“Glocalizing” visual communication in organizations: when and how to adapt visual communication to local standards (Sabrina Bresciani and Martin Eppler)
Visual communication is increasingly being used in organizations for its unique power to attract attention, engage the audience and enhance recall and comprehension. Business visualization is by no means limited to bar charts or flowcharts, but encompasses a wide variety of forms, from mind maps to visual metaphors, sketches to diagrams. Visual templates based on these genres can be used for supporting collaborative tasks such as strategy development, project management, knowledge management, learning, risk management or planning. Organizations are learning to exploit the power of visualization for communication and collaboration across organizations and often across organizational branches that are located in different countries. As the (business) world becomes more and more flat, visual communication can be particularly helpful for getting a message across various cultures, thanks to its ability to convey a message with symbols and pictograms that can be – often – universally understood. However, the impact of cultural differences on visualization interpretation is frequently overlooked. In this article we thus aim to give an overview of how visualization can be successfully used in an international organizational context, by leveraging the universality of perception and, in particular, by addressing the major differences in the cross-cultural interpretation of visualizations |
