Multiplicity and reflexivity in organizational research: Towards a performative approach to the visual

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is, first, to assess the potential of the visual to enact multiplicity and reflexivity in organizational research, and second, to develop a performative approach to the visual, which offers aesthetic strategies for creating future research accounts in organization and management studies.

Design/methodology/approach

The paper reviews existing visual research in organization and management studies and presents an in‐depth analysis of two early, almost classical, and yet very different endeavors to create visual accounts based on ethnography: the multi‐media enactments by Bruno Latour, Emilie Hermant, Susanna Shannon, and Patricia Reed, and the filmic and written work by Trinh T. Minh‐ha and her collaborators.

Findings

The authors’ analysis of how the visual is performed in both cases identifies a repertoire of three distinct and paradoxical aesthetic strategies: de/synchronizing, de/centralizing, and dis/covering.

Originality/value

The authors analyze two rarely acknowledged but ground‐breaking research presentations, identify aesthetic strategies to perform multiplicity and reflexivity in research accounts, and question the ways that research accounts are written and published in organization and management studies by acknowledging the consequences of a performative approach to the visual.

Citation

Steyaert, C., Marti, L. and Michels, C. (2012), "Multiplicity and reflexivity in organizational research: Towards a performative approach to the visual", Qualitative Research in Organizations and Management, Vol. 7 No. 1, pp. 34-53. https://doi.org/10.1108/17465641211223456