PhD Oral Exam - Alina Gutiérrez Mejía, Individualized Program

When studying for a doctoral degree (PhD), candidates submit a thesis that provides a critical review of the current state of knowledge of the thesis subject as well as the student’s own contributions to the subject. The distinguishing criterion of doctoral graduate research is a significant and original contribution to knowledge.

Once accepted, the candidate presents the thesis orally. This oral exam is open to the public.

Abstract

Visual tools (VTs) encompassing graphic facilitation (GF), graphic recording (GR), visual notes (VNs), mind maps, collective visual posters, and photo elicitation, are increasingly used in organizational settings to support communication, collaboration, and collective sensemaking. Yet despite their growing presence in practice, empirical research on how VTs actually function in diverse organizational teams remains limited. Practitioner literature tends toward experiential accounts, while scholarly research on visuals has largely equated them with data visualization or statistical display, leaving the participatory, relational, and facilitative dimensions of VTs underexamined. Critically, no established body of literature has directly examined Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) as a design principle shaping how VTs are selected, structured, and facilitated, a gap this study explicitly addresses.

Building on organizational development literature that frames VTs not as representational aids but as interventions that actively alter interactional dynamics, redistribute epistemic agency, and create conditions for reflection, negotiation, and collective sensemaking, this dissertation investigates what happens when VTs are used as a facilitation practice with diverse organizational teams. It asks how they affect participation, what barriers and enabling conditions shape their use, what facilitators must hold in mind to deploy them equitably, and whether their effect extends beyond the immediate session.

This study employs a qualitative, arts-based, single-case study design grounded in a critical bricolage methodological stance. Data were generated across a nine-month engagement with a Montreal-based bilingual nonprofit organization, in which an internal Design Team co-designed and facilitated a DEI strategic session using VTs. Data sources included researcher and participant-generated drawings, pre-session surveys completed by 10 participants and post-session surveys completed by 15 participants from a pool of 20 session attendees, and semi-structured interviews with six Design Team members. Analysis followed an inductive thematic process guided by Richardson’s (2000) strategy, which will be further developed in Chapter 4.

Seven empirical themes emerged: facilitation as a core condition of method effectiveness; the paradox of time; inclusion, epistemic agency, and the flattening of hierarchies; cognitive depth and the visual pause; identity barriers and the “I’m not an artist” blockage; modality tensions between analog intimacy and digital filtration; and workflow and productivity. Participants valued VTs not primarily for their visual qualities but for the relational and temporal conditions they created, the slowing down, the shared surface, the permission to think differently together.

The study makes three primary contributions. Theoretically, it reframes VTs as epistemic mediators whose effect is conditional rather than inherent, challenging the persistent “magical effect” assumption in practitioner discourse. Methodologically, it demonstrates a coherent approach to treating participant-generated drawings as primary analytic data within an organizational case study. Practically, it proposes a DEI-informed facilitation framework that translates empirical findings into actionable guidance for practitioners navigating linguistic,

cultural, neurocognitive, and positional diversity. In doing so, the dissertation advances organizational development theory, facilitation practice, and arts-based research methodology, while arguing that as artificial intelligence (AI) reshapes what it means to produce visuals, the irreplaceable core of visual facilitation remains the relational, present, and intentional human facilitator.