Visual Inquiry: Exploring Embodied Organizational Practices by Collaborative Film-Elicitation

Abstract

Analysis of visual data is underdeveloped in visual research, and this article gives a methodological contribution on how to perform collaborative video research on organizational practices, combining ethnographic methods and intervention through film-elicitation. We provide guidance for how to (a) collect ethnographic data with (and without) camera, (b) make preparations for film-elicitation, and (c) facilitate collaborative sensemaking with participants. Building on an enactive approach, we argue that film-elicitation based on a preliminary visual analysis and categorization conducted by researchers reenacts the immediacy and vitality of lived experience. This is done through enabling organizational members to create communicative constructs of the culturally embedded, inarticulate, and embodied aspects of social conduct. As such, we argue that video research is a powerful means for process-oriented theories concerned with capturing the multiplicity of organizational practices.