Towards a better paradigmatic partnership between design and management

Design Management is an academic area that straddles the disciplines of design and management, as well as the practice of managing designers and the emerging corporate interest in the design concept. Drawing on Burrell and Morgan’s (1979) paradigmatic framework, we problematize the way knowledge from design merges with knowledge from management. We claim that design management is a partnership between “main-stream management research ” and design. We draw attention to other management paradigms – and discuss how many of them may better suit the design discourses