ABSTRACT
This chapter describes the method, design, process, and some of the learning’s from, and insights into, what it means to use photos as a means of understanding what might be below the surface of an organisation. It presents two case examples. The first is a seminar with postgraduate students in a Department of Business and Economics at a German university, and the second in a penal institution for remand prisoners in Germany. The experience from these two examples as well as from other social photo-matrix (SPM) gives encouraging evidence for the underlying assumption that this method allows organisational role holders to conceive their organisations differently in the light of new thinking and thoughts. Contrary to the common assumption that photographs are owned by the photographer, in the SPM the photograph, not the photographer, is the medium of discourse. The social photo-matrix is an action research orientated experiential methodology in the making.
