Page 26 - Design meets Business:An Ethnographic Study of the Changing Work and Occupations of Creatives

14 Design Meets Business
Another motivation for this dissertation research is that, so far, most research on creatives explored the phenomenon of ‘creativity’ or how crea- tives themselves become ‘creative’ (Carlsen, Clegg & Gersvik 2012). As a consequence, our knowledge of how creativity is triggered and managed in the workplace is growing (Hargadon & Bechky 2006; Rosso 2014; Jones et al. 2016; Cohendet & Simon 2016; Fortwengel, Schüßler & Sydow 2017). Yet, at the same time, we still know little about the ‘mundane’ activi- ties of creatives, or the other activities in which creatives engage beyond their own creative processes (Rahman & Barley 2017). This is problematic because the work of creatives is as much about managing creative processes as it is about other ‘mundane’ activities. Hence, a better understanding the wider social context and interactions of creatives is warranted (Hargadon & Bechky 2006), looking at diverse interactions such as those with each other, with clients and with their work materials.
Finally, it is relevant to explore how collaborations between crea- tives and business shape the work and occupations of creatives because it can shed light on the occupational developments of creatives. In today’s society, occupations constantly change and evolve (Barley & Bechky 2017). In particular, Rahman and Barley (2017: 405) write that “as occupations continue to evolve and as people 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 occupations become increasingly impor- tant for our understanding of what work is, how it is accomplished, and how it is organized”. Recognizing these opportunities for research, in this dissertation I will address the following research question:
How do creatives cope with their changing work and occupation as a result of collaborating with business?
In order to answer this question, I designed and conducted three quali- tative studies at two different creative organizations. I conducted two studies at one design firm (‘Fjord’) and one study at an innovation hub (‘Waag Society’). As this dissertation research aims to answer an ‘how’ – questions and explore the mundane activities of creatives, a practice approach is adopted (Nicolini 2012; Feldman & Orlikowski 2011; Bechky 2011). In accordance with the practice approach, I collected data through conducting field research. Being physically present in the two creative organizations allowed me to capture detailed data. In particular, most of the data of this dissertation was collected through ‘doing ethnography’, an immersive approach through which I did not only observe the daily acti-