96

This issue of the journal Entreprises et Histoire focusses on the historical and contemporary roles of design – widely defined – within business and management. It addresses design’s role in public and private sector organizations, beyond the conventions of product design and development or branding, including design as stance, approach and/or heuristic in different economic sectors and cultures. Designers, researchers and managers – only a handful of the many disparate actors who engage in and with design activity in business contexts – employ and understand ‘design’ differently in various economic sectors, geographies and contexts. Today, actors in many industries across the globally-linked economy understand design a practice concerning people, interactions, systems and services, rather than one principally related to form or aesthetic. Practitioners and researchers in areas such as service design, social design and design thinking have reframed design as a transformational practice for public and private services and organizations alike. At the same time, explorations of practices emergent and aligning from local protocols and conditions have demonstrated how design, like any other social practice, is contingent on and contributes to local culture, contra to universalist claims, and how claims otherwise can perpetuate colonial and other systemic inequalities, not least climate injustice. The issue also explores critical narratives and assessments of design’s transition from the design of products to design management, service design and design thinking for business. Finally, it presents propositions embodying a vision of industry transforming from the extractive exploitation of limited resources to produce wasteful commodities to a force for socio-environmental regeneration.