Picturing Topics Related to Change: Drawing and Its Underlying Elicitation Processes

Abstract

This article suggests including drawing, a participative visual method, when designing organizational change research. It is based on a comparative analysis of three research protocols that have integrated drawing as a data collection method. Examining how drawing has been used in these studies leads to the identification of four elicitation processes—contextualizing, exemplifying, focusing, and reflecting—by which drawing gives access to data that would be more challenging to collect with conventional research methods alone. The article shows that these processes bring the participants’ emotions, lived experiences, and cultural influences to light in ways that may considerably enrich organizational change research. It ends by providing a set of guidelines on how to employ drawing in triangulation with other data collection methods.

Resilient Values in Game Industry Formation: Institutional Perspective to the Finnish Context

“…Instead of analyzing the drawings and verbal accounts as static representations of ecosystems, we draw on Kress and van Leeuwen (2006, p. 59) who understand drawings as dynamic illustrations or narratives: 'narrative patterns serve to present unfolding actions and events, processes of change, transitory spatial arrangements'. In addition, our data analysis also borrows from Renaud et al (2021) in the sense that the analysis process was abductive in nature. More specifically, while we entered the field with our theoretical understanding in mind, due to the elastic nature of the drawings we could also analyze the informants' perceptions by not imposing any theoretical frameworks on the data.…”

“…Lefsrud et al, 2020). For instance, Venkatraman and Nelson's (2008) photo-elicitation study showed how visual methods can help the respondents explore their subconsciousness (see also Zaltman, 2003); instead of simply generating visual data, talking about the drawings with the researcher enables the respondent to explore meanings and thoughts even further (Renaud et al, 2021). Having said that, due to the relative novelty of drawing-based research methods (Steyaert et al, 2012), most studiesincluding this onehave devised a bespoke approach to collecting and analyzing data involving visual material.…”

“…In line with the first study, in the second phase we invited the respondents to draw the ecosystem by asking the same question: "Could you draw the game industry ecosystem in Helsinki from your perspective?". By collecting drawings, we have been able to enrich interviews by contextualizing them as well as allowing the participants to focus on matters we might have otherwise ignored (as per Renaud et al, 2021).…”

“…In other words, while verbal communication tends to focus on more cognitive and articulated sense-making, visual focuses more on the selusive or difficult to articulate aspects (e.g., Toraldo, Islam, & Mangia, 2018), and their combination can reveal something that otherwise would remain unnoticed (e.g., Lefsrud, Graves, & Phillips, 2020). For instance, Venkatraman and Nelson’s (2008) photo-elicitation study showed how visual methods can help the respondents explore their subconsciousness (see also Zaltman, 2003); instead of simply generating visual data, talking about the drawings with the researcher enables the respondent to explore meanings and thoughts even further (Renaud, Comeau-Vallée, & Rouleau, 2021). Having said that, due to the relative novelty of drawing-based research methods (Steyaert et al, 2012), most studies—including this one—have devised a bespoke approach to collecting and analyzing data involving visual material.…”

Drawgasms: Playing with expectations and experiences of pleasure through multimodal accounts

“…Data for this study was collected in two ways: 16 drawings and immediate follow-up interviews were conducted in person while 13 were collected via email by participants sending their visualizations and answers to accompanying questions to the authors. We complemented verbal data with drawings and similar analogous materials as they do not seem to impose many restrictions, but instead allow participants to explore topics quite freely (Renaud et al, 2021). Consequently, Taussig (2011: xii) elucidates on drawing as giving rise to “a depicting, a hauling, an unraveling, and being impelled toward something or somebody.” Thus, combining the verbal and the visual not only gives rise to new perspectives but it also blends the holistic with the particularistic since an “image is seen as a whole and simultaneously, whereas speech has a more linear and temporal order” (Brooks, 2002: 326).…”