IS THERE AN ORGANIZATIONAL "WAY OF SEEING"? FOLLOWING THE "PRACTICES OF SEEING" IN ORGANIZATION

The aim of this paper is to understand the "practices of seeing" that take place within an organization and to follow the progressive constitution of an organizational "way of seeing" that supports the production of knowledge. Our study contributes to the analysis of practices of seeing in their situated, embodied and materialized dimensions. We conducted an organizational ethnography in a firm of land surveyors and the video recording of the daily activities was privileged. We analyzed how organizational members progressively and jointly build expertise about a property, and, in particular, how specific "practices of seeing" are constituted through the daily work activities. We show that surveying work rests upon the abilities of the organizational actors "seeing" and "making visible" relevant clues in order to support the constitution of an organizational "way of seeing" through the embodied practices of the actors.