EPISTEMOLOGY OF DESIGN MANAGEMENT
Structure and Status in Design Teams: Implications for Design Management By David A. Owens
DAVID A. OWENS, VANDERBILT UNIVERSITY, OWEN GRADUATE SCHOOL OF MANAGEMENT
Introduction This research started as an attempt to address a fairly fundamental concern of many people interested in design. I wanted to understand how it was that products intended to serve the same purpose or market may be implemented in radically different ways. For example, compare an Apple iMac and a Sony VAIO. Why is it that two general-purpose personal computers look and act so differently? From the perspective of design management, the obvious answer is that designed products derive long chains of decisions, and that different decisions made at critical points in the process result in differences in the designed products. Though this is a fairly commonplace observation, it has deep implications. It suggests that a design can be understood in terms of the decision-making process used to arrive at it, not only in the terms of the aesthetic, market, or technological factors commonly assumed to drive designs. For products designed in groups, this means the organizing structures used to facilitate coordination during the design process have a substantive effect on the content of the design. Beyond coordination, the primary intent of an organizing structure is to control how decisions are made. This means we must consider the design implications of the types of organizing structures we currently use to manage design practice. General business trends suggest a movement toward flat, low-hierarchy organizational structures that are centered around self-managing teams (Dumaine 1990; Katzenbach & Smith 1993). Anecdotal evidence suggests this is particularly true for design organizations and it has significant implications for decision making in teams. When flat organizing structures are adopted in design teams, designers must negotiate design decisions among team members, because a hierarchical, or “top-down,” approach to decisionmaking is not available. Indeed, that members of a design team negotiate decisions with one another during design projects is obvious to anyone who has performed design or observed group design process. Yet, while the fact that these product-defining negotiations occur in groups is often acknowledged, only rarely are the dynamics of the negotiation examined. A common assumption seems to be that these decision-making negotiations proceed in a reasonable if not rational manner, this being a basic premise of design-management processes, such as concurrent engineering. However, in my year-long observation of decision-making negotiations in groups in an R&D organization, I found that negotiations did not follow a pattern of obvious reason or rationality. Rather, I found the patterns and outcomes of negotiations were best explained in terms of status dynamics in the groups. This study examines these status dynamics and their effects on groups that must negotiate designs. Starting from the proposition that meetings can be viewed as status contests, I describe the nature and the content of the status currency used in one organization. I then induce a model of status dynamics that describes how an individual’s level of status might affect the behaviors he or she uses to participate in the group’s working negotiations. In the subsequent quantitative
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analysis, I examine the types and rates of behavior actually used by individuals at each status level. Beyond validating the primary propositions of the status dynamics model, the analysis suggests that status differences among members of a designing group can play a substantial role in explaining the differences we see among designs. Decision-Making and Group Structure In groups and organizations that use traditional hierarchical structures, the decision-making process follows a familiar pattern. Decisions are made on the basis of formal rank in the organization, with the understanding that decisions made by higher-ranking individuals override those made by lower-ranking individuals. To the extent that rank is commensurate with expertise and understanding of organizational goals, this system of decision-making makes sense. It ensures that decisions will be authoritatively made by those with the expertise needed to make them, and that those higher in rank can coordinate and align the actions of others with the goals of the organization. While the potential benefits of formal hierarchy are clear, a number of factors make traditional forms of organizing less useful, particularly in the design context. Uncertainty due to increased technological complexity of the products being designed and due to increased market volatility makes it difficult to create a decision-making structure that reliably puts the required expertise “in the right place, at the right time.” It seems that to address this problem, rather than assign each individual’s authority up front as traditional hierarchies do, the current trend is to choose flatter, looser structures that empower team members to assert their own expertise when needed. This approach is exemplified in the eminently popular concurrent engineering approach (Parsaei & Sullivan 1993; Syan & Menon 1994). It prescribes that the composition of an ideal design team should consist of team-members who represent every phase of a product’s life-cycle. This approach is thought to allow information to flow freely across the bounds of time and distance (these being inherent constraints in a serial “over-the-wall” design process). It also is meant to ensure that representatives of later phases of design and manufacturing have as much influence in making design decisions as do those representatives of earlier phases. While obvious benefits such as these can result from a flattened organizational structure, it is also apparent that structureless models can complicate decision making in groups. To start, design—even under the idealistically rational concurrent engineering arrangement—is far from a rational process of simply identifying design issues and then assigning the expertise required to solve them. Rather, the truly important design decisions—those most critical to the innovative definition of a product—are more likely to be subjective decisions (hunches, intuitions, or guesses) made on the basis of incomplete information, ill-defined judgments, and personally held values. Under uncertainty, the final say over decisions in a flat group remains unclear and unspecified, and so authority over decisions must be negotiated among members as the need arises. But this does not mean that negotiations occur at random. Rather, as I shall describe in detail below, my observations in the R&D organization suggest that working negotiations in groups may take place in fairly predictable ways. Though the organization I studied did not assign or use formal titles to differentiate rank, it was apparent that project team members were able to reliably determine who would talk and who would listen—that is, who would have more influence over decisions, and who would have less. As I reflected on data gathered over the first several months of observations, it became evident that the patterns were also relatively stable over time. Upon further analysis, it became clear that members were using relative social status in the organization as an index for decision-making influence in project groups.
…the current trend is to choose flatter, looser structures that empower team members to assert their own expertise when needed
Research Methodology I conducted the study in an 80-person research and development organization that served as the “research lab” for a diversified technology company. Project teams in the organization performed research and advanced development work in high-technology domains, such as
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telecommunications and computing. From the organization’s point of view, the desirable output at the conclusion of a project consisted of a validated technology, a basic design, a defined set of users, and a plan for commercialization. This organization served as an ideal site to examine issues of status and design for several reasons. First, project teams were extremely interdisciplinary. Although the organization had a large number of scientists and technologists, it also employed a fair number of humanists and designers in teams. This meant that decision-making influence was less likely to follow occupationally determined lines. Second, the organization was extremely flat; all employees involved in the R&D work carried the same title (that is, research staff member). Project teams also had no authoritative leaders, and individuals were free to decide for themselves which projects they would work on. Finally, it was an ideal site because the work that was performed was highly uncertain and required a great deal of subjective decision making by teams. Because there were no objective means for determining whether a cutting-edge technology would work, who its users might be, or how it could best be configured, teams had to constantly engage in subjective negotiations in order to make the decisions that kept a project in motion. I spent more than 1,000 hours on site in the lab over a recent one-year period, observing and interviewing people throughout the organization, attending all meetings, and closely tracking three project groups as they went about their work. Both subjective and objective data was gathered. Data took the form of written field notes, structured observations, audio and video recordings, archival files, and public information about the lab, its parent firm, and its employees. Of the three projects I tracked intimately (interviewing and informally interacting with all members, attending all meetings and social events, and sharing a physical space with them), two focused on projects related to communications technologies, while the third pursued a project in the area of input devices for computers. Social Status in Groups The first task of my research was to create a reliable measure of informal status for individuals in the organization. As a property of individuals, social status represents the informal standing, honor, and reputation a person has within a social group, and status is associated with physical rewards and social influence. The status of each member of a group is assessed by other members based on the belief that the member possesses some of the currencies and personal characteristics valued in the group. Based on interviews and informal conversations with members of this organization—and on detailed observations of their behaviors—it became clear that social status was not simply determined through one or two idealized personal characteristics, such as wealth, intelligence, and gender. Rather, status was determined by a particular set of characteristics and displayed behaviors that were valued in this organization, as well as by circumstances that emerged during group interactions. I became convinced that status was garnered based on the possession of a number of specific skills and personal qualities. For example, many members of the organization reported during conversations and interviews that they tended to respect and value colleagues who were acknowledged experts in a discipline and who were willing to share their expertise. Though the disciplines that were valued tended to be technical ones (that is, hard sciences and engineering), creativity, and persuasive communication skills were also highly respected. Financial wealth seemed to be much less esteemed than having participated in some revolutionary technical innovation even if one had not reaped personal financial gain from the innovation. Just having been part of the revolutionary project seemed to warrant exalted status. These qualitative observations hinted at some of the dimensions of the status order in the organization, and so I sought to tie these down with some objectively measurable status indicators. Objective indicators would allow me to more systematically map out the dimensions of status in the organization, to enlarge the sample through the inclusion of archival data for those whom objective data was available, and could facilitate the validation of my findings by others. I also chose to use objective measures that were unobtrusive in the research site, this being a paramount consideration for ethical and methodological reasons. Past research on status indicates several objective indicators associated with status (that is, gender, age, race, tenure, and education level). However, my experience in the lab suggested
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that other local, contextual status indicators might be applicable, as well. With this in mind, I selected 14 potential unobtrusive indicators of status. These are displayed in Table 1. In order to discern which of these measures could serve as reliable indicators of a status scale, I gathered data on all 14 measures for the population of 380 employees and contractors who had worked for the firm over a four-year span that included the year of this study and performed a factor analysis (see Owens 1998 for details on this analysis). The factor analysis indicated that a subset of 8 of the 14 factors provided a statistically reliable and convergent scale of social status in this organization. The final 8-measure scale of status includes the first 8 measures listed in Table 1 (facilitator; term, tenure, office quality, reviewer, inner circle, list owner, and age). In a reliability analysis, the scale generated a Chronbach’s Alpha of 0.77. With this objective and robust method for determining the status of individuals, I began careful observations aimed at discerning the effects that status had on interactions in groups. Status Dynamics in Meetings A pet food manufacturer keeps 30 cats as a consumer panel. At the time of feeding, the cats cue up in a definite order, always the same. Only when a new cat enters is there some disorder: It tries to take a place in the queue and is bitten by every neighbor until it has found a place where henceforth it is tolerated. (Hofstede, 1980, p. 66)
Though sociologists, socialpsychologists, anthropologists, and ethologists seem to maintain general agreement about what status is, they offer conflicting conclusions about its effects. Social psychologists focusing on group communication observe that status is associated with a person’s ability to dominate a group’s communication channels (Bales 1951; Kelley 1951). High-status individuals are found to initiate communication more often, to get more opportunities articipate in group discussions, to enjoy increased opportunities to evaluate the group’s output, and to have a greater influence over the group’s decisions (Berger & Morris Zelditch 1985). An implicit assumption of this approach is that status behaviors are hierarchical; higher-status individuals dominate and lead, while lower-status individuals submit and follow. Alternatively, those who take a more anthropological view describe status in more ritualistic and negotiable terms. Anthropologist Schwartzman (1986) proposes that meetings may be the place in which the status order of an organization is “played and displayed.” Sutton and Hargadon (1996) report one designer’s suggestion that brainstorm meetings are “a place to strut your stuff ” (p. 696). Another designer at IDEO described his approach toward brainstorm meetings: “I like being one of the three or four people who come up with the creative ideas. If I am not, I sometimes Table 1 spend a couple more hours afterward to deStatus-Scale Measures velop better ideas” (p. 707). These views seem Measure Description Range Scale Factor to describe status interactions as much more Project facilitator Held a project-facilitator or other administrative position. * 0-2 Factor 1 negotiable, contestable, and strategic than a (Status-Scale Used) Term Terms of hire into the organization (e.g., intern, contractor, three1-9 hierarchical view allows. year hire, permanent hire) I propose that rather than view the Length of tenure in organization from time of restructuring to time of Tenure 0-2000 study (days) status dynamic exclusively as a dominanceOffice quality Quality of assigned office space 1-5 submission relationship, or exclusively as Reviewer Served as a peer-appointed project reviewer 0/1 a chaotic free-for-all, these views can be reconInner circle Sat in "inner circle" during weekly meetings 0/1 ciled by a model that takes into account an List owner Owned and facilitated an e-mail mailing list 0/1 individual’s level of status in a group (that is, Age Age in years 20-63 low, medium, or high) and that considers the Department Administrative or research affiliation 1-4 Factor 2 degree to which the behaviors used to manage Functional Functional expertise discipline: administration, art/ design, social 1-6 status act to reinforce or threaten the group’s discipline science, business, engineering, sciences existing status order. Functional Field of Expertise: fine-grained version of Domain 1-26 specialty The model I propose posits that the highestGender Male/Female 0/1 status members are most likely to use dominating Degree Highest educational degree achieved 1-4 Factor 3 moves, such as interruption and threatening Race Nonwhite/White 0/1 Factor 4 gestures, to control the participation and atten*In this organization, managerial positions carried only formal budgeting authorities. These positions had no authority over how or where tion of others in the group. In doing so, these other organization members allocated their time.
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individuals can provide high-level guidance to the group’s task efforts without actually performing the task itself. I observed how high-status individuals would quietly allow the group to proceed in its design tasks, stepping in only to strategically reorient the group into different directions. This was done, for example, by interrupting one individual’s line of argument and then offering the floor to a different person. Threatening exclamations, such as: “Why would we want to do that in hardware and not in software?!” by a high-status individual has the immediate effect of sending the group down a wholly different path of inquiry. Beyond displaying the high status of an individual, such an exclamation by a high-status individual serves to moderate the status-managing behaviors of others. In the example just given, the high-status person unequivocally indicates to the group the value that will be placed on hardware vis-à-vis software implementations (at least in the group’s current context). This can affect the overall shape, logic, and value system of the group’s status order by indicating to the group which expertise will be valued in the group and which will not. Effectively, dominating behaviors, such as interrupting others, showing up late to meetings, delivering protracted monologues, and constantly summarizing the group’s progress, continuously puts high-status individuals at the center of a group’s attention, allowing them to maintain advantageous influence over the group’s substantive decision-making work and the process through which that work is done. At the next level, the model proposes that medium-status individuals are likely to engage in task-directed contesting behaviors, particularly those that serve to make their own expertise, knowledge, or skill visible, vivid, and of enhanced importance to the group. In the framework of the model, these behaviors are viewed as attempts to gain influence over the group’s task and to increase status by proving or claiming value and worthiness to the group. For example, technical jargon was often used with the effect of displaying technical knowledge and excluding “uninitiated” others from participation in the discussion at hand. I also observed how individuals at this level would attempt to redefine the group’s current problem into their own domain of expertise. Thus, at a particularly perplexing decision point in one project meeting, a team member with a marketing background claimed: “Oh, I learned to solve this kind of problem in Business School” and used this entrée to define how the group should proceed. I also observed how individuals claimed connections to other valued domains or organizations (for instance, “There was this saying around Bell Labs…”) and that this had the effect of indicating actual or potential value to the group. It was with these kinds of behaviors in the middle level of status that much observable “status-contest” action occurred as group members contested for influence and control over the group’s task. Finally, the model proposes that low-status members will try to increase integration or cohesion in a group (thus strengthening their own place in it) by using behaviors that give them a useful role in the group and that maintains the current social order (Blau 1964). Such actions by low-status members seemed to be focused on the social and emotional aspects of group life. Behaviors such as ingratiation through flattery and compliments to high-status others (“What a great idea!” or “Gee, what a neat tie!”); supplication through the adoption of undervalued roles in the group, such as the critic or devil’s advocate; and volunteering to perform menial tasks and chores in the group are typical examples of behaviors that can reinforce the status quo while integrating a person within it. The primary features of this model are summarized in Table 2.
…technical jargon was often used with the effect of displaying technical knowledge and excluding “uninitiated” others from participation in the discussion at hand
Quantitative Analysis Since the model of status dynamics was induced from qualitative observations that were subject to my personal biases, I sought further validation for it using objective data generated in the lab. To this end, I conducted a detailed analysis of interactions in two groups during working meetings. I made audio recordings of 14 meetings of the two groups (the meetings averaged around six participants). Two research assistants, who were unaware of the propositions of the model and who were unfamiliar with the research site, coded a randomly selected 15-minute segment of each meeting as follows. Working from the audiotape recordings and a transcript of the interactions, the coders indicated whether each speech act uttered in the meeting was an
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Table 2 Status-Dynamics Model
integrating, contesting, or dominating behavior. More than 1,500 speech acts were coded in this way. After all the STATUS STRATUM RELEVANT BEHAVIOR PRIMARY DOMAINS OF ACTIVITY coding was done, I went through the coded transcripts and—based on the objective status measure described in High status Dominating: Perform high-level task guidance the previous section—indicated the status (high, Interruption Control status interactions Participation control medium, or low) of the person who made the speech act. Define, reinforce status currency Threats I then compiled aggregate frequencies of each type of Stabilize group status order behavior within each of the three status categories into a Medium status Perform primary task activities Contesting: contingency table. These frequencies are presented in Contest task approaches Framing social capital Table 3. Expertise framing Offer competing problem definitions Jargon Consistent with the conventions of contingencyChallenge others Move higher in the status order table analysis, Table 3 displays the observed number of Contest status quo behaviors of a type made by a person of a status level Low status Perform peripheral support tasks Integrating: in the first row within each data cell (for example, 270 Ingratiation Enhances socio-emotional climate Dominating Behaviors were displayed by High-Status Supplication Become integrated in group Volunteering individuals). The next row within each cell shows, in Reinforce group status order parentheses, the number of behaviors expected to appear in that cell under a model of independence. If there is no underlying pattern of associations in the table, this is Table 3 the frequency we expect to observe (for example, 207.0 Contingency Table: Formal Organizations Members Dominating Behaviors made by High-Status individuals). The final row in each cell reports the chi-square compoMove Type Individual Total Moves nent of the deviation from the expected value. A larger Status Per-Capita Dominating Contesting Integrating number indicates a more significant departure from 270 397 183 121.4 High independence. Note how the main diagonal (upper left (207.0) (431.0) (213.0) to lower right) across the cells displays a consistent pattern 19.0 3.0 4.0 67 263 123 75.5 of higher-than-expected values with relatively high chiMedium (110.0) (229.0) (113.0) square contributions. This suggests that the central 17.0 5.0 1.0 propositions of the status dynamics model are supported 35 115 77 28.4 Low for these groups in this setting. (55.0) (115.0) (57.0) In order to gain a more intuitive sense of the 7.0 0.0 7.0 magnitude of these dynamics, I performed an odds-ratio Total Chi^2 = 63.0 (p< 0.0001) Observed frequency analysis. This analysis indicated that high-status indi(Expected frequency) viduals were 2.6 times more likely to engage in dominance Chi-square component behaviors, that medium-status members were 1.5 times more likely to display contesting behaviors, and that low-status individuals were 1.7 times more likely to use integrating behaviors than they were other types of moves. This analysis suggests a decided tendency for individuals at each level to engage in a particular type of interaction behavior, and it is also apparent from Table 3 that overall participation rates in these groups were associated with status, as well. The right-most column in Table 3 reports the average number of speech acts of any type made by members of each status level. Note the obvious differences in rates of participation across status levels in these groups. It is apparent that low-and medium-stratum individuals participate at only 25 percent and 60 percent, respectively, of the rate of those at the highest status level. Discussion Considering both the qualitative and the quantitative analyses, it is clearly conceivable that a person’s status is related to the form and frequency of his or her interaction in a group. This implies that to the extent that active participation of particular types can result in influence in the group, high-status group members will carry a disproportionately large share of influence in group negotiations. My claim that high status leads to increased influence should come as no surprise, since it is consistent with 50 years of findings in experimental socialpsychology (Bales 1951; Kelley 1951).
What is surprising, however—and what makes this study relevant to design management— is that these patterns were observed in an extremely progressive organization that took great pains to ensure equality among members, and that the critical characteristics of this organization
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are precisely those being adopted in current design organizations. As described earlier, in addition to consistently espousing egalitarian values at all levels throughout the organization, all R&D employees in the lab carried the same title responsibilities and duties. Further, “project facilitators,” who served as official contact points for groups, had no authority over personnel assignments or budgets; individuals were free to assign and reassign themselves to projects they found interesting or where they thought that they could “add value,” and controlled their own day-to-day activities as they saw fit. Given these features and policies, it is clear this organization and the groups in it are as flat and egalitarian as can be imagined. Yet, even with all these equality-enforcing mechanisms in place, I discerned a potent hierarchy of informal status that had effects much like those that are idealized in a formal organization chart. I observed how individuals with lower status would tend to “lie low” in the background during discussions, contributing substantively to the discussion only when specifically polled. This occurred not only for new employees or those fresh out of college, but also occurred with senior employees with PhD’s and others with decades of experience who would sit silent, taking notes for the group, making jokes to entertain, or fetching coffee, until they were specifically asked for an opinion about the task at hand. Even then, these individuals would tend to speak quietly and tentatively as if unsure of themselves or their place in the group. At the other extreme, those with high status (sometimes, but not necessarily commensurate with education or experience) would forge ahead, dominating the group’s communications and attention, implicitly making decisions for the group by controlling interactions, seemingly stopping only to gather information from the group when they were truly stumped and did not have a specific point of view to press. Between these two were the status contests in which explicit build-ups of currency and clout were used in jousts of technical jargon and arguments of definition over the “true” direction the group could, should, or would move in as it tried to solve its problem of defining a technology, a user, and a plan to unite the two—that is, as the group tried to collaboratively negotiate a design.
Full participation in design is not guaranteed simply because members are assigned into a group with no titles
Implications for Design Management In considering the implications of these issues for design management, I believe it is worth reasserting my earlier proposition that to the extent a group is forced to rely on informal negotiation as the primary mechanism for decision making (that is, to the extent the group is flat), individuals with high social status are likely to enjoy a lion’s share of the influence. In a framework that conceptualizes negotiation as constituting the work of design, it follows that it will matter a great deal to the designed output which particular individuals possess high status in a design group and which do not. Take a hypothetically ideal concurrent engineering product design team that might consist of design engineers, industrial designers, marketing specialists, and manufacturing engineers. In order to understand design outcomes in such a group, the findings of this study suggest it is important to understand the relative status each member has in the team. If, for example, the manufacturing viewpoint is represented by a low-status person, then it is possible and likely that the manufacturing viewpoint will not make it into the mainstream of the group’s design logic. And this is not solely a problem of individual personality. As the multi-measure status scale suggests, the status possessed by a manufacturing person may well be beyond his or her control. If the low status of manufacturing is reflected and implicitly enforced in the organization’s formal structure, its culture, its pay scales, its space distribution, its recruiting efforts, and in other subtle, but signifying, ways, it is unreasonable to expect that manufacturing engineer (or marketing specialist, design engineer, industrial designer, whoever) to magically become the equal participant the concurrent design process assumes. Full participation in design is not guaranteed simply because members are assigned into a group with no titles. The structural barriers and interests of others in the group are likely to be far too formidable as the group travels down the long chain of decisions that result in the product’s design. It is this potentially structural aspect of the status dynamic that may give some insight
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into the question posed at the outset of this paper. The question was: Why do products look and behave differently. The answer may be that the organizations that design the products have different internal status hierarchies. Even if two organizations develop similar products using development teams with similar disciplinary compositions, members of the otherwise comparable design teams may have varying levels of influence as decisions are made and acted upon by their teams. In one group, it may be the marketing specialists who have high status (for reasons manifest at the individual, group, and organizational level), whereas in the other firm it is the user-interface specialists who are revered. I would also expect the effects of these implicit values to ripple throughout an organization’s designed product lines. THE LOGIC OF STATUS ORDERS
Though the descriptions and propositions presented to this point have tended to dramatize some of the problematic aspects of doing design in a status-based organizational structure, several characteristics of the status order and the dynamics of how it is maintained may positively address some critical and fundamental organizational problems of coordination, decision making, motivation, and alignment. To start, the status order emerges where the work is being performed and it emerges in response to that work. A status-based group negotiates for itself—in the moment and with consideration of the problem being faced—what will constitute status and who will possesses it. On-the-fly, members can rearrange the group by reconfiguring the balance of influence each member will have. Such a group does not have to operate from an abstract or preconceived concept of formal organization that cannot possibly account for the contingencies of their situation, skills, or any new and local information they may have. Although I have focused on describing the primary tendencies inherent in the status order, I also observed notable examples of groups acting to override highstatus members by ignoring, ridiculing, and ganging up on them. Though groups may be dominated by high-status individuals, these individuals still must negotiate their way into the high positions. Ultimately, they can survive at the top only at the continued discretion of the group. This lesson is also reinforced by the contingency-table analysis. Although I focused on the primary tendencies, the table clearly shows that individuals at all status levels engaged in all types of behaviors. The status-dynamics model also proposes that once at the top, a high-status individual will work toward conserving the status order (and his or her place in it!). Though this ultimately conservative dynamic may be repellent to some for reasons of politics or because of its negative effects on innovation, it can have benefits for a group. This mechanism can provide stability in a group while still fostering robustness in the group’s social order. While those at the top (and those at the bottom) work to reinforce and conserve the existing order and the values on which it is based, those in the middle test and threaten it through their constant contesting and challenging of the order and the logic on which it is based. But rather than tear apart the group—which it would if not kept in check by the actions of the adjoining two strata—this dynamic provides a means to allow critical views to surface in the group. This enlarges the search space of possible approaches and solutions to the group’s tasks and problems. Finally, from a motivational perspective, I note that the status order—a system that guides values and behaviors—emerges from within a social group and may therefore be more intrinsically motivating to the group’s members. In traditional formal hierarchies, externally derived systems of procedures, rewards, and punishments must be devised and constantly manipulated to encourage desired behaviors. On the other hand, when members honor, esteem, or respect someone in their group, this status is voluntarily given for reasons that are intuitively understood and valued. I assume to the extent that high status is given to a member of the group, other members will be likely and willing to follow his or her lead.
…the status order emerges where the work is being performed and it emerges in response to that work
Conclusion Design groups must make decisions and invariably some set of values must drive those decisions. This study was an attempt to generate insight into how these values may be
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manifest. I also have tried to indicate to designers of design organizations the kinds of issues that may be relevant in the effort to ensure the values that drive designs are both desired and appropriate. Though the generalizability of this study is severely limited in that it examined only one relatively unique organization, I believe the framework may nonetheless provide valuable insights for thinking about design management in other organizations. I have also tried to indicate how the flat and cross-disciplinary organizational forms being increasingly adopted in new product development and R&D teams (and by business organizations, generally) may have unanticipated effects on the decision-making processes of the groups inside. Far from being a rational process of isolating problems and then identifying and empowering an expert to solve them, it seems these organizing forms enable design to proceed according to a status dynamic in which the amount, form, and content of participation and influence for each individual varies according to his or her rank in the emergent informal social order of that organization. Of course, organizations are not faced with only a stark choice between highly structured, formal organizational arrangements and highly unstructured, informal ones. Both types of organizations are present and available for any group or organization in varying amounts. Nonetheless, it remains important to understand and acknowledge the particular effects and implications of each as each affects the products we design. ⽧ (Reprint #00AOWE55) References Bales, R. F. (1951). Channels of communication in small groups. American Sociological Review, 16, 461-468. Berger, J., & Morris Zelditch, J. (Eds.). (1985). Status, Rewards, and Influence. San Francisco: Jossey Bass Inc. Blau, P. (1964). Exchange and Power in Social Life. New York: John Wiley & Sons. Dumaine, B. (1990, May 7). Who needs a boss? Fortune, 52-55, 58, 60. Hofstede, G. (1980). Values and culture, Culture’s Consequences: International Differences in Workrelated Values (Vol. Chapter 1, ). Beverly Hills: Sage. Katzenbach, J. R., & Smith, D. K. (1993). The Wisdom of Teams: Creating the High-Performance Organization. Boston: Harvard Business School Press. Kelley, H. H. (1951). Communication in experimentally created hierarchies. Human Relations, 4, 39-56. Owens, D. A. (1998). Negotiating Order in R&D Groups: A Model of Status Dynamics in Groups and Organizations. Unpublished Dissertation, Stanford University, Stanford, CA. Owens, D. A., & Sutton, R. I. (in press). Status Contests in Meetings: Negotiating the Informal Order. In M. E. Turner (Ed.), Groups at Work: Advances in Theory and Research. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum and Associates. Parsaei, H. R., & Sullivan, W. G. (Eds.). (1993). Concurrent Engineering: Contemporary Issues and Modern Design Tools. London: Chapman & Hall. Schwartzman, H. B. (1986). The meeting as a neglected social form in organizational studies. Research in Organizational Behavior, 8, 233-258. Sutton, R. I., & Hargadon, A. (1996). Brainstorming groups in context: Effectiveness in a product design firm. Administrative Science Quarterly, 41(4), 685-718. Syan, C. S., & Menon, U. (Eds.). (1994). Concurrent Engineering: Concepts, Implementation and Practice. London: Chapman & Hall.
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About the Authors Erik Bohemia teaches Industrial Design at The University of Western Sydney in Australia. As an educator in the field of industrial design he is interested in the skills and competencies of industrial designers and the mach between these and industry requirements. He has conducted research in the area over the past five years. The results from the research have been used to guide the development of curriculum in design management subjects at the University of Western Sydney. Julie H. Hertenstein is an associate professor in the College of Business Administration at Northeastern University, in Boston. She received her B.S. in mathematics summa cum laude from The Ohio State University and her M.B.A and D.B.A. degrees from the Harvard Business School in 1979 and 1984, respectively. She was on the faculty at HBS for nine years. Dr. Hertenstein teaches regularly in corporate executive programs and consults with organizations, including Bristol-Myers Squibb, British Petroleum, General Electric Co., and IBM. At Northeastern University and at Harvard, she has taught in a wide range of graduate and executive education programs. The co-author, with Robert N. Anthony and James S. Reece, of the ninth edition of the widely used textbook Accounting: Text and Cases, Hertenstein is also the author of more than 50 cases and notes published through Harvard Case Services. She is a member of the American Accounting Association and the Institute of Management Accountants. Birgit H. Jevnaker is associate professor of industrial development at the Norwegian School of Management BI, Department for Innovation and Economic Organization, based near Oslo. She currently teaches creativity and innovation, as well as leadership programs. As senior research fellow at the Foundation for Research in Economics and Business Administration (SNF), she conducted studies on design/business relations. An official report (initiated by the Ministry of Industry) underlining industrial design as a competitive factor for industry has arisen from this research. Jevnaker’s articles are published internationally, and she has co-edited, with Margaret Bruce, Management of Design Alliances (Chichester, UK: Wiley, 1998). Their paper on design as a strategic alliance, presented at last year’s Strategic Management Society’s
conference, was selected for publication in Dynamic Strategic Resources (Wiley’s Strategic Book Series, 1999). Jevnaker has worked with the market strategic design/design management program in industrial design at the Oslo School of Architecture. She also conducts research with the Norwegian University of Science and Technology and gives guest lectures and organizes learning forums for industry. Jevnaker is a member of the international executive committee of European Academy of Design and was recently appointed to the research advisory board of the Design Management Institute. She may be reached at
[email protected]. David Owens is an Assistant Professor of Management at Vanderbilt University. As a member of the Organizational Studies group in the Graduate School of Management, he teaches graduate courses in General Management, R&D Management, and Creativity & Innovation. He performs research on the topics of strategy development, innovation management, and organizational structure in startups and other rapid-growth, high-uncertainty contexts. Professor Owens is also a Research Fellow at the Imagination Lab in Lausanne Switzerland where he studies strategy-making processes in New Economy companies. Owens earned his BS and MS degrees in electrical engineering and product design, and holds a PhD in Management Science and Engineering from Stanford University. He worked as a designer at IDEO Product Development in Palo Alto and he has performed design and design-management consulting for firms such as Apple, HP, Corning Consumer Products, and Daimler Benz TEG. Professor Owens is currently working on issues in product design and business strategy development with a number of incubator and startup firms in the U.S. and Europe. Marjorie B. Platt is an associate professor in the College of Business Administration at Northeastern University. Prior to joining the faculty at Northeastern in 1982, she taught at the University of Michigan and the University of Massachusetts, in Boston.
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She has also served as assistant director of Radcliffe College’s Henry Murray Research Center and as a private consultant to the Massachusetts Department of Public Welfare. She has taught at the undergraduate and graduate levels at Northeastern University and was the recipient of Northeastern’s Excellence in Teaching Award in 1992. Platt is a certified management accountant (CMA). She received her M.B.A. from Babson College in 1986, her M.A. and Ph.D. in social psychology from the University of Michigan in 1974 and 1976, respectively; and her B.A. degree in psychology from Northwestern University in 1972. She has published more than 35 scholarly articles on group selection decisions of new members, the cost structure of the thrift industry, and issues related to corporate bankruptcy. Her research has been featured in Journal of Banking and Finance, Journal of Business Finance & Accounting, The Financial Review, and Organizational Behavior and Human Performance.
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Robert Whitman Veryzer is an associate professor in the Lally School of Management & Technology, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, N.Y. His industry experience includes product management and product planning positions with Kraft-General Foods and General Motors Corporation. His research and consulting interests include various aspects of consumer behavior, product design, and new product development. Veryzer holds an MBA from Michigan State University and a PhD in consumer research and marketing from the University of Florida. He is co-author of a forthcoming book on the development of “radical” innovation products and is co-founder and president of Aeseus Marketing, Consumer and Design Research. Veryzer may be contacted via email:
[email protected]. Viviem Walsh
