Using a Design Approach to Assist Large-Scale Organizational Change

Abstract

A team of practitioners, university researchers, and health care policy makers has been working to develop and apply “design sciences” thinking within the challenging context of a national system aiming to bring about a “revolution in health care.” As members of that team, the authors share that thinking and early findings with those interested in the concept, theory, and practice of design as an approach to large-scale organizational change. The article builds on what to date has been a somewhat abstract debate around the design sciences, its aim being to forge stronger links between the concept and the practice of design. Using empirical data from the English National Health Service as a case study, the article seeks to demonstrate how design sciences may first, expand our thinking around organizational theory and practice and second, offer organization development some new methods, approaches, and processes around the “doing” of large-scale change.