Page 114 - Design meets Business:An Ethnographic Study of the Changing Work and Occupations of Creatives

102 Design Meets Business
tion increasingly attracted professionals with a background in business and management. Moreover, while Service Design is still an emergent occupa- tion, heterogeneity inside the occupation intensified as design moved into the field of business, making it a relevant setting to study how members of an emergent occupation develop an occupational mandate in times of change.
Based on grounded theory techniques (Strauss et al. 1988), this study shows that the occupational mandate remains in development and is never fully settled. In other words, despite efforts to define commonalities, ambiguity around the occupation of Service Design remains to persist. We saw that newcomers challenged existing understandings of Service Design and questioned the work practices of longer serving members of the occupation. In particular, we saw discussions emerging between two communities of designers: ‘business designers’ and ‘craft designers’. Their discussions emerged around interactions with space, time and clients. For example, whereas business designers were willing to iterate their design concepts with clients during design processes, craft designers preferred to keep client engagement at minimum and “surprise” their clients in the final phases of design processes. In order to progress their work despite these internal differences, the designers developed temporary settlements. They for example temporarily adapted their approach to each other or developed a compromise and invented a new practice. At the same time, we saw that designers expressed their discontent with the situation by gossiping and joking. Taken together, this study shows that the arrival of newcomers might lead to the (re)negotiation of the emerging occupational mandate and, as a result, ambiguity around the occupation may persist.
Our findings elaborate on organizational studies of occupational emer- gence (Fayard et al. 2017; Nelsen & Barley 1997). First, we elaborate on theory by showing that ambiguity inside the occupation might enhance and the occupational mandate might be (re)negotiated when emergent occupa- tions are changing. Building on the thought that occupations are inherently heterogeneous (Howard-Grenville et al. 2017), we challenge the underlying assumption that developing an occupational mandate is a beginning phase in an occupation’s institutionalization (see Fayard et al. 2017; Nelsen & Barley 1997). Our study shows that an occupational mandate can be (re)negotiated at all times, especially when newcomers arrive in occupations (Howard-Gren- ville et al. 2017). Further, we promote an ethnographic approach to studying occupations (see also, Bechky 2003a; 2003b; Nelsen & Barley 1997; Van Maanen 2011). Doing ethnography allowed us not only to grasp the ‘front- stage behaviors’ (Goffman 1973) in which designers presented themselves as a coherent group of practitioners, but also the ‘backstage behaviors’ (Goffman 1973) in which heterogeneity inside the occupation became evident.