Page 202 - Design meets Business:An Ethnographic Study of the Changing Work and Occupations of Creatives

190 Design Meets Business
vities’ other than those targeted to achieving creative output. So far, only little studies illuminate what other those ‘other mundane activities’ that which creatives perform. For example, an exception is the work of Rahman and Barley (2017) who argued that architects spend a lot of time on “situated redesign”, which is work oriented to resolve or prevent unforeseen tech- nical problems that can hamper the progress of projects.
A motivation for the neglect of ‘mundane activities’ of creatives might be that in the past, most attention has been given to creativity and innova- tion involved in the work of creatives themselves (Harrison & Rouse 2014; Berg 2016; Fortwengel, Schüßler & Sydow 2017). Most research focused on the ‘intellectual capital’ (Bourdieu 1977) or the shaping of novel “ideas that form the basis of any creative endeavor” (Townley et al. 2009: 944), or on how innovative ideas are assessed (Elsbach & Kramer 2003), selected and brought to fruition (see e.g. Lingo & O’Mahony 2010). Research who did mention other ‘mundane activities’ like management and planning (Cohendet & Simon 2007), building networks (Uzzi 1997; Uzzi & Spiro 2005) and brokering (Hargadon & Sutton 1997), explained this in the light of the creativity involved in the work of creatives. Such attention for the creativity involved in the work of creatives, is not surprising since the latter often seek to develop products or services that are appreciated as distinc- tive, unique and novel.
While previous studies yielded interesting insights, an implication of the focus on creativity in the work of creatives, is that we lack a deep understanding of ‘what creatives do’ (Rahman & Barley 2017). Knowing more about the mundane activities of creatives is important “as occupa- tions continue to evolve and as people find themselves working in entirely new fields, as well as in organizations whose forms depart from standard bureaucracies, detailed fieldwork on the mundane activities of members of the so-called creative and technical occupations becomes increasingly important for our understanding of what work is, how it is accomplished, and how it is organized (Hughes 1958; Barley & Kunda 2001; Bechky 2011 in Rahman & Barley 2017: 405). In this regard, this dissertation builds on the work of Carlsen and colleagues (2012) who urge scholars to focus not only on creative work as the development of new ideas, but also on all the other practices evolving around it.
This dissertation research contributes to what we know about mundane activities of creatives (Rahman & Barley 2017) in various ways. First, in Chapter 2 it is demonstrated that creatives perform various material prac- tices not only for purposes of creativity but also, and especially, for the sake of reinforcing their identity as craftsmen. In addition, in Chapter 3 it is demonstrated that creatives decorate their work space with ‘designerly’