This paper presents findings from an ongoing research project that is based in an understanding of organizations as artefacts. The overall research aim of the project is to provide insights into the hidden design activities and behaviours through which members of an organization contribute to its shape.
Looking at an organisation as an artefact on the one hand acknowledges the human-made process that brings organisations into existence (Rollinson 2008) and the possibility that an organisation is a product of human action (Junginger 2008). On the other hand it raises questions with regard to the core properties of this artefact, as it is rather different from other artefacts of physical or digital nature. One of the paradoxes is that an organisation is made by but at the same time ‘consists’ of humans.
This paper then communicates specific observations and findings gained during the analytical phase of this research and responds to one specific objective: to identify characteristics of organizations when considered designed artefacts. At the core of this research is not the organization of design processes but the hidden activities that shape an organization and the question whether and how we can better understand these as design.
By eliciting core aspects of design from literature and taking these as indicators to be applied to the case study, I will evaluate the organizational side of a building project as designed artefact. This should enable the identification of shared characteristics and nuances that this perspective can provide.
As this developmental paper draft is restricted in its extend, I will place an emphasis on the observations and findings, less on the theoretical background and the concept of organizations as socially designed artefact (Herfurth 2013). Research that looked into emergent and hidden forms of design has been conducted by Gorb and Dumas (1987) in which they conclude that design activities in organizations happen without being called ‘design’ and are not necessarily carried out by people called ‘designers’. Little research has moved further into this direction.
Discussions around aspects of organizations that form part of the artificial and designed world, that I refer to, derive from concepts articulated by human-centred design scholars (Krippendorff 2005; Junginger 2008) and were taken up by the management and organizational studies community (Jelinek et al. 2008; Michlewski 2008; Pandza and Thorpe 2010).