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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.

This chapter presents an auto-ethnographic journey into the world of women's bodybuilding and the role performance-enhancing drugs play in the pursuit of muscularity in this growing, but hard-to-reach, subculture. The research addresses a paucity in the literature and paves the way for further research to inform public health initiatives for this population. Synthesizing journal entries, field observations and informal conversations recorded over the course of 18 months, this chapter provides insight into the rituals and practices present in bodybuilding culture. This embodied narrative explores the decision-making process surrounding anabolic androgenic steroid use in the context of competitive endeavour, including the impact that cultural norms, peer influence and personal narrative have on their uptake. It also sheds light on the experiences of being a woman in a man's world and the additional stigma women face when attempting to increase their muscularity. It also highlights the personal and professional challenges involved in auto-ethnographic endeavour.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the leadership qualities and behaviours required to support recovery-focussed practice in mental health.

This paper contrasts the prevailing leadership style within the NHS with the leadership style required to support recovery-focussed practice in mental health. The underlying reasons for, and implications of, this disparity are explored.

The leadership style required to support recovery-focussed practice in mental health services is one based on collaboration, empowerment, service-user led practice, autonomy, shared decision making, distribution of power, compassion, strengths, valuing, recognising and rewarding positive behaviours and using a collective approach. This is fundamentally at odds with that experienced by staff working within the NHS.

If NHS services are genuinely to promote the recovery of those whom they serve then the leadership and culture of organisations is critical.

The purpose of this paper is to introduce the practices and findings of a visual inquiry developed by the co‐authors with students in a Business School in the south west of England. The authors are interested in how students engaged with the visual as a practice of inquiry and how this contributed to their development of a critical approach to the concept of ethics in business organisations.

Students visited an exhibition shown as part of the 100 days countdown to the COP15 UN climate change conference, and constructed visual representation of questions and dilemmas related to ethical business practice. The analysis focuses on student presentations, and the discussions that these provoked on the relationship between “business” and “ethical practice”.

Doing co‐inquiry with visual images enabled many students to engage more proactively with ethical dilemmas; to attend to deeply felt values that they were not accustomed to bring into the rule bound environment of the classroom; to develop critical readings of the visual as a discourse about business organisations and their claims to ethical practice; and to create their own visual representations of ethical dilemmas within business practice.

The research methodology brings together inquiry‐based learning and visual inquiry in the context of undergraduate learning in a business school. The paper considers the significance of the methodology and findings as a contribution to visual inquiry methodology and practice, and as a medium for enabling students in a business school to develop their ethical sensibility.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the possibilities of incorporating such visual methods as photoelicitation and photovoice into qualitative research, in order to retrieve something that, as a result of particular group socialisation, has been hidden, unspoken of or marginalised.

The research design combines 40 in‐depth verbal interviews with male butchers, with the use of photoelicitation and photovoice, in order to increase participant control of data generation.

Results suggest that photoelicitation enabled working‐class men to engage with themes which are rarely reflected on or discussed; which may sit uneasily with desired presentations of self; and which challenge traditional notions of gendered work. It prompted participants to elaborate and translate their daily experiences of physical labour into more expressive and detailed accounts. This provided room for the display of positive emotions and self‐evaluation and the surfacing of the aesthetics and the pleasures of the trade – aspects that might have been otherwise concealed as a result of adherence to identity affirming norms. Photoelicitation also evoked powerful nostalgic themes about the past: a lament for the loss of skills; the passing of the time of closer communities and more traditional values.

The use of photovoice and photoelicitation in the exploration of a class and gendered “habitus” has highlighted the power of visual methods to offer a closer look at what participants considered important, to open space for the emergence of unexpected topics and themes and to allow for more comprehensive and reflective elaboration on specificities of personal experiences and emotions.

The purpose of this paper is to discuss the ways in which Derridean deconstruction can be used for image research.

Derridean concepts, mainly located in literary criticism, are adapted to image research.

The paper presents four concepts of visual deconstruction: logocentric vision; close reading images; seeing the Other; and problematising not solutionising the image.

Many more aspects of Derridean deconstruction can be related to the economy of the image.

Little work to date in management studies has considered how Derridean deconstruction can be used to investigate images.

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.

The purpose of this paper is to put forward an argument for the importance of social and situational dynamics present when groups of organizational members view images. This both enriches psychoanalytic theories of the visual previously brought to bear on this topic and adds a valuable psychoanalytical perspective to visual organization studies.

The paper extends Burkard Sievers’ concept of the “social photo matrix” (SPM) through an interdisciplinary review of literature in psychoanalysis, audiencing, media studies and social theory.

A socially nuanced variant of the SPM is put forward as a way to explore organizational members’ experiences of work and employment, as part of a nascent “visual methodological approach” to studying organization(s).

The ideas within this conceptual paper would benefit from empirical investigation. This would be a fruitful and interesting possibility for future research.

The paper concludes with a discussion of the contemporary utility of the SPM as a psychoanalytically‐motivated method through which to understand visually‐mediated effects of organizational action, as collectively experienced by their members and stakeholders.

The paper makes a particular contribution to the poorly‐researched area of the collective reception of organizational images and opens up possibilities to work with the hidden anxieties and defences that arise in the course of organizational action.

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.

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.

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.

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.

The subject of this paper is the application of holograms in cultural institutions. The purpose of this paper is to define the potential areas of hologram use in libraries, particularly in education and promotion, and also in services.

The method of analysis and criticism of literature was used. Based on a search conducted through Google Scholar for the 2006-2016 period, the current state of research on the use of holograms in cultural institutions was established. Subsequently, in order to find examples of hologram use in libraries, museums, galleries, and social organizations, an established set of queries was used to systematically search network resources using global search engines and metasearch engines. The initial list of results was narrowed down to the most relevant. On the basis of the above fact, the main areas of hologram use in cultural institutions were defined and examples of best practices were selected according to chosen criteria. The comparative method then was used to determine potential areas of application of holographic techniques in libraries. Finally, SWOT analysis – the situational analysis method known to management sciences – was used to determine opportunities and threats related to the use of holograms in cultural institutions.

Holograms have broad potential use in libraries that is even broader than initially assumed because they are not limited to education, promotion and services, and can also be used in documentation, research and exhibitions. The use of holograms can bring many benefits, but it is also associated with certain risks that need to be considered.

The results can be widely used in practice as a framework for the implementation of holographic techniques in libraries.

The paper can help initiate debate on the opportunities and risks of using holograms in cultural institutions.

The issue of the use of holograms has not yet been widely discussed in library and information science scientific journals.