Examining a planning discourse: how a manager represents issues within a planning frame and how the others could do the same
Abstract
The aim of Participatory Design (PD) is to involve the users in the design. Even though the research has shown the success of PD projects in empowering users, little has been said about PD practices within accountable organizations. To transfer PD practices to these business organizations, we need to understand design as an institutional discourse. This paper discusses a sequence of organizational planning interaction and demonstrates how a manager represents the issues within a planning frame and why other participants are unable to act within this frame. The users and even the designer were marginalized from the planning activity. It is postulated that balancing the existing institutionalized power relationships may be laborious within this kind of context. For this reason, it is, instead, argued that we could approach this task implicitly by strengthening diverse frames and, in this way, to pave the way for a more grounded heterogeneous planning discourse inside accountable organizations. This process could be supported by a human mediator, a frame advocate.
