Call for Papers

Design is hereby defined as the cumulative development of a specific act through which a design-object impacts the process that enables desired outcomes to be realised (D’Ippolito, 2014). As such, design is considered an important tool through which firms filter and understand complex situations, and eventually shape the pathways to appreciate and manage complexity. ‘Design’ emerged in the initial developments of the strategic management field (Aldrich et al., 1984; Mintzberg, 1990), and these terms have together influenced various areas in the broader discipline of management, including organizational studies (Ewenstein & Whyte, 2009; Stigliani & Ravasi, 2012). To advance the interplay between the notions of design and strategy and their interconnection, scholars need to advance toward an agenda that integrates the concepts and explains how they jointly help decision makers in complex firms – like firms that face extensive levels of internationalization, or large firms with diverse products that operate in various industries – to deal with complexity and gain competitive advantage.
 
This sub-theme calls for contributions that address how design can help elaborate complexity within and beyond organizational boundaries, posing impetus on unpacking how a design-driven understanding of strategic processes can enrich organization studies. On one hand, design can help address strategic problems leveraging on creativity-led endeavours (Cross, 2001; Michlewski, 2008). On the other hand, strategy refers to the plans and policies set by senior executives at both head office and foreign subsidiaries (Georgakakis et al., 2022; Paroutis & Pettigrew, 2007) and may help them overcome their bounded rationality and bounded reliability when making strategic choices (Georgakakis et al., 2023).
 
Albeit often described as separate and independent constructs, design and strategy are broadly interconnected. Scholars, for example, stress that strategy in practice is about design, and that design-strategy influences how organizations function (Regnér, 2008; Simeone & D’Ippolito, 2022). Since organizational actions are planned and strategized, design can help to predict and forecast outcomes (Wright et al., 2013). Similarly, boosting creativity and innovation can be facilitated by design and, thus, tendencies to strategize innovative moves of a firm can drive decision makers to design (Liedtka, 2000). Given the versatility of the design-strategy interface, deepening knowledge in these two areas by exploring their interconnection can substantially inform their role in dealing with complexity.
 
Visualizations and materializations produced by the application of design practices can play a significant role in strategy formation. For instance, design can generate experiential learning via co-creation experiments (e.g., use of Lego artifacts), solve complex strategic issues (Bürgi et al., 2005) and it can perhaps also facilitate monitoring and control of geographically distant teams and locations through constructing communication and information exchange among powerful actors.
 
It also allows them to shape and construct their perceptions of complex strategic issues, metaphorically, and literally – by touching, moving, and assembling physical constructions that act as embodied metaphors (Heracleous and Jacobs, 2008). In sum, individuals explore their strategic issues through collective sense-making (Kaplan & Orlikowski, 2013), that is, through the design of real artifacts that are metaphors in the flesh. These designs tell stories that become explicit and materialize only when organizational structures are decoded and made sense by the group that built them (Tschang et al., 2022).
 
This sub-theme seeks to draw attention to the underlying mechanisms through which experiential learning (a core concept in strategic management and strategy-as-practice) – fuelled by integrated design and strategy approaches – can help dealing with complexity (Elsbach & Stigliani, 2018; Samra-Fredericks, 2003). Outputs of design can go way beyond traditional ones, such as industrial products or communication materials, and include, for example, complex services, social innovation projects, artificial intelligence technology, policy instruments, social entrepreneurship initiatives and, more broadly, transformative interventions within natural and social ecosystems (Buchanan, 1992, 2019; Garud et al., 2011).
 
We are open to papers that advance theory, topic, and method and aim to bring together the notions of strategy and design. Some examples of potential directions include, but are not limited to, the following:

• How does the social interaction demanded by individuals or organizations willing to engage in the practice of design-driven initiatives (design thinking but not only) can foster, even facilitate, complex decision making different levels of the firm’s hierarchy (e.g., corporate, foreign subsidiary, middle management)?

• How does design allow managers to mitigate and make sense of different forms of complexity – i.e., international complexity, product-diversification complexity, institutional complexity, and other forms of complexity?

• How does design help managers economize on bounded rationality and bounded reliability in making strategic decisions?

• How can artificial intelligence act as a tool of design to help managers exchange information across subsidiaries and headquarters and ensure corporate integration?

• How can the experience-based learning underpinning design help in developing more empathic strategy?

• How can experiential learning fuelled by integrated design and strategy practices help managers and other societal actors to tackle complex issues, such as widespread conditions of social exclusion, the persistence of injustice in our societies, and the need to address and adapt to climate change?

• In a context increasingly characterized by digital innovation and platforms, how can experience-based learning in collective decision-making shape processes of digitalization and subsequent strategy-making?

• How can we bridge design scholarly traditions with the efforts put in by ethnographic traditions used in organization studies?

References

• Aldrich, H., McKelvey, B., & Ulrich, D. (1984): “Design strategy from the population perspective.” Journal of Management, 10 (1), 67–86.

• Buchanan, R. (1992): “Wicked Problems in Design Thinking.” Design Issues, 8 (2), 5–21.
• Buchanan, R. (2019): “Systems Thinking and Design Thinking: The Search for Principles in the World We Are Making.” She Ji: The Journal of Design, Economics, and Innovation, 5 (2), 85–104.
• Bürgi, P.T., Jacobs, C.D., & Roos, J. (2005): “From metaphor to practice in the crafting of strategy.” Journal of Management Inquiry, 14 (1), 78–94.
• Cross, N. (2001): “Designerly ways of knowing: Design discipline versus design science.” Design Studies, 17 (3), 49–55.
• D’Ippolito, B. (2014): “The importance of design for firms’ competitiveness: a review of the literature.” Technovation, 34 (11), 716–730.
• Elsbach, K.D., & Stigliani, I. (2018): “Design thinking and organizational culture: A review and framework for future research.” Journal of Management, 44 (6), 2274–2306.
• Ewenstein, B., & Whyte, J. (2009): “Knowledge Practices in Design: The Role of Visual Representations as ‘Epistemic Objects’.” Organization Studies, 30 (1), 7–30.
• Garud, R., Gehman, J., & Kumaraswamy, A. (2011): “Complexity arrangements for sustained innovation: Lessons from 3M corporation.” Organization Studies, 32 (6), 737–767.
• Georgakakis, D., Heyden, M.M., Oehmichen, J.D.R., & Ekanayake, U.I.K. (2022): “Four decades of CEO–TMT interface research: A review inspired by role theory.” The Leadership Quarterly, 33 (3), 1–13.
• Georgakakis, D., Wedell-Wedellsborg, M.E., Vallone, T., & Greve, P. (2023): “Strategic leaders in multinational enterprises: A role-specific microfoundational view and research agenda.” Journal of International Business Studies, 54, 514–537.
• Heracleous, L., & Jacobs, C.D. (2008): “Crafting strategy: The role of embodied metaphors.” Long Range Planning, 41 (3), 309–325.
• Kaplan, S., & Orlikowski, W. (2013): “Temporal work in strategy making.” Organization Science, 24 (4), 965–995.
• Liedtka, J. (2000): “In defence of strategy as design.” California Management Review, 42 (3), 8–30.
• Michlewski, K. (2008): “Uncovering Design Attitude: Inside the Culture of Designers.” Organization Studies, 29 (3), 373–392.
• Mintzberg, H. (1990): “The design school: Reconsidering the basic premises of strategic management.” Strategic Management Journal, 11 (3), 171–195.
• Paroutis, S., & Pettigrew, A. (2007): “Strategizing in the multi-business firm: Strategy teams at multiple levels and over time.” Human Relations, 60 (1), 99–135.
• Regnér, P. (2008): “Strategy-as-practice and dynamic capabilities: Steps towards a dynamic view of strategy”. Human Relations, 61 (4), 565–588.
• Samra-Fredericks, D. (2003): “Strategizing as lived experience and strategists’ everyday efforts to shape strategic direction.” Journal of Management Studies, 40 (1), 141–174.
• Simeone, L., & D’Ippolito, B. (2022): “The potential of design-driven foresight to support strategy articulation through experiential learning.” Long Range Planning, 55 (6); https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0024630121001126?via%3Dihub.
• Stigliani, I., & Ravasi, D. (2012): “Organizing thoughts and connecting brains: material practices and the transition from individual to group-level prospective sensemaking.” Academy of Management Journal, 55 (5), 1232–1259.
• Tschang, T., D’Ippolito, B., & Chaboud, M.-C. (2022): “Videogames and their material representations: Prototyping interactive experiences for social and cognitive purposes.” Entreprises et Histoire, 4 (109), 138–156.
• Wright, R., Paroutis, S., & Blettner, D. (2013): “How useful are the strategic tools we teach in business schools?” Journal of Management Studies, 50 (1), 92–125.
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