Making Design Explicit in Organisational Change: Detour or Latour

This paper explores a Latourian approach in addressing the challenge for Design Management to integrate design strategically within small, medium enterprises (SMEs). Design thinking’s positioning towards providing an accessible and open process for organisational change is argued to currently manifest a rhetorical detour around the role of design practice. The proposal is that the role of design can be expressed in the repeated interactions between participants and design artefacts, and how these are then translated into the organisation. The paper uses a case-­‐study method to produce a situated account of design work within a strategic design intervention with an SME. Drawing on Latourian principles around actor-­‐network theory (ANT), observations and accounts of the intervention are grounded in the use of tools, artefacts and activities deployed. This allows for analysis exploring the traceable influences design artefacts have on the work being performed and a reflective space for designers to assess their performative agency. The paper proposes an approach to the constraints and opportunities that design management encounter around the matters of concern for organisational change; and in so doing, how this can inform reflective design practice