Abstract
In recent years, governments have increasingly pursued innovation by embed-ding design into their organizations. One particularly common approach to em-bedding design in government organization is to establish public sector innova-tion labs. These labs are described as contributors and facilitators of innovation in policymaking processes; however, less light has been shed on the role of in-house designers (including these labs) in fostering and managing the changes made by design practices within government organizations. In the current study, design management has been used as a theoretical lens to study the strategic activities of in-house designers in a Dutch municipality to embed design within the organization. The findings show the importance of strategic activity by in-house designers to foster design practice and resulting organizational changes and the need for participation of more organizational members in this activity. We conclude with setting an agenda for more research and practices on strategic activities to foster design practices and organizational changes in government.
Keywords
design for policy, embedding design, design management, local government
DOI
https://doi.org/10.21606/drs.2022.528
Citation
Kim, A., van der Bijl Brouwer, M., Mulder, I., and Lloyd, P. (2022) A study on strategic activities to foster design practices in a local government organization, in Lockton, D., Lenzi, S., Hekkert, P., Oak, A., Sádaba, J., Lloyd, P. (eds.), DRS2022: Bilbao, 25 June - 3 July, Bilbao, Spain. https://doi.org/10.21606/drs.2022.528
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
Conference Track
Research Paper
Included in
A study on strategic activities to foster design practices in a local government organization
In recent years, governments have increasingly pursued innovation by embed-ding design into their organizations. One particularly common approach to em-bedding design in government organization is to establish public sector innova-tion labs. These labs are described as contributors and facilitators of innovation in policymaking processes; however, less light has been shed on the role of in-house designers (including these labs) in fostering and managing the changes made by design practices within government organizations. In the current study, design management has been used as a theoretical lens to study the strategic activities of in-house designers in a Dutch municipality to embed design within the organization. The findings show the importance of strategic activity by in-house designers to foster design practice and resulting organizational changes and the need for participation of more organizational members in this activity. We conclude with setting an agenda for more research and practices on strategic activities to foster design practices and organizational changes in government.