User participation in architectural and organizational design

Abstract

There is a growing interest in design and design thinking within organization and management – amongst practitioners as well as within various research communities. The general argument is that managers may benefit from the approaches and ways of working traditionally associated with professional designers. Despite this interest, there is surprising little research on how design thinking can, practically, be brought into organizational contexts. In the paper, we focus on the concept of “managing as designing”, one of the ideas that has emerged from design thinking, and explore what this approach to the management assignment might mean in practice. The empirical context of our study is the merger between two municipal administra- tions that took place as a result of a Structural Reform of the Danish public sector in 2007. In this venture management’s aspiration was to combine two substantial devel- opment projects: the organizational merger and the development and construction of a new town hall to house the new administration. Organized user participation was an important means to this end that en- tailed engaging the staff in developing the interior design of the building; their future workspace. Based on ethnographic methodology, we explore how material artefacts in different ways brought the participants together, enabled them to visualize their work processes and influenced their experience of the spatial organization of their work. Drawing on insights from actor-network theory, we argue that designing organizations and organizational change is a socio-material effect rather than a ‘pure’ management decision. The material artefacts served as mediators, affecting staff members’ comprehension of their work and their workplace; an outcome that not only provided valuable input to the design process but also introduced new managerial challenges. Our analysis is illustrative of some of the processes involved in taking a design approach to management – engaging others in the design processes, working with multiple solutions and decentering of management. However, like other management approaches, a design approach is not without challenges. What is different is the conditions under which these challenges arise – through materially mediated interactions that can lead to new understandings of the organization and change the roles of those involved.