Abstract
“One of the most significant facts of our time is the predominance of organizations. Perhaps this is the most significant. It will take time to fully understand its effects on individuals' thinking and behavior. Only a few of them will not be affected by this conditioning process”. If we read this sentence today, for the first time, without knowing its context, date and source, we would first of all be struck by its timeliness. We could also assume that we are dealing with an extract from a publication in the field of economics or business organization aimed at investigating the complexity and speed of the phenomena that contemporary organizations today go through in terms of markets, technologies, people, knowledge. We'd be wrong on both sides. It was 1957 when George Nelson published these considerations in his essay entitled "The Designer in the Modern World". Industrial designer and father of American modernism, Nelson had anticipated by many decades the discourse on the centrality of the organization understood as a complex social system and the main challenge for design for organizations and in organizations: identifying processes, practices, methods to influence them not only in terms of thought and expected behaviors of the individuals who are part of it but also and above all in the generation of a "positive effect on human experience in a world of increasing complexity" (Buchanan, 2015) . This paper aims at exploring the contribution of design in enabling the "shape" of organizational evolution and capacity building.
Keywords
organizational design; change management by design; capacity building; circular organizations
DOI
https://doi.org/10.21606/iasdr.2023.483
Citation
De Matteo, V.(2023) Change management by design. Design as a flow improver in turbulent times, 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.2023.483
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Change management by design. Design as a flow improver in turbulent times
“One of the most significant facts of our time is the predominance of organizations. Perhaps this is the most significant. It will take time to fully understand its effects on individuals' thinking and behavior. Only a few of them will not be affected by this conditioning process”. If we read this sentence today, for the first time, without knowing its context, date and source, we would first of all be struck by its timeliness. We could also assume that we are dealing with an extract from a publication in the field of economics or business organization aimed at investigating the complexity and speed of the phenomena that contemporary organizations today go through in terms of markets, technologies, people, knowledge. We'd be wrong on both sides. It was 1957 when George Nelson published these considerations in his essay entitled "The Designer in the Modern World". Industrial designer and father of American modernism, Nelson had anticipated by many decades the discourse on the centrality of the organization understood as a complex social system and the main challenge for design for organizations and in organizations: identifying processes, practices, methods to influence them not only in terms of thought and expected behaviors of the individuals who are part of it but also and above all in the generation of a "positive effect on human experience in a world of increasing complexity" (Buchanan, 2015) . This paper aims at exploring the contribution of design in enabling the "shape" of organizational evolution and capacity building.