Abstract
Public Sector Innovation Labs (PSI labs) have been increasingly established globally in response to the growing complexity of social issues. These labs typically adopt design-oriented approaches, which may engender potential conflicts with existing organizational cultures due to their exploratory nature. While this has led to the discussion on the organizational perspective to overcome such obstacles, previous research has emphasized the managerial layer, and there are limited discussions on establishing legitimacy on the part of PSI labs. To fill this gap, this paper examines the process of establishing legitimacy—how PSI Labs can gain approval, support, or continuous project opportunities from management or other departments—through a study of five PSI Labs in Finland. This paper presents three main points. First, establishing legitimacy is a dynamic, ad hoc process that emerges from daily design practices and utilizes provisional circumstances and resources, rather than a planned outcome. Second, we identify three categories of approaches used by PSI labs to gain legitimacy: promotion, which disseminates achieved results; collaboration, which involves organizational actors in design processes; and networking, which creates a mutual support system. Finally, we argue that the process of establishing legitimacy overlaps with the process of knowledge creation, which leads to the expansion of tacit and explicit knowledge about design within an organization.
Keywords
PSI labs, design in the public sector, legitimacy, knowledge creation
DOI
https://doi.org/10.21606/iasdr.2023.160
Citation
Mori, K.,and Iwasaki, H.(2023) How do PSI Labs establish legitimacy?: Dynamics, approaches, and knowledge creation, in De Sainz Molestina, D., Galluzzo, L., Rizzo, F., Spallazzo, D. (eds.), IASDR 2023: Life-Changing Design, 9-13 October, Milan, Italy. https://doi.org/10.21606/iasdr.2023.160
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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
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How do PSI Labs establish legitimacy?: Dynamics, approaches, and knowledge creation
Public Sector Innovation Labs (PSI labs) have been increasingly established globally in response to the growing complexity of social issues. These labs typically adopt design-oriented approaches, which may engender potential conflicts with existing organizational cultures due to their exploratory nature. While this has led to the discussion on the organizational perspective to overcome such obstacles, previous research has emphasized the managerial layer, and there are limited discussions on establishing legitimacy on the part of PSI labs. To fill this gap, this paper examines the process of establishing legitimacy—how PSI Labs can gain approval, support, or continuous project opportunities from management or other departments—through a study of five PSI Labs in Finland. This paper presents three main points. First, establishing legitimacy is a dynamic, ad hoc process that emerges from daily design practices and utilizes provisional circumstances and resources, rather than a planned outcome. Second, we identify three categories of approaches used by PSI labs to gain legitimacy: promotion, which disseminates achieved results; collaboration, which involves organizational actors in design processes; and networking, which creates a mutual support system. Finally, we argue that the process of establishing legitimacy overlaps with the process of knowledge creation, which leads to the expansion of tacit and explicit knowledge about design within an organization.