Page 53 - Design meets Business:An Ethnographic Study of the Changing Work and Occupations of Creatives

1. Introduction 41
sions around ‘what designers ought to do’ could be interpreted as efforts to establish an occupational mandate, which is further developed into a paper in Chapter 2. Then, to better understand the habits of designers, and their turn to artifacts, I read the literature on the role of materia- lity in organizations (Bechky 2003a; Rafaeli & Pratt 2006; Elsbach 2006; 2009; Carlile et al. 2013) and in particular turned to the work of Sennett (2009), who unpacks the concept of ‘craftsmanship’. During my data analysis, I turned back and forth between these studies and my empi- rical data, sometimes adding new studies to it, sometimes rereading a study and reinterpreting its findings. This iterative process helped me to move beyond the intuitive analysis of my data, while identifying potential contributions for theorizing.
Collaborative meetings. All academic efforts are collaborative endea- vors. Whether scholars draw on the work of others, pick the brains of others or write on an article together, collaboration is unavoidable. During my dissertation research much of my data analysis was shaped by colla- borative meetings in which I presented my work to others. Especially my meetings with my supervising team at the KIN Group and professor Beth Bechky (New York University) were helpful. With their fresh perspec- tives and critical questions, they helped me shed a new light on my data. In particular, these meetings helped to identify what insights were worth to further explore empirically and theoretically. My data analysis at Fjord resulted in two papers, which are presented in Chapter 2 and Chapter 3.
1.7.5. Qualitative case study at Waag
Next to doing ethnography at Fjord, I also conducted a qualitative case study at Waag. Waag is a non-profit Dutch innovation hub. On its website, the organization is described as an independent and multidisciplinary institute for art, science, and technology. In projects, Waag develops new technologies and explores social innovation challenges across a variety of domains related to digital society (like ‘e-health’ or ‘digital citizenship’). Waag is already in existence since 1994 and has reached the status of a key player in creative projects in the Netherlands, and lately also inter- nationally (Bria 2015). One of their products, the FairPhone, has become a famous example of a creative social digital innovation (www.fairphone. com). Waag employs over 50 creatives, and has a broad network of freelan- cers and partners related to it. It fuels its efforts through a combination of funding from national and international public subsidies and grants (80 percent of their income), client organization co-financing and income from spin offs of their projects (20 percent of their income).