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Our primary objective is to provide method-related broad guidelines to researchers on the entire spectrum of issues involved in cause mapping and to encourage researchers to use causal mapping techniques in strategy research. We challenge strategists to open the black box and investigate the mental models that depict the cause and effect beliefs of managers, “walk” readers through the causal mapping process by discussing the “nuts and bolts” of cause mapping, provide an illustration, and outline “key issues to consider.” We conclude with a discussion of some promising research directions.

In this chapter, the authors discuss how visual artifacts may support the analysis and interpretation of qualitative data in organization studies. They draws on their own experience as well as other scholars’ published work to explore the distinctive affordances of visual forms. In particular, the authors identify four roles – namely “mapping,” “analyzing,” “conceptualizing,” and “communicating” – that visual artifacts play to help us move from raw qualitative data to a compelling conceptual product.

Specifically, the use of visuals for “mapping” involves directly coding data into visual forms such as cognitive maps, flow charts or relational diagrams, an approach that may offer a useful complement to traditional verbal coding. Using visuals for “analyzing” implies either comparing, aggregating or decomposing previously constructed visual maps, or drawing directly on verbal data to develop visuals such as analytical flow charts, process replication maps, and trend charts. Using visuals for “conceptualizing” involves rising above the data to develop more abstract representations of concepts and relationships, while maintaining recognizable connections to empirical phenomena. While conceptual models can take a wide variety of forms, the authors illustrate, in particular, the use of visuals to represent linear, dialectic and multi-level process theories. Finally, the authors consider the importance of visualizations for “communicating” insights as well as for developing them, and the inextricable linkages between the two.

The authors conclude by discussing some of the strengths and weaknesses of visualization and by considering how new technologies may offer further possibilities for useful and insightful visual representations of qualitative data that can enhance theory-building.

Contemporary cities are the subject of new forms of visualization that are not only changing how we see the urban world but how it operates as a social environment. This chapter explores Google's Street View database and the Google Maps platform as sites for the production of distinctive new streams of visual data about cities around the world. I argue that this kind of digital infrastructure presents urban researchers with both new opportunities and new challenges, raising complex questions about the role of visual images in the context of the ongoing transition to a digital, computational, and networked image world.

Advances in geospatial technology, web map interfaces, and other Web 2.0 tools provide new opportunities for educators to engage students in critical thinking, problem-solving, and collaborative skills. Although little attention has been given to learning from maps in higher education, knowledge of space is critical to attitudes and decision making as global citizens. Additionally, the ability to easily create multimedia maps offers new educational affordances for students at a distance and has the potential to link geographic and cultural understanding within the context of a variety of disciplines. We discuss the development of a mapping and blogging interactive learning environment, MapBlog, as a visual platform for representing information spatially. In this chapter, the MapBlog will be discussed as an interactive learning environment and as a visual platform for representing information spatially. We present and discuss four MapBlog categories: external content, student-created content, static content, and thematic.

This paper describes the application of, enhancements to, and use of surface fire spread models in predicting and mitigating fire risk in the Wildland–Urban Interface (WUI). Research and fire management strategies undertaken in the East Bay Hill region (containing the 1991 Tunnel Fire) of the San Francisco Bay area over the past decade are reported. We ascertain that surface fire spread modeling has impacted policy and decision making, resulting in a regional strategic plan where large landowners and public agencies are able to implement fire mitigation practices. Although these practices involve extensive fuel management within a buffer zone between the wildland and residential properties, the residential property owners are still at risk, as no strategy within neighborhoods can be accurately mapped using the current scale of the data and models. WUI fires are eventually extinguished by fire fighters on the ground, up close, and at the backyard scale. We argue that large-scale (backyard scale) mapping and modeling of surface fire spread is necessary to engage the individual homeowner in a fuels management strategy. We describe our ongoing research and strategies, and suggest goals for future research and development in the area of large-scale WUI fire modeling and management.

Concept maps are popularly used within academic development spaces, especially to teach new concepts at beginner levels for undergraduate students. Their popularity is partly based on the fact that they employ visual tools such as charts, diagrams, pictures, tables, etc., to simplify concepts that students would otherwise consider dense. This paper reports on the findings of an extended orientation project conducted between February and June of 2022 with a small cohort of 15 first-year students registered in an entrepreneurship course at a vocational higher education institution in South Africa. The research question guiding this study is: How can concept maps inspire entrepreneurial thinking for first-year ECP students at a vocational institution in South Africa? Using Cultural-Historical Activity Theory (CHAT), I analysed the two iterations of the students' concept maps together with selected data from the focus group interviews. Key findings reported include the students' fuzzy knowledge of what entrepreneurship as a discipline entails, the planned career trajectories for most of the participating students, as well as indecisiveness as to whether the students will be pursuing entrepreneurship after graduation. In the language of CHAT, the above findings are described as presenting tensions between the subject, tool and object. This layer of analysis calls for an urgent re-think of how the students are recruited and orientated into the programme and how the curriculum is delivered at the first-year level.