This edited volume brings together two largely separate fields - organization studies and multimodal social semiotics - to develop an integrated research agenda for the novel interdisciplinary field of 'organizational semiotics'. Organizations, whether for profit, non-profit, or governmental, dominate much of everyday life, and multimodal communication is not only an output of organizations, it is constitutive of them. This volume argues in particular for the importance of organization studies for social semioticians: not just as a site of application, but as a critical contemporary context which requires novel and expanded methods of analysis and critique, and new practices of partnership. The volume addresses a range of institutions and sectors, from civil to retail to medical, from corporations to universities, and reveals how a deep engagement with their meaning-making practices produces insights not just about communication but also about the broader contemporary cultural context in which organizations play such a significant role. Fundamentally, it reveals that the rich analytical and theoretical resources of multimodal perspectives on organizations studies can - and should - make a fundamental contribution to our understanding of organizations in social life. This volume is relevant to social semioticians and organizational researchers, as well as to practitioners and decision-makers in organizations.

This volume brings together two hitherto disparate domains of scholarly inquiry: organization and management studies on the one hand, and the study of visual and multimodal communication on the other. Within organization and management studies it has been recognized that organizational reality and communication are becoming increasingly visual, and, more generally, multimodal, whether in digital form or otherwise. Within multimodality studies it has been noted that many forms of contemporary communication are deeply influenced by organizational and managerial communication, as formerly formal and bureaucratic types of communication increasingly adopt promotional language and multimodal document presentation. Visual and Multimodal Research in Organization and Management Studies integrates these two domains of research in a way that will benefit both. In particular, it conceptually and empirically connects recent insights from visual and multimodality studies to ongoing discussions in organization and management theory. Throughout, the book shows how a visual/multimodal lens enriches and extends what we already know about organization, organizations, and practices of organizing, but also how concepts from organization and management studies can be highly productive in further developing insights on visual and multimodal communication. Due to its essentially interdisciplinary objectives, the book will prove inspiring for academics and scholars of management, the sociology of organizations as well as related disciplines such as applied linguistics and visual studies.

The insight that institutions, and the communicative practices that create, sustain, and challenge them, are multimodal accomplishments has garnered increasing attention from scholars in organization and management research over the last decade. Traditional understanding of social knowledge and meaning as being constituted primarily through verbal discourse has been challenged and extended by work that has promoted the centrality of visual, material, and other sign systems (e.g., audio, gestures, layout) for constructing social reality. While some discursive approaches to organizations and institutions have acknowledged the existence and relevance of modes other than the verbal for some time, systematic research on multimodality has remained rather sparse. In particular, the interaction and orchestration of multiple modes remains terra incognita with considerable empirical, methodological, and theoretical stakes. Together, 54A and 54B of Research in the Sociology of Organizations investigate these issues with innovative research that focuses on the relationship between different modes in the emergence, diffusion, maintenance, and challenge of social meanings and institutions. Individual contributions demonstrate the potential of multimodal approaches to rejuvenate and extend the study of institutions, they revisit research on classic phenomena in organization theory through a multimodal lens, and advance the design of relevant and rigorous methods of analysis for the study of multimodal communicative practices.

The insight that institutions, and the communicative practices that create, sustain, and challenge them, are multimodal accomplishments has garnered increasing attention from scholars in organization and management research over the last decade. Traditional understanding of social knowledge and meaning as being constituted primarily through verbal discourse has been challenged and extended by work that has promoted the centrality of visual, material, and other sign systems (e.g., audio, gestures, layout) for constructing social reality. While some discursive approaches to organizations and institutions have acknowledged the existence and relevance of modes other than the verbal for some time, systematic research on multimodality has remained rather sparse. In particular, the interaction and orchestration of multiple modes remains terra incognita with considerable empirical, methodological, and theoretical stakes. Together, 54A and 54B of Research in the Sociology of Organizations investigate these issues with innovative research that focuses on the relationship between different modes in the emergence, diffusion, maintenance, and challenge of social meanings and institutions. Individual contributions demonstrate the potential of multimodal approaches to rejuvenate and extend the study of institutions, they revisit research on classic phenomena in organization theory through a multimodal lens, and advance the design of relevant and rigorous methods of analysis for the study of multimodal communicative practices.

This volume brings together two hitherto disparate domains of scholarly inquiry: organization and management studies on the one hand, and the study of visual and multimodal communication on the other. Within organization and management studies it has been recognized that organizational reality and communication are becoming increasingly visual, and, more generally, multimodal, whether in digital form or otherwise. Within multimodality studies it has been noted that many forms of contemporary communication are deeply influenced by organizational and managerial communication, as formerly formal and bureaucratic types of communication increasingly adopt promotional language and multimodal document presentation. Visual and Multimodal Research in Organization and Management Studies integrates these two domains of research in a way that will benefit both. In particular, it conceptually and empirically connects recent insights from visual and multimodality studies to ongoing discussions in organization and management theory. Throughout, the book shows how a visual/multimodal lens enriches and extends what we already know about organization, organizations, and practices of organizing, but also how concepts from organization and management studies can be highly productive in further developing insights on visual and multimodal communication. Due to its essentially interdisciplinary objectives, the book will prove inspiring for academics and scholars of management, the sociology of organizations as well as related disciplines such as applied linguistics and visual studies.

Die Studie widmet sich der Analyse der latent hinter den Regelungsinhalten deutschsprachiger Fuhrungsgrundsatze wirkenden Sinn- und Bedeutungsdimension. Unter Ruckgriff auf qualitativ-hermeneutische und argumentationsanalytische Methoden werden die unhinterfragten und typisierten Vorstellungen von Fuhrung und Steuerung rekonstruiert sowie die rhetorischen und argumentativen Strategien identifiziert, mit welchen diese Vorstellungen diskursiv verankert werden. Die latenten Argumentationsmuster im Material zeigen einen starken Fokus auf Effizienzuberlegungen hinter den manifest geausserten Partizipationsbestrebungen. Durch die diffuse und allgemeine Natur der verwendeten Argumente wird ausserdem eine breite Anschlussfahigkeit und damit einhergehend eine herrschaftssichernde Wirkung der Dokumente angestrebt.