'
David A. Buchanan, Professor of Organizational Behaviour, Cranfield University School of Management
'This companion is not trivial reading. It is rich, complex and diverse; consider it ‘strategic reading’, choosing relevant chapters according to your expertise and interests.'
Issy Drori, VU University, Amsterdam
