Putting the “Design” Back into Organizational Design: The Case of High Social Value-Creative Business Models

Currently there is no veritable role for design, designers, or design methodology associated with ‘organizational design’. Rather, the design of an organization is a byproduct of tactics and management bureaucracy. In postmodern, post-industrial, and post-capitalist organizational entities the role of design is subordinate and residual at best. In this concept paper the authors demonstrate that (a) an entrepreneurial and organic perspective on design is challenged by the paradigmatic and transformational effects of information and information technology on firm; and (b) that the apparent problematic absence of a design theory and the existence of the firm can be reconciled via the involvement of design managers with their presumed design-methodological grounding. They advocate substituting the anachronistic evolutionary speciation of organizational design with a perspective based on ‘intelligent design’.