Visual rhetoric and the case of intellectual capital

Visual images abound in accounting-related media and are powerful tools for communicating messages regarding all aspects of organisations. This is particularly important in the case of intellectual capital, where a deficient accounting framework for intangibles leads stakeholders to seek enlightenment beyond the financial statements. The central contribution of the work presented here is the development of theory to guide the interpretation of visual rhetoric in pictures and photographs. Within an over-arching framework of Barthesian visual semiotics, a model of visual rhetoric and repetition is developed by reference to the work of Durand and others. Four types of visual repetition are identified: identity, similarity, accumulation and series. In the light of this model, illustrative examples of visual images from annual reports are analysed to indicate how visual rhetoric contributes to the communication of intellectual capital.