Page 36 - Design meets Business:An Ethnographic Study of the Changing Work and Occupations of Creatives

24 Design Meets Business
not only take into consideration the practices itself but the entire system of practices, objects, bodies and other materials in which it is embedded. In Chapter 2, I further explain the relations between people’s interactions and the ‘material’, as I explore how designers cope with changing material practices at work.
Related to all of the above, the practice lens also is based on the belief that all practices are imbued with power. Nicolini (2012: 6) explains this as follows:
“Practices, in fact, literally put people (and things) in place, and they give (or deny) people the power to do things and to think of themselves in cer- tain ways. As a result, practices and their temporal and spatial ordering (i.e. several practices combined in a particular way) produce and reproduce dif- ferences and inequalities”.
As a consequence, interactions can both reinforce and compromise power positions. To stick with the example of the office, the relationship of authority between employee and employer might be reproduced through various interactions. For example, hierarchical relations might be repro- duced in the way in which the employer is using her voice when having a conversation or where her desk is located. Interactions, hence, are not stan- dalone activities but have consequences for all those involved. Following the same logic, interactions can be contested and challenged, and ultima- tely change into new interactions. Chapter 3 of this study might offer an illustration of how previously dominant interactions can be renegotiated upon the arrival of new people in the social context.
Taken together, the practice approach compels a worldview that sees social life as emergent and constantly changing. When studying organi- zations, this means that it is important to give center stage to questions like ‘what people do’, ‘how they do it’ and ‘why they do what they do’. In this dissertation, I explored the questions in three specific areas of inte- ractions: ‘interactions with artifacts’, ‘interactions within occupations’ and ‘interactions with clients’.
1.6.1. Interactions with artifacts
One of the areas of interactions that this dissertation addresses is: ‘interactions with artifacts’. The importance of artifacts is mundanely obvious in what we do at work (Bechky 2006b; 2008). We use our car for transportation to work; we use rooms to have meetings in; send an email with our laptop, and use the coffee machine in our breaks, among others.