Design Thinking and Organizational Development: twin concepts enabling a reintroduction of democratic values in organizational change

Författare

Magnus Eneberg
Lisbeth Svengren Holm

Summary, in English

Design Thinking is a rather new concept for increasing innovation capabilities in organizations. Organizational Development is a concept from the 1950s aiming at modernizing organizations through participatory methods. As organizations struggle with constant change and to become more innovative we will compare and discuss design thinking and organizational development and explore what we can learn from these concepts that have many similar aspects. Design is

argued to be moving into new territories, changing its focus towards the ideas that organizes a system or environment (Buchanan, 2001). At the same time there are clear resemblances to new organizational development not the least regarding participatory methods (Eneberg, 2012). In this paper we describe the ontological and epistemological development of organizational theory, change, and development with the aim to discuss the role of design thinking as an enabling

concept in the revitalization of organizational development that includes a reintroduction of democratic values in organizational change.

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