Introduction

This chapter starts by highlighting that contingency-led thinking, the dominant school of thought, has had a reductionist effect on the understanding of what organization design is, so that in managerial circles organization design continues to mean a simple formula for efficiency-seeking and profit-maximizing performance, oblivious of anything to do with the ethical, environmental or social consequences of the organization’s activity. In the last couple of decades, there has been a growing trend aimed at bringing design closer to management, with management being depicted as a practice that goes beyond decision-making and plays an active role in the ongoing design of the organization. This trend has begun a shift in organization design from what organizations “are” to what they “could be”, with a focus on warmer, livelier and more engaging approaches, incorporating the sensory, aesthetic and ethical sides of design. Building on this background, the book proposes a new framework with a solid normative foundation, built primarily on the principles of morality and humanism from the design discipline and highlighting a new managerial responsibility—holistic organization designing. This managerial responsibility is complementary of strategic management, in the sense that the designing role is also required to assess and evaluate organizational performance but using a new type of yardstick—sensory/aesthetic/experiential—in addition to the regular rational and instrumental measures.