Marianne Stang Våland

The socio-materiality of designing organizational change

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine the managerial implications of adopting a design attitude to organizational change. Design/methodology/approach – Based on an ethnographic study of a merger, the paper investigates the intricate interplay between architectural design and organizational change in the context of physically relocating an organization to a new office building. Emphasis is given to the socio-materiality of this double design process. Findings – The data suggests that taking a design attitude toward managing organizational change can allow different actors to participate in organizational design processes, releasing management from its traditional role as the keeper of the design solution. Research limitations/implications – Although based on a single case, the paper provides insights into the socio-materiality of organizational change that is relevant in other settings where developing new collective understandings of change processes are needed. Practical implications – A desi...

Designing a Counter: the Constitutive Entanglement of the Social and the Material in Architectural Desi

The relationship between the design and construction of architectural objects — the material — and the social context in which these objects are shaped and used — the social — is a key issue within the sociology of architecture. The relationship between the material and the social is contested: some tend to reify one, be it the material or the social, at the expense of the other, whereas others consider the material and the social to be ‘constitutively entangled’ (Orlikowski 2007:1437). In keeping with the latter perspective, we investigate the recursive interplay between the material and the social in the context of a design process that involved both architectural and organizational design. Particular emphasis is given to how extensive user participation was brought to bear in developing the architectural design and the implications of this for the users’ sense of their work and organization, as well as for the architectural designers’ sense of their professional practice.