Page 66 - Design meets Business:An Ethnographic Study of the Changing Work and Occupations of Creatives

54 Design Meets Business
Picture 2.1 Showing Pensiopoly to the rest of the designers
digital, such as drawings (Bechky 2003a; Boland et al. 2008), Lego bricks (Oliver & Roos 2004), PowerPoint slides (Kaplan 2011), organizational dress (Rafaeli et al. 1997; Pratt & Rafaeli 1997), and prototypes (Sutton & Hargadon 1996; Carlile 2002). Organizational studies on design showed that designers engage in material practices in various ways. They can use artifacts as ‘boundary objects’ (Carlile 2002) to facilitate knowledge sharing among designers and users (Kelley 2001) or designers and clients (Stigliani & Fayard 2010). Further, they can use artifacts as ‘probes’ to support crea- tivity (Kimbell 2008; Boland & Collopy 2004) or gain aesthetic inspiration (Ewenstein & Whyte 2007; 2009). Moreover, existing studies have high- lighted that designers enact material practices instrumentally, to better manage their work processes.
In research on craftsmanship, however, it is highlighted that artifacts can also be used beyond instrumental purposes (Sennet 2008). Craftsman- ship refers to “the efforts oriented at reaching a high level of proficiency in one’s craft” (Baer & Shaw 2017: 1213). In his book on craftmanship, Sennett (2008) explained that craftsmen might perform material practices without genuine awareness because perfecting a craft demands repeating the same action over and over again. For example, he explains that carpenters might be unaware of using the hammer and positioning their bodies in certain