Design as an interactive boundary object

Thinley Tharchen, Raghu Garud and Rebecca L. Henn
Additional contact information
Thinley Tharchen: EM - EMLyon Business School
Raghu Garud: Penn State - Pennsylvania State University - Penn State System
Rebecca L. Henn: Penn State - Pennsylvania State University - Penn State System

Post-Print from HAL

Abstract: What is it about the term ‘design' that facilitates the emergence of interdisciplinary interactions even though the term may hold different meanings for those involved? To address this question, we analyzed the vocabularies, practices and orders of worth proposed by the members of an interdisciplinary Center for Design. Our analysis revealed similarities and differences in the meanings accorded by these individuals to the term design. The analysis also revealed an awareness on their part that their notions of design were incomplete, and that they had to rely on the inputs of others. Such reflexivity was an important factor in fostering meaningful interactions between these individuals. Based on these findings, we argue that design is an interactive boundary object, which enables different meaning structures to co-exist and co-inform actors from multiple disciplines and domains. Within such a view, the emergence of interactions occurs not despite but because of the diversity of views about the notion of design itself.

Keywords: design; Vocabularies; Practices; orders of worth; Design games; Reflexivity; Interactive boundary object (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020-10-30
Note: View the original document on HAL open archive server: https://hal.science/hal-03188179v1
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Published in Journal of Organization Design, 2020, 9, 34 p. ⟨10.1186/s41469-020-00085-w⟩

Downloads: (external link)
https://hal.science/hal-03188179v1/document (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hal:journl:hal-03188179

DOI: 10.1186/s41469-020-00085-w

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Post-Print from HAL
Bibliographic data for series maintained by CCSD ().