Page 37 - Design meets Business:An Ethnographic Study of the Changing Work and Occupations of Creatives

1. Introduction 25
Artifacts are created through different media and can be tangible or intan- gible, physical or digital, and might refer to the collection of “objects, the numbers, blueprints, faxes, parts, tools, and machines that individuals create, measure, or manipulate” in their work (Carlile 2002: 446). Scholars that study how artifacts are made and used in organizations also refer to this as ‘material practices’ (Stigliani & Ravasi 2012; Bechky 2003a).
Even though it is clear that the material is important, scholars argue that there are still little organizational scholars studying interactions with artifacts in the workplace (Bechky 2003a; Comi & Whyte 2018; Rafaeli & Pratt 2006). The limited attention for artifacts in organizational and management studies might be explained by the fact that artifacts are often treated secondary as supportive to text and talk (Comi & Whyte 2018; Whyte & Harty 2012; Bechky 2003a). Only recently, along with the ‘mate- rial and visual turn’ (Carlile et al. 2013; Boxembaum et al. 2014), scholars gave more attention to artifacts in studies of organizing and work (such as Stigliani & Ravasi 2012; Ewenstein & Whyte 2009; Nicolini 2012; Nicolini, Mengis & Swan 2012; Bechky 2003a). For example, organizational studies on design have shown that material practices are key in the work of desig- ners (Fayard et al. 2017), as they use artifacts as instruments to develop innovative solutions (Boland & Collopy 2004) or to share knowledge between diverse people (Fayard & Stigliani 2010).
Taking seriously the importance of material practices at work, in Chapter 2 I explore what happens if the material practices change. In particular, I explore how designers cope with their work which is beco- ming increasingly abstract and difficult to design. This setting is particu- larly interesting because designers are ‘craftsmen’. Different than most of the knowledge workers (Alvesson 2004), craftsmen are intertwined with their material practices. Because craftsmen seek to perfect their craft and become better in what they do, they engage in the same action over and over again (Sennett 2008). As a consequence, they might perform certain material practices as a matter of habit. These observations suggest that even when designers are encouraged to change their material practices, this might prove to be difficult. Hence, in Chapter 2, I ask: How do designers as craftsmen cope with changing material practices at work?
To enlighten this question, I did an ethnographic study at Fjord, a design firm located in Madrid. Partly a result of a large organizational transformation, the work of Fjord’s designers changed from designing tangibles - technical products such as ‘mobile screens’- to designing intan- gibles – services such as ‘stories’. As a consequence, the material practices of designers changed significantly. Now, the design processes themselves did not demand them to use former design tools and engage in the same