Course Title: Doctor of Philosophy in Management

Thesis Title: Managing As Designing: Australian Public Sector Case Study

Supervisors: Dr Anni Dugdale, Dr Monica Kennedy & Prof Deborah Blackman

This project aims to explore how design thinking has been adopted and embedded by a complex public organisation in the design of public policy and administration.

This is an empirically based case study that looks at how a public organisation has adopted design as a management approach in its policy and administrative design work.

This study looks at how this case organisation drew off design as methodology borrowed from traditional design disciplines, such as product and interaction design and how it has applied this to specific aspects of the organisation’s work. The approach of taking a human-centred view to its work in complement to its rules-based role as a public administrator offers a unique case to understand how this has become a way of operating.

The significance of this application of design is an opportunity to learn what design may bring to the role/work of the public organisation. In particular the role of design as a way for public organisations to introduce a new form of logic that is inherently more participatory in its management style. This suggests that this case study will provide significant insight into the emerging emphasis in Public management discourse of increased democratisation in the design of public policy and public services.

The philosophical shift in public management is from inward bureaucratic views of public policy and administration design and delivery, to more outward citizen centred approaches. This is yet to be fully understood in its practical application. There is an emerging discourse on how public organisations can be more democratic in their management work, but there is little evidence of how design thinking can be a tool in the realms of public management.

Therefore this research project will answer:

How has design become a management practice in a complex public organisation?

In addressing this question this research will :

• define design as a management practice in public sector context;
• demonstrate how design has been embedded in the organisations management repertoire.