Remarks on Managing as Designing

I was excited to find this book, Managing as Designing, because I think design skills can be put to good use in management and organizational design. Richard Boland and Fred Collopy edited this slim volume that contains contributions from authors who participated in a 2002 workshop. The participants came from business, sociology, architecture, dance, semiotics, economics, and history.

This is no how-to book. There's lots of theory. The various authors write comfortably within their own knowledge areas, but don't really help the reader make the translation from their own specialty to management. So, if you are wondering how semiotics can inform the management arena, you'd better be familiar with semiotics. I was delighted by the chapter on the application of interaction design to management, but I know the language of both pretty well. Otherwise, it was a tough go. Recommended if you like to stretch yourself.