Using Photographs to Research Organizations: Evidence, Considerations, and Application in a Field Study

• Published in: Organizational research methods Vol. 15; no. 2; pp. 288 - 315
• Main Authors: Ray, Joshua L., Smith, Anne D.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Los Angeles, CA SAGE Publications 01.04.2012; SAGE PUBLICATIONS, INC
• Subjects: Ethics; Inclusions; Management science; Names; Organizational change; Organizations; Research methodology; Studies; Visual; Voice; visual methods; qualitative research; photographic research methods; photo elicitation
• ISSN: 1094-4281; 1552-7425
• DOI: 10.1177/1094428111431110

Despite calls for more visual methodologies in organizational research, the use of photographs remains sparse. Organizational research could benefit from the inclusion of photographs to track contemporary change processes in an organization and change processes over time, as well as to incorporate diverse voices within organizations, to name a few advantages. To further understanding, the authors identify researcher choices related to the use of photographs in organizational research, clarify the advantages and disadvantages of these choices, and discuss ethical and other special considerations of the use of photographs. They highlight several organizational areas of research, primarily related to the management discipline, that could benefit from the inclusion of photographs. Finally, the authors describe how they used photographs in a study of one organization and specifically how their intended research design with photographs changed over the course of the study as well as how photographs helped to develop new theoretical insights. Photographic research methods represent a viable—but underleveraged—method that should be more fully incorporated in the methodological tool kit of organizational scholars.