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The purpose of this paper is to explore a visual method, snaplog (snapshots and logbooks) from a performativity theory approach.

The paper uses empirical examples from a three‐year qualitative research project where snaplogs are used as an experimental method. The paper presents a reading of performativity theory and discusses the performativity of using visual methods in the research process.

The paper concludes that visual methods have a special ability to activate the field in a way that avoids preconceived ideas, and creates possibilities to observe the researched phenomenon and how it practices, resists and revoices the questions asked by the researchers.

The paper explores and discusses the authors’ experiences and reflections on the positioning and scope of using snaplogs as a visual method. It does not report a systematic evaluation of its implications.

Snaplogs offer the researcher the possibility to activate and cooperate with the researched phenomenon.

The potential value of the paper is that it offers inspiration to organization researchers looking for innovative/performative research methods.

This paper aims to explore what belonging is through the represented experience of people at work. The aim is to investigate employees’ interpretations of belonging at work and its interrelation with the material, aesthetic and emotional aspects associated to the where, the how and the when workplace is inhabited.

In line with the practice turn in social sciences, this study uses the visual method (snaplogs), which includes pictures and texts.

Belonging is situated in and integrated with social interactions, materiality, emotions and aesthetics. Belonging is about being part of something, the process of becoming through constant mediation between material aspects and social components, the process of experiencing boundaries and the attempt to perform, engage and participate (and find spaces for shared practices) in a workplace. Together, they constitute the situatedness, the here and now, of experiences of belonging and the perceived interpretation of being one among equals across organizational boundaries.

Data were only collected at one point in time. The authors also relied on their own interpretations of pictures and texts and did not involve the informants in the analysis.

Being, becoming and belonging comprise material, social and affective dimensions. These dimensions should be addressed for employees to belong at work.

This study contributes to the belonging literature on perceived interpretations of what belonging is at work. The paper is also original in terms of the visual method used to grasp the practice representation of belonging experiences.

The purpose of this paper is to discuss how “the visual” might be conceptualised more broadly as a useful development of qualitative methodologies for organizational research. The paper introduces the articles that form the basis of this special issue of QROM, including a review of related studies that discuss the analysis of organizational visuals, as well as extant literature that develops a methodological agenda for visual organizational researchers.

The Guest Editors’ conceptual arguments are advanced through a literature review approach.

The Guest Editors conclude that studying “the visual” holds great potential for qualitative organizational researchers and show how this field is fast developing around a number of interesting image‐based issues in organizational life.

A future research agenda is articulated and the special issue that this paper introduces is intended to serve as a “showcase” and inspiration for qualitative researchers in organizations and management studies.

This issue of QROM is the first collection of visual research articles addressing business and management research. The Guest Editors’ introduction to it seeks to frame its contents in contemporary interdisciplinary debates drawn from the wider social sciences and the arts.

The purpose of this paper is to reflect on the development of visual qualitative research in organizations and management over the past ten years, the experience of editing a special issue of Qualitative Research in Organizations and Management entitled “Exploring the visual in organizations and management”, and the potential contributions this journal could make to the advancement of this significant area of research.

This paper provides an overview and critical reflections on visual qualitative research in the study of organizations and management.

The authors note that organization studies have been slow to develop visual research compared to other disciplines, especially the humanities and branches of the social sciences. However, development has been rapid over the past decade, and the authors comment on the diverse visual empirical material and the range of conceptual approaches.

The paper is a condensed reflection. It predicts a “mainstreaming” of visual research in future years and an increased integration of the visual into the study of management processes and organizations.

This piece provides useful directions and references for researchers new to the field and different ways of thinking the visual and visual methodologies.

The paper provides a rapid overview of the state of visual research in organizations and management studies.

This chapter presents a novel method for using PechaKucha presentations to generate and analyze participant-generated video data. As a data source, participatory video (PV) differs from ethnographic or archival video by relying on participants to tell their own stories. As a presentation technique, PechaKucha produces six-minute-and-forty-second, narrated slideshow presentations. The slideshows or recordings from live PechaKucha presentations are a dense form of PV that is easier to code and analyze than traditional sources of PV. This chapter describes the procedures to capture and analyze PechaKucha-based PV and illustrates considerations for researchers who plan to use PV to gather data.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the intersection of professional values and career roles in accountants’ presentations of their professional identity, in the face of enduring stereotyping of the accounting role.

This study presents a qualitative investigation of accountants’ construction of their professional identities and imagery using a Goffmanian dramaturgical perspective. Viewing professional identity construction as a presentational matter of impression management, the investigation employs a reflexive photo-interviewing methodology.

Accountants use a variety of workplace dramatisation, idealisation and mystification strategies inside and outside the workplace to counter the traditional accounting stereotype. They also attempt to develop a professional identity that is a subset of their overall life values.

Their professional orientation is found to embrace role reconstruction and revised image mystification while not necessarily aiming for upward professional mobility. This has implications for understanding the career trajectories of contemporary accountants with associated implications for continuing professional development and education.

The paper focusses on professional role, identity, values and image at the individual accountant level, while most prior research has focussed upon these issues at the macro association-wide level. In offering the first use of reflexive photo-interviewing method in the accounting research literature, it brings the prospect of having elicited different and possibly more reflective observations, reflections and understandings from actors not otherwise possible from more conventional methods.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the potential of incorporating visual methods in the study of identity and identity work.

Scholars have proposed a range of approaches to the study of identity. However, studies have typically relied on interviews or surveys with little exploration of the dynamic narrating of self-in-situ inherent to identity and identity work. The paper reviews the aforementioned methods, builds on the power of visual approaches, and proposes a method involving figurative character image-elicitation (FCI). FCI uses personal, contextual cartoon-style images to mobilize and encourage the narration of identity. The paper details the development of the approach, drawing on a pilot study, and reports its use in an exploratory study of employee identity.

The results suggest that the use of FCI provides a situated focus for the narration of identity with the signifying – self-insitu – nature of the images providing room for participants to position themselves as subject. These features are also suggested to provide a safe distance for a more in-depth and expressive discussion which transcends impression management.

The use of FCI has highlighted the power of visual methods in the exploration of identity and identity work. The approach is personally engaging and contextually adaptable providing methodological opportunities for a range of organizational and societal studies.

While recent theoretical discussions around discourse–material relationality have facilitated important conceptual and analytical advancements within the broader field of CMS, less progress has been made methodologically with regard to innovating empirical methods and data modes. Therefore, the purpose of this article is to contribute to strengthening the methodological focus in the literature when grappling with the relationality of discourse–materiality and co-constitution. This includes a method-retooling framework inspired by new materialism.

In this article, the authors engage at the methodological level by developing a method-retooling framework that combines insights from organizational discourse studies and new materialist thinking. This framework enables a retooling of existing methods to become sensitive to multimodality and offers two concrete examples that were developed during fieldwork for a multi-sited and multi-method case study in 2018.

Based on the framework for retooling methods for multimodality, two illustrations are offered. These include retooling interviews by employing multimodal vignettes and retooling observations by using multimodal mappings. They are unfolded and discussed regarding their appropriation of discourse–material relationality.

This paper includes original research and method developments – adding a critical focus on the methodological aspects and potential advancements that are necessary in the wake of the ongoing debates around discourse–materiality across CMS and specifically within studies of organizational discourse and CCO. By suggesting a framework, the authors stimulate methodological explorations and contribute to furthering method developments that are equal to the rich conceptual progress made within the field.

The purpose of this paper is to argue for the reflective use of visual techniques in qualitative inter-viewing and suggests using visuals not only as projective techniques to elicit answers, but also as facilitation techniques throughout the interview process.

By reflecting on their own research projects in organization and management studies, the authors develop a practical approach to visual interviewing – making use of both projective and facilitation techniques. The paper concludes by discussing the limitations of visualization techniques, and suggesting directions for future research on visually enhanced interviewing.

The integration of projective and facilitation techniques enables the interviewer to build rapport with the respondent(s), and to elicit deeper answers by providing cognitive stimulation. In the course of the interview, such an integrative approach brings along further advantages, most notably focusing attention, maintaining interaction, and fostering the co-construction of knowledge between the interviewer and the interviewee(s).

This paper is reflective of what is currently occurring in the field of qualitative interviewing, and presents a practical approach for the integration of visual projection and facilitation in qualitative interviews.

Telecare is a growing practice defined as diagnosis, treatment and monitoring among doctors, nurses and patients, which is mediated through ICT and without face-to-face interaction. The purpose of this study is to provide empirically based knowledge about the organization of the use of ICT and dilemmas of this increasingly common practice in healthcare.

The study draws on observations, interviews and desk research in relation to a large €4.5m pilot project at four hospitals in Copenhagen regarding care of 120 patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disorder (COPD). The empirical study was carried out over four months. Online video consultations were observed alongside workshops focusing on nurses’ photo elucidation of the telecare practice. The analytical ambition was to start the study in the middle of things and explore the emergent design of telecare.

Telecare not only embraces new standards and possibilities for professional responsibility and accountability for nurses but also alters the relationship between doctors and nurses. This leads to a dilemma we characterize as “paradoxical accountability”.

The study draws on Star’s notion of “infrastructure”. In this perspective, infrastructure comprises human and non-human conduct embedded in organizational conventions, relations and sites. The analysis demonstrates that nurses are not only exposed to a new responsibility as all-round case managers but they also have less access to clinical decision makers. The notion of “paradoxical accountability” is developed to account for this dilemma.