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Call for Papers
Exploring the Interface between Organization Design and the Humanities
Subtheme 31
24th EGOS Colloquium, July 10-12, 2008, Amsterdam (The Netherlands)
Subtheme convenors:
Hans Berends (Eindhoven U of Technology)
Georges Romme (Eindhoven U of Technology)
Jennifer Whyte (University of Reading)
The field of organization studies is witnessing an upsurge of interest in design oriented research. Recently, Organization Science and the Journal of Applied Behavioral Science published special issues on organizational design (Dunbar and Starbuck 2006; Bate 2007). A special issue of Organization Studies on organization research as a science of design is currently being produced. The notion of design may contribute to solving a fundamental weakness of organization and management theory – its limited relevance to practice. The ultimate aim of design oriented research is to make organizations more effective, desirable and humanly satisfying.
The (social) science, humanities, and design traditions are different modes of engaging in organizational research. Science and the humanities help to understand existing organizational systems, either by searching for causal explanations or by seeking hermeneutic understanding and critical reflection. In contrast, design aims to change what exists for the better or create something entirely new. Organizational design aims to create new organizational artifacts and to improve existing ones. Papers published in the recent Organization Science special issue reported, for example, on efforts to enable and improve decision making, organizational boundaries, project work, organizational renewal and organizational structures. Organization studies practiced as a design science aims to develop design knowledge, for example codified in design rules, to be used in the development of solutions to field problems (Romme 2003; Van Aken 2004).
This track explores the interface between organization studies as design science and organization studies from humanities-based perspectives (including interpretive research, social constructivism, critical management studies, postmodernism, discourse analysis, aesthetics). Design approaches in the field of organization studies are often inspired by engineering and medicine. These latter fields are characterized by a realist ontology, an emphasis on causality, technical rationality and control. These are characteristics that humanities have questioned with respect to organizations. Instead of realism, humanities stress the socially constructed nature of organizations. Instead of causality, humanities stress the agency of actors, their ability to say "no" and to shape their own actions. Instead of technical rationality, humanities have stressed sensemaking, communicative rationality, competing values and power struggles. In stead of control, humanities have stressed the downsides of management, control´s unintended consequences, improvisation and organizational becoming.
Yet, design oriented research within the field of organization studies is clearly not wedded to the ontological and epistemological assumptions of other design domains like engineering (Boland and Collopy 2004; Krippendorff 2006). Organizational design has to take the different nature of organizations into account. Organizations are not like mechanical systems in which parts can be replaced by decree. The challenge, therefore, is to see what organizational design can learn from inquiries in the humanities.
A starting point may be the recognition of connections and similarities. Both design and humanities are attentive to the unique characteristics of individual cases, in stead of focusing on averages. Furthermore, they share a focus on the creative abilities of humans. Finally, they find common ground in the idea that research is not value-neutral. Research is implicitly or explicitly committed to goals and acts of research do change the reality that is studied – preferably for the better.
Questions and themes addressed in this track include, but are not limited to:
- How can insights from interpretative research inform the design of organizations? Does interpretative understanding help to make organizations more effective, desirable or humanly satisfying?
- How can traditions of work in design studies and organization studies inform each other? What be learnt about organization design and designing from the practices of professionals that are designing products and services?
- What is the role of values in organization studies as a science of design? Which values or whose values should be dominant?
- Agency, design and intervention. Is the agency of organization members faced with redesigns and interventions a burden or can it be productively used? Does a design approach presuppose too much agency on the part of those who design and intervene in organizations?
- Design and social construction. Is the notion of organizational design compatible with the idea that organizations are socially constructed? What makes particular social constructions (systems of meaning) more or less effective, desirable or viable?
- Generalizability of design knowledge. To what degree is design knowledge culturally embedded? Can the ideal of evidence-based-management be realized? How to deal with diversity?
- Design and organizational processes. Is it possible to design - or design for - renewal, learning, improvisation and organizational becoming?
- Organizational design and aesthetics. Do elegance, beauty and other aesthetic notions matter in organizational design?
- Design and discourse. Can we design organizational discourse? What is the role of language in intervening in the world?
We particularly encourage empirical studies of organizational (re)design and interventions that address these and other themes.
Please submit your abstract (about 800 words) by January 13, 2008, through the conference website or to one of the convenors.
More information: http://www.egosnet.org/conferences/collo24/sub_31.shtml
Kind regards,
Hans Berends
Georges Romme
Jennifer Whyte