On the Role of Design Activities in the Development of Complex Industrial Systems

In the research presented here, a literature review pointed to distinct and complementary assumptions about how design activities affect individual beliefs and through that organisational action. For example, beliefs might be impacted through design activities as beliefs are made explicit rather than tacit, and therefore become subject to revision. Bringing together actors with conflicting viewpoints is expected to yield creativity and impact beliefs, identifying role models affects ideals of operation, and the selection of performance indicators impacts beliefs, focus and priorities. Accelerated learning may help individuals let go of outdated assumptions, the formulation of umbrella strategies establishes beliefs about how to stay alert in a changing environment, and evaluating organisational lifecycle status holds a potential to affect self-perceptions, beliefs and subsequent actions. Existing theory indicates that a sense of dissatisfaction or even crisis might provoke a revision of beliefs and drive action, but empirically, it appears that if dissatisfaction should function as a driver, it must be used quickly. Furthermore, it appears that an alternative to establishing dissatisfaction in terms of op-erational problems is to reinterpret current practices in terms of different system boundaries than nor-mally considered. When the perception or definition of system boundaries is extended, a call for integra-tion is likely to arise. Sub-optimal solutions become apparent and set the direction for development, and actors need not change their ideals of operation, but simply extend the scope of these. Design activities that facilitate an awareness and evaluation of emerging or local practices were as-sumed to potentially impact beliefs. This was confirmed empirically, where it was found that awareness and documentation of local practices or experiments appears to be superior to corporate analysis with respect to affecting beliefs, even if less capable of facilitating corporate decision-making. In the ob-served change process, such decision-making did not appear to be a prerequisite for affecting beliefs or action for that matter, as actions taken largely reflected ideas, which had been rejected at critical deci-sion points. In fact, decision-making appeared to delay action. Furthermore, formal strategy formulation and decision-making is argued to often introduce inertia through manifestation of already mature beliefs maintained by a dominant coalition in the organisation. It is argued that dominant beliefs should be re-vised through the management of ideas, cultivation and evaluation of competing ideas. The research has indicated that systems development is likely to be realised if action is based on oppor-tunities or urgent challenges combined with dominant organisational ideas, ideas which ensure some convergence of action as they provide guidance while leaving open significant degrees of freedom for local operationalisation. It is argued that design activities generally become influential through lo-cal/middle managers, who are responsible for addressing operational problems, and strive towards local performance as well as personal self-actualisation. The research indicates that local degrees of freedom combined with shared concepts as developed through various design activities and interactive events enable convergent development, which may be assumed to have a positive impact on performance. Finally, it is suggested that proactive investments in facilities or other system resources may accelerate change as they provide opportunities and solution elements. Such acceleration determines when focus may be shifted from design for authorization to design for operation, which have been identified as separate stages with different characteristics. The research is based on a case study of developing downstream logistics systems from the point of view of a divisionalised manufacturing enterprise.