| Managing as Designing
Edited by Richard J. Boland and Fred Collopy
Stanford University Press, 2004, $45.00, 312 pages
Reviewed by Rhonda Taira
he premise of the book,“Managing
as Designing” is that management
would be both different and
improved if it adopted “design attitude.”
Boland and Collopy coin this phrase to
mean viewing “…each project as an
opportunity for invention that includes a
questioning of basic assumptions and a
resolve to leave the world a better place
than we found it.” Design attitude is in
contrast to “decision attitude,” which
makes the most logical choice from
existing alternatives rather than starting
with a clean slate.
The idea grew when Boland and
Collopy were part of the group working
with architect Frank Gehry and his firm,
Gehry Partners, to design the Peter B.
Lewis Building for the Weatherhead
School of Management at Case Western
Reserve University in Ohio. The process
was unexpected for many in the group,
revealing that client and architect must
agree on a common vocabulary and
understand the proposed outcome of
each stage of a project. For instance,
Boland and Collopy describe how, early
in the process, faculty thought that models
were representations of what would
be built, rather than three-dimensional
sketches that Gehry used to explore
ideas.
“Managing as Designing” is a result of
a workshop where the implications of
management and design were explored,
and addresses the tension that often
divides people into two factions, whether
we name them “business” and “creatives”,
or “left-brains” and “right-brains.”
The book is divided into four parts.
The first part is an overview, describing
the process of working with Frank Gehry on the design of the
Peter B. Lewis Building
and includes the
keynote speech given by
Gehry at the workshop.
The second part is comprised
of a series of short essays by professors
of business and art/architecture,
who explore the theoretical foundations
of managing as designing. Part three
moves from the theoretical to the concrete,
drawing on the real-life experiences
of professionals who are attempting
to manage as design. Part four
hypothesizes about the future of management.
A vocabulary is included with
entries like thrownness, handrail, agonize,
and circulation, and provides a nice
jump-start to change.
“Managing as Designing” is a good
read for both managers and designers,
and will certainly help to break down
barriers between these two groups.
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