Page 153 - Design meets Business:An Ethnographic Study of the Changing Work and Occupations of Creatives

3. (Re)Negotiating Service Design 141
ideas and behaviors. An implication might be that they were inclined to reach temporary, rather than definite, settlements of negotiations. We recommend future research to further explore how contextual develop- ments impact occupational emergence and, in particular, the development of an occupational mandate.
A final consideration is that the intra-occupational struggles in our case were shaped by power asymmetry inside the design team and possibly also at the organizational level. To start with, in the project we followed, a business designer had a leading role in the design team: even though all designers were responsible for the success of the design project, the busi- ness designers was ultimately responsible for keeping the clients happy and communicating with Accenture consultants. One can imagine that because of this authority, the business designer could encourage the other designers to behave in certain ways - even though the latter do not agree. For example, she could invite the clients to join the designers’ interview processes - while the other designers did not agree, yet the other designers could not resist this as she already communicated this decision with the clients. In such occasions, we saw that designers turned to gossip instead of actively resisting. In other words, it might be that in our study the designers were inclined to find a middle ground, while in other situa- tions - in which newcomers embody lower power positions - they could have pushed more for accommodating to their own desires. Further, we expect that the intra-occupational struggles were also shaped by develop- ments on the organizational level. As Fjord was acquired by Accenture, a typical business firm, it can be expected that the designers were ultimately encouraged to adapt to the business designers’ needs instead of that of the craft designers. We recommend other researchers to further explore occu- pational heterogeneity and power differences. Especially we encourage future research to do research on occupational heterogeneity in situations in which collaboration is not the ultimate goal, as we can imagine in such situation intra-occupational struggles might intensify and even hamper the identification of commonalities and the construction of the occupa- tional mandate altogether.
In conclusion, this ethnographic study of Service Design at one design firm described the intra-occupational struggles through which an occu- pational mandate is (re)negotiated in times of occupational change. In our case, the designers shared various commonalities. Collectively, they dressed informally, loved to capture their insights on Post-Its and did not like it when their clients asked them to act like ‘normal consultants’. Yet, at the same time, the designers internally differed in their interactions with space, time and clients. Especially, struggles within the occupation