Bridging between Organization Design as a Noun and as a Verb

The two conceptions of organization design—simultaneously historical legacy and dynamic change—create a major conundrum, identified by Simon’s (1996) as an important challenge to the design of social organizations. The solution, according to Simon, is to design without final goals, however no advice is provided about how this might be achieved. In this chapter, it is proposed that this is possible through the use of mechanisms that bridge between the past and the future of the organization’s design. The mechanisms are formative affectual contexts and design trace. Enhanced by embodied cognition theory, the notion of formative context provides a solid background for an understanding of the processes of organizational change that co-evolve with organization designing. The notion of design trace is based on the idea that organizational interactions leave a trace that can be harnessed and used to help manage the organization’s designing effort.

Embodied Cognition

Embodied cognition theory has become central to contemporary sociologists who theorize and empirically study the mechanics of thinking. Those applying this approach to thought treat meaning-making as quite distinct from the processes described in abstract representational models of cognition. Moving beyond sole considerations of neural operations, embodied cognition theory views meaning-making as deeply entwined in the body’s experience with surrounding environments. To fully unpack the importance of this shift in studying thought, this chapter begins by exploring the roots of embodied cognition theory; it then traces its rather recent entry into the sociological literature. The chapter moves on to summarize the growing number of empirical sociological works informed by embodied cognition theory, and it touches on the methodological debates surrounding work in this area. The chapter concludes by suggesting ways in which sociology can forward the embodied cognition project.