Apologies for Cross Posting.

List members may be interested in this special issue – I know I am

Kirstie

 

 

Dear CMS'ers - apologies for cross postings as usual.

Please find below a call for papers for a special issue of Visual Studies.

Best wishes
Sam

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Call for papers for a Special Issue of Visual Studies
Visual Narratives of Organization
Guest editors: Henrik Schrat, Samantha Warren, Heather Höpfl
Deadline for completed papers: September 1, 2009

The intention of this special issue is to provide an insight into the world of organizations and work. Drawing on an emerging methodology within organisational theory (Warren 2008) this special issue is concerned with visual narratives of work.

The way visual material is used to describe and mediate organizations and the processes by which they are performed has become of increasing interest in Organization Studies. Organizations can be seen as cultural contexts, offering coherent/reproducible conditions to study how pictures both mobilize and reflect organizational action and how these may differ across the corporate and not-for-profit landscape. With roots in the study of organizational symbolism (Dandridge 1980) and developing through a concern with the aesthetic dimensions of organizational life (Strati 1999; Hopfl & Linstead 2000), the visual – as both subject matter and methodology – is a fertile ground for innovative organizational enquiry. On one hand this includes all the qualities which differentiate visual from verbal communication. On the other hand, attending to the visual in organizational life links with different uses of verbal communication, especially storytelling and narration, (Boje 2001). Here we are particularly interested in the aspects that can not only be told (or written), but those which are understood by the act of seeing.  

The issue will focus on the special ways narration is constructed through seeing, say, by artefacts or pictures. How do narrative elements in an organization such as character or plot develop from seeing, and what are the key differences to those elements as developed in text? What can change if the visual component of a narrative is privileged and is germane to its interpretation? Interpretation taken as the basis for action would push the question further: Which streams of meaning are running through an organization, connected with visuals, never surfacing into text or spoken word, but springing directly into action? For instance, how can unconscious processes be surfaced through images? (Sievers 2007).

Springing from this, contributors are invited to consider:

• Moving/ Movie: The person acts as a creator of a narrative by moving through an organisation, by walking from the entrance hall through the corridors to an office and the canteen, for example. It is the observer that moves through real objects, not the movie that simulates narration. How can these mobilizations be recognized and analysed within existing methodological frameworks? Are new ones needed?
• Sense / Cyber – distinctions between an aesthetic reading of a real object and the disembodied images of the cyber age, which exist in non-material, non-dimensional spaces yet are increasingly vital for 21^st century organizational survival via Internet and mobile technologies. How do these elements of organizational imagery become fused or remain distinct in various milieus?
• The Seeing Body – the visual sense as a function of the body, a body which can be managed by external institutions and techniques.
• Fixed/ Fluid - How different would individuals within one organization interpret the same picture? What would that say about the organization? The construction of subjectivity in a wider context could be relevant. The notion of visuality needs to be critically reviewed in this context as a concept which has its own history and conditions.
• The visual as positioned between Gestalt and Semiotics; between Psychology or Linguistic reading. Principles of perception like proximity, similarity, continuance, and closure are seen as a key to understanding, or is the way to better plotted through metaphors and Semiotics?

We anticipate a high quality of submissions but will only be able to publish a limited number. Instructions and guidelines for contributors can be found here: http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals/authors/rvstauth.asp. Authors are responsible for securing the necessary copyright permissions for images included in submissions.

Please direct inquiries and submission to: [log in to unmask]
References

Boje, David. (2001) Narrative Methods for Organisational & Communication Research. London: Sage
Dandridge, T.; Mitroff, I. & W. Joyce (1980) ‘Organizational symbolism: A topic to expand organizational analysis’ Academy of Management Review, Vol 5 (1) pp. 77 – 82

Gagliardi, P. (1990) Symbols and Artefacts: Views of the corporate landscape, deGruyter: Berlin
Höpfl, H. & S. Linstead (2000) The Aesthetics of Organizing, Routledge: London
Sievers, B. (2007) ‘Pictures from below the surface of the university: The social photo-matrix as a method for understanding organizations in depth’ M. Reynolds & R. Vince (eds.) Experiential learning and management education, Oxford: Oxford University Press

Strati, A. (1999) Organization and Aesthetics, Sage: London
Warren, S. (2008) ‘Empirical challenges in Organizational Aesthetics research: Towards a sensual methodology’ Organization Studies, Vol 29 (4) pp. 559 – 580.