Abstract
Organizational life is inherently multimodal, shaped by the interplay of multiple “semiotic modes” or “resources for making meaning”, such as language, gesture, spatial arrangement, and visual and auditory elements (Kress, 2010, p. 79). From a multimodal perspective, these modes are understood as semiotic resources that enable ‘the simultaneous realization of discourses and (inter)action’ (Kress & Van Leeuwen, 2001, p. 21). While scholars have called for the ‘joint consideration of representations and interventions expressed in verbal language and those expressed in material and visual form’ (Boxenbaum et al., 2018, p. 599), organizational research has tended to privilege verbal text, often treating non-verbal elements as peripheral or secondary. Yet, meaning-making in organizations is rarely confined to a single mode; rather, it emerges dynamically across spoken and written language, embodied interactions, visual representations, and spatial configurations. As Höllerer et al. (2019, p. 7) argue, by focusing exclusively on the verbal mode—or by assuming that other modes function in the same way—organizational research ‘ignores empirical material that is readily available and misrepresents the actual life-worlds of actors in and around organizations’.