Page 104 - Design meets Business:An Ethnographic Study of the Changing Work and Occupations of Creatives

92 Design Meets Business
Further, this study offers insights into the specific responses of designers to changing material practices. Designers continue using former material practices such as brainstorming on Post-Its or visualizing their ideas in a Customer Journey and design new physical objects like the board game Pensiopoly. In other words, the designers are not only main- taining but also, in the spirit of O’Mahony and Bechky (2006), ‘stretching’ their current practices to adapt to the new situation in which they work. In arguing this, we provide explanatory insights to research that posed that “tangible objects, in the form of intermediate tools and techniques – customer journeys, service blueprinting, experience prototyping, etc. – play an even more crucial part when the results are inherently intangible and abstract” (Fayard & Stigliani 2010: 23).
Next, our study nuances existing understanding of responses to work changes. Existing organizational research on changing work shows that people might adapt their practices even though this often is accompanied by resistance. As an example, Kärreman and Alvesson (2009) describe how consultants, who experience a lot of pressure to be hardworking, attempt to rebel against their management by developing an alternative discourse that promotes autonomy and freedom. Research further showed that people can try to protect their existing practices in times of change. For example, in their study on the implementation of data analytics in a tele- communications organization, Pachidi and colleagues (2014) show how certain employees resort in ‘symbolic conformity’ by pretending to comply with suggested changes while continuing their own work activities. We add to such studies by showing that even though the designers are frustrated about their changing work, the continuation of certain material prac- tices is not necessarily a rebellion nor a ‘symbolic action’ which expresses their discontent with the new situation. Instead, the designers performed certain material practices as a matter of being naturally inclined to do so, rather than resistance.
This does not mean, however, that the designers did not resist their changing work at all. We saw for example that designers openly resisted by for example saying things like “we do not want to become like the Accen- turians” and dressing informally in “sneakers” in contrast to the Accenture consultants who were primarily wearing “suits”. In an interview, the studio director laughingly remembered that after the acquisition the designers printed T-shirts on which they stated “we are rebels”. Other examples include purposefully ignoring requests of clients or Accenture, working overtime on what they consider important (making artifacts, mostly) and making jokes. Our research extends existing research by suggesting that in the case of emergent occupations like service design that do not