The concept of design has been defined in a multitude of ways and used in a variety of academic fields, ranging from the classics of organizational and system design to studies on corporate culture, aesthetics and consumption. However, in mainstream organization and management studies, the concept of design has been 'black-boxed' and easily implied as an updated (and more fashionable) version of the traditional idea of structuring organizational processes. At the same time, working and organizing seem to be embedded nowadays in increasingly complex and situated technologies and practices. If the spreading of information and communication technologies (ICTs) has changed workplaces (and even the very meaning of 'workplace' as an area marked by the physical presence of different human actors), working and organizing mobilizes the joint action of humans, technologies and knowledges. The aim of the book is thus to discuss the relations among technologies, work and organisations from multiple theoretical perspectives and to engage with questions about design as well as the sociomaterial foundations of working and organising. The book focuses on the close study of practices and processes that inextricably link work and organisation to the use of artefacts and technological systems (and vice versa), exploring by means of different cases of organizational and design research articulations and disarticulations of daily work and design; the doing of objects and technologies in everyday organizational life; the reconstruction of organizational processes through technological and design practices; the relation between learning, innovations and technologies in organizational settings.
The book is addressed to graduate students, PhDs, scholars and researchers interested in the fields of Organization Studies, Science and Technology Studies, Sociology and Design, as well as to professionals and practitioners interested in new methodological approaches towards the relations between technology, work and organization.

Bruni A., Parolin L.L., Schubert, C.: Introduction

SECTION 1 - Designing work and technology in institutionalized organizational settings
1. Yli-Kauhaluoma S., Pantzar M.: Designing administrative practices through artifacts
2. Mellini B., Talamo A. The role of artifacts in professional communities and their relation with routines: the case of nurses' practice
3. Kamp Kragh B.: When EPR comes to work

SECTION 2 - Designing work and technology in emerging organizational settings
4. Parolin, L.L.: Designing a new chair, transgressing organizational boundaries
5. Macchia T.: Designing exhibition through technological infrastructuring
6. Vangeebergen , T.: Designing aroma. Perception as collective device of calculation

SECTION 3 - Work and technology in organized design settings
7. Schubert C.: Distributed design. The global manufacture of technologies and organizations
8. Janda, V.: The means of design work. Models, sketches and related objects in the creation of new technology
9. Plontke, S.: How things are designed and how they design