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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.

In this paper, we discuss how “cultural capital” and “symbolic capital,” understood as specialized subsets of intangible resources and capabilities, enable firms to achieve valuable strategic positions in ways that are currently underexplored by mainstream strategy literature. We articulate the similarities and differences between cultural and symbolic capital and the intangible assets that have been the focus of mainstream strategy researchers, such as intellectual, social, and reputational capital. Our theoretical arguments build on insights from a number of studies conducted primarily in non-North American settings that have shown how symbolic properties of products create value. We conclude by delineating future avenues of research that strategy scholarship should consider in order to develop a more comprehensive understanding of the relationships between intangible resources and capabilities, and value creation.

Past research has highlighted multiple interrelations between technology and social cognition. In this chapter, building on past studies, as well as on our own research, we advance propositions about the conditions under which technological features are likely to serve as cues for the construction of organizational identity and about the consequences of this fact for the enduringness of these features. In doing so, our emerging framework may contribute to increase more general understanding of how organizational features come to be perceived as part of organizational identity.

Although the organizational identity (OI) construct (Albert & Whetten, 1985) is now in its fourth decade, research in the field has been somewhat uneven, particularly with respect to an essentialist view and hypothetico-deductive type of studies. Believing that this stems in large part from insufficient construct clarity (Suddaby, 2010), this theory-development initiative presents an expanded conceptual framework. The authors exploit several key elements of individual identity and make the case for using these as the basis for conceptualizing an organizational-level equivalent. Starting with the premise that an individual’s identity is the product of comparisons, two dimensions are identified: the type of comparison (similarity, difference), referred to as the “identity conundrum,” and the object of comparison (self–other, self–self), referred to as the “identity perspective.” The authors then propose a four-cell distinctive conceptual domain for OI and explore its implications for scholarship.

Research has begun to explore how individuals perceive and respond to institutional complexity differently. The authors extend such efforts and theorize how the complexity of individuals’ cognitive representations of the institutional logics (based on their perceived differentiation and integration of the external environment) and of their role identities (based on the pluralism and unity of their self-representations) can predict such variation. The authors argue that the former explains whether individuals are capable of enacting norms and beliefs from different logics and of envisioning possibilities to reconcile their contradictory demands, whereas the latter explains whether they are motivated to implement a given response.

The study applies a multimodal approach to position aesthetic innovation, i.e., the strategic use of aesthetic design attributes, such as color and shape, as an institutionalized aspect of competition, rather than as a firm-specific differentiation strategy, in settings that favor the symbolic meanings of products. Empirically, the study offers a detailed case study of the personal computer (PC) industry to examine the institutionalization of aesthetic innovation as a dimension of competition across industrial firms. The study examines the color and shape of PCs over the 1992–2003 period and situates changes to these attributes in the competitive conditions that characterized the industry, paying particular attention to the introduction of the Apple iMac in 1998. Furthermore, it examines the discursive manifestations of aesthetic innovation by content analysis of reviews of PCs and interviews with industry executives. Findings demonstrate that, in a period coinciding with a decline in demand for PCs and an overall mature market as well as with the introduction of the iMac, the majority of firms engaged in aesthetic innovation and used a greater number of aesthetic words in describing their PCs.

This study explores how organizations deal with divergent institutional logics when designing new products. Specifically, we investigate how organizations approach and embody institutional complexity in their product design. Through a multimodal study of serious games, we identify two design strategies, the proximity and the amplification strategies, which organizations employ to balance multiple institutional logics and design novel products that meet competing institutional expectations. Our study makes an important theoretical contribution by showing how institutional complexity can be a source of innovation. We also make a methodological contribution by developing a new, multimodal research design that allows for the in-depth study of organizational artifacts. Altogether, we complement our understanding of how institutional complexity is substantiated in organizational artifacts and highlight the role that multimodality plays in analyzing such situations.