Human Relations 2010 Brown 525 49

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'Invisible walls' and 'silent hierarchies': A case study of power relations in an

architecture firm
Andrew D Brown, Martin Kornberger, Stewart R Clegg and Chris Carter
Human Relations 2010 63: 525 originally published online 8 January 2010
DOI: 10.1177/0018726709339862
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human relations
Invisible walls and silent

hierarchies: A case study of power
relations in an architecture firm
human relations
63(4) 525549
The Author(s) 2010
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co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav
DOI: 10.1177/0018726709339862
hum.sagepub.com
Andrew D Brown
University of Bath, UK
Martin Kornberger
University of Technology, Sydney, Australia
Stewart R Clegg
University of Technology Sydney, Australia
Chris Carter
University of St Andrews, UK
Abstract
In this article we investigate how power relates to the production of creative identities and
outcomes.We report on an in-depth case study of an award-winning creative architecture
firm. Our data show how talk about creativity and the creative identities of architects can
be analysed as effects of power. Theoretically, our study represents an investigation into
the disciplining of professional architects discourse about their selves, their organization,
and their work. This article adds to debates on creative industries, demonstrating that
creativity is deeply embedded in organizationally based relations of power.
Keywords
architecture, creativity, discourse, identity, power, profession
Introduction
All organizations are relations of power even the most egalitarian. Based on an indepth case study of Earth Architects1 (EA), an innovative and award-winning architectural practice, we investigate how power relates to the production of creative
Corresponding author:
Martin Kornberger, School of Management, University of Technology, Sydney, PO Box 123 Broadway, Sydney,
NSW 2007, Australia.
Email: martin.kornberger@uts.edu.au
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Human Relations 63(4)
identities and outcomes. Drawing on the literatures associated with the creative industries (e.g. Bjorkegren, 1996; Caves, 2000; Drake, 2003; Hartley, 2004), architectural
firms (e.g. Blau, 1984; Cuff, 1991; Winch & Schneider, 1993) and the organization of
power (e.g. Clegg, 1975, 1989; Foucault, 1977) we analyse how participants talked
about the relations of power that structured their working lives. In exploring peoples
talk about their everyday work life in EA, we focus in particular on how putatively
creative work patterns and worker identities are constituted as effects of power. The
principal research contribution of this article is to investigate the disciplining of professional architects discourse about their selves, their organization, and their work.
Architectural practices are prime examples of creative organizations in which skilled
professionals turn imaginative ideas into disciplined practices and practices into profits
(Caves, 2000; Christophers, 2007; Flew, 2002; Jeffcutt & Pratt, 2002; OFarrell, 2000).
There is broad agreement that firms in the creative industries are both knowledge and
symbol intensive organizations that deploy systems of persuasion (Alvesson &
Karreman, 2004) in order to produce and sell meaning (Lawrence & Phillips, 2002:
431). Scholars in organization and cultural studies have focused on various aspects of
creative industries: distinct disciplinary forms of regulatory power (Christophers, 2007;
Flew, 2004; Gibson & Klocker, 2004); rationalization and creativity (Nixon, 2006;
Tschang, 2007); the strategic positioning and identity building of firms and nations
(Jones & Smith, 2005; Moeran, 2007), and the importance of location, clusters and networks in developing these industries (Antcliff et al., 2007; Drake, 2003; Turok, 2003).
There are also important connections here with research on professional service firms,
such as Maisters (1986) study of Goldman Sachs and the now defunct Arthur Andersen,
and his identification of the One-Firm Firm model, which, inter alia, was characterized
by a marked distinction between high-end conceptual work and lower status grind
work. Whereas earlier work on the professions and especially architecture (e.g.
Pinnington & Morris, 2002) has focused on the profession itself as the unit of analysis,
our study focuses on the variety of ways professionalism and professional identity are
voiced, negotiated and sometimes silenced within organizations.
Yet there is still a dearth of empirical research on management practices in this area,
with recognition that the creative acts of specific individuals are embedded in processes
of organizing, despite some notable exceptions (e.g. Maister, 1986), still to be reflected in
a large body of empirical work. There is, though, a considerable literature on how creativity is manifested in professional contexts, such as product development teams, which
explicitly recognizes that organizational settings are most fundamentally characterized
by multiple, powerful normative influences . . . that promote well-aligned but routine
behavior (Ford & Porter, 2008: 309; Rossiter, 2003). Architectural practices have, occasionally, been analysed by organizational scholars (e.g. Boland et al., 2007; Pinnington &
Morris, 2002; Winch & Schneider, 1993) and sociologists (Blau, 1984; Larson, 1993), but
these studies have not focused on how relations of power further or lessen creativity.
Given the interest in organization studies in the work of Foucault (1977; for example,
McKinlay & Starkey, 1997), and the centrality of concerns with the creativity and positivity of power in his later work, this is a surprising omission (but see OFarrell, 2000).
While creativity has become cool, an element of marginality still attaches to the
creative industries, whose hallmark is often promoted as non-routine repetition, in contrast
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Brown et al.
to the standardized products and organizations of bureaucracy. Creatives are seen to be

facilitated and constrained by complex and reciprocal interactions with evolving social and
task environments, in which creativity (variation) is inherently in conflict with organizing
(selective retention) (Drazin et al., 1999; Elsbach & Kramer, 2003). Thus, design practices joins a celebrated list of management oxymorons: design designating creativity and
innovation as the hallmark of the unique professional, the increasingly immaterial labourer
in a symbolic economy of signs and affect, while practices, implies a way of ordering
imaginative relations to social or physical environments in a manner that is organized, and
thus routine. Our study complements previous theorizing by analysing how the notionally
creative work of professional architects as a unique cultural construction is governed by
relations of power to become a disciplined, organized, situated practice subject to routine
constraints and characterized by repetition (Clegg, 1975, 1989; Giddens, 1979).
Theorizing power in architectural practices

Power, discourse and organization
Power in the professions is increasingly seen in terms of jurisdictional regimes, usually supported by state licence. Moreover, important contributions from the sociology of the professions (e.g. Friedson, 1994; Larson, 1993; MacDonald, 1995; Muzio et al., 2008) have
emphasized, on a macro-level, how they shape powerfully their members perceptions of
themselves, others outside their profession, and appropriate patterns of behaviour.
Complementing these understandings, there are, at a more micro-level, relations of power
that are routinely reproduced in mundane practices of organizing. These micro-politics of
power relations, which reproduce and introduce tensions, also shape the nature of professional practice. Following a Foucauldian approach (e.g. Newton, 1998) we understand micropractices as constitutive of the experience of professional workers rather than conflating their
organizational reality with the discourse of the profession; or, as Alvesson and Karreman
(2000) have argued, we concentrate on small d discourse rather than large D discourse.
That is, we frame a Foucauldian inspired analysis of micro-organizational power relations
within a more macro-organizational perspective derived from the sociology of the professions. In doing so, we develop a notion of creative power that neither ignores the micro nor
overstates the macro. Such an approach hints at the interstices where institutionalized logics
and organizational micro-practices meet and transform each other (see Lounsbury, 2008).
Theoretically, our primary concern is with the power that is embedded in the overall
authoritative structure and design of organizations, rather than deviations from this order,
which tend to attract most attention (Brown & Coupland, 2005; Hardy & Clegg, 1996).
In so doing, we draw on a conception of organizations as socially constructed by participants (Berger & Luckmann, 1966) through networks of conversations (Ford & Ford,
1995) that feed on and contribute to prevailing discursive practices. From this perspective, the term organization is best regarded as a spatial metaphor that refers to a domain
of (supposedly) legitimate authority which favours certain linguistic constructions over
others; a sphere of dominancy that is constituted by discursive practices. These practices
both constitute our case study organization as a regime of truth and discipline participants actions by privileging particular forms of language use (Foucault, 1973). We argue
528
that the most insidious and potent systems of control in organizations are not generally
exercised by direct or coercive means, but through the discursive production of quasifixed meanings that reify social orders (Clegg, 1989). Drawing on Gramscian (1973)
ideas of hegemonies that sustain relations of domination, there has been some previous
work in this field that has explored organizational ideologies (Thompson, 1990). Such
views need to be balanced by an understanding that organizations tend not to be discursively monolithic, and that people have the capacity for reflexivity and creative deviancy (Worthington, 1996: 102), which provide scope for discretion and resistance. That
is, in organizations, control is never total (Clegg, 1994: 163).
The literature on creativity has evolved from a focus on psychological studies of putatively creative individuals to a sophisticated understanding that novelty is often a product of
formal and informal aspects of organizing (Drazin et al., 1999; Elsbach & Kramer, 2003).
Many studies of creativity have a strong managerialist orientation and are preoccupied with
brokering the challenges associated with promoting creativity in organizations (Ford &
Porter, 2008: 312), with little appreciation of the role that such discourse might play in shaping power relations. Power operates through the availability of discourses, is shaped by the
frequency/intensity of their presence, and the specific situated linkages between organizations, discourse and subjectivity (Fairclough, 1995; ODoherty & Willmott, 2001) that are
built in practice. Our interest is in the organizationally based discourses centred on creativity
and creative work that participants reference, evoke and reproduce as they construct the
text of their organization through acts of languaging. As language is a representational
technology that actively organizes, constructs and sustains social reality, so our task is to
analyse how discursive practices come to form the instinctively shared calibration points
for defining local reality (Chia & King, 2001: 312) a reality that in architectural practices
tends often to collectively emphasize the importance of creativity work.
Organizations are discursive regimes that provide participants with important symbolic resources for identity negotiation and for the legitimation of social practices, leading
people to constitute themselves, their work and the organization in particular ways. As
Jermier et al. (1994: 8) have described them, identities are . . . complex outcome[s] of
processes of subjugation and resistance that [are] contingent and perpetually shifting (see
also Clegg, 1994: 275; Humphreys & Brown, 2002a, 2002b). In creative industries talk
about how work is and should be accomplished tends often to be shaped by individuals
understandings of their selves as professionals and their organizations notionally creative identity (Caves, 2000; Maister, 1986). Fournier (1999) has shown how the label
professionalism can act as a disciplinary mechanism, which allows for control at a distance through the construction of appropriate identities and conducts. How architects
sense of their selves as creative professionals operating within a well defined matrix of
organizationally specific opportunities and constraints is an important topic for research
into what it means to be creative, competent, and productive employees. In this article, we
comment specifically on the importance of creativity as a symbolic term in participants
definition and articulation of their preferred individual and organizational identities as
they engaged in projects of the self (see Grey, 1994; Thornborrow & Brown, 2009).
Architectural practices, identity and power

Relations of power structure the activities of a firm of architects just as much as a military bureaucracy: the expression of these power relations is, of course, dissimilar, but the
529
Brown et al.
pervasiveness of the basic phenomenon of people being obliged to act as they might not
otherwise do is apparent.
Larson (1993: 8) notes that the persistent claim of architects to a special role in the
process of construction depends on the implicit ideological appeals to the telos (i.e. the
buildings reason for being). Rhetorically, the telos has often been represented, at its best,
as the expression of a capability for being creative in designing something that expresses
the soul of the architect, an opportunity to turn dreams and ambitions into material reality
and splendour. A key tension, however, has always existed between the creative ethos
and the necessity of winning commissions, often on projects and terms that severely
restrict the expression of creativity. In practice, all architects have to deal with many
other influential stakeholders, and it is these groups especially clients who are often
able to dominate proceedings. The distinction between architects espoused values and
common practices within the construction process is but one example of the contradictions and dilemmas of architectural work (Blau, 1984).
The reality of elite architectural practice is its constitution in terms of a recognizable
signature-style architects discourse; while creative in its envisioning, it is not idiosyncratic. It is embedded in almost paradigmatic fixing of fashion in dominant schools and
counter schools. In some eras the dominance of particular schools has been striking; in
her account of the history of architecture in 20th-century America Larson (1993) charts
the rise and fall of modernism, which had its origins in between the wars Europe, with
the Bauhaus being its most striking expression. One of the evident corollaries of the
eclipse of modernism from the 1970s was the way in which small architecture practices
known for their novelty and architectural daring were able to win large commissions
in the face of competition from larger practices. The collapse of the dominant school era
freed discursive space for other claims to style and creativity. Consequently, reputations
for creative genius were built by iconic architectural figures whose buildings were seen
not only in functional terms but also as totems of expressivity, as style, and stylization,
made a return to practice that had been dominated by architectural modernism (Jencks,
1977; Sklair, 2005, 2006). Increasingly, elite architectural discourse came to emphasize
the autonomy of architects, and architectural practice, despite relying on many other
groups, including clients. As Larson notes, the rhetoric was associated with a tendency to
maintain relatively small architects offices no more than 30 practitioners being seen as
the ideal (with regard to the strategy of staying deliberately small, see Mintzberg et al.,
1988). This is a finding that resonates with our own case.
Today, architecture lies at the interstices of a quintessential pre-bureaucratic form (professional practice) and what is often assumed to be a post-bureaucratic and post-modern
form (creative industry). Contemporary architectural practices are a distinctive type of
knowledge-based, professional, and creative organization whose status in AngloAmerican societies has been systematically weakened by internal disputes regarding how
far architectural knowledge is codifiable and scientific, or an indeterminate art form
(Jamous & Peloille, 1970; Larson, 1993; MacDonald, 1995; Svensson, 1990). In recent
times, relatively weak authority over clients and contractors, combined with increased
competition, has led them to seek to preserve the core of their jurisdiction in the design
area and to concentrate more centrally on the aesthetics of design (Pinnington & Morris,
2002: 196; see Blau, 1984; Gutman, 1988). The dilemmas arising from architects aesthetic
and professional commitments are all the more pertinent as architects have occupied more
specialist and team-based roles in many building and construction projects. Larson (1993)
530
highlights that while the discourse of architecture emphasizes the autonomy of the profession, the reality is somewhat different, as architecture is best characterized as heteronymous because the built exemplars of architecture (1993: 5) rely on other professions and
occupations such as engineers, builders, quantity surveyors, consultants, etc. and are,
therefore, not the preserve of architects alone. As with other service organizations, firms
of architects rely on the expertise of their staff in order to trade and sell a capacity to produce rather than a product: . . . the assets of an architectural practice are its people, and
their reputation for providing the service promised (Winch & Schneider, 1993: 926).
Firms must seek to balance their desire for challenging creative work with commercial constraints but also represent themselves as pursuing aesthetic goals even at the
expense of pragmatic economic gain (Pinnington & Morris, 2002; Winch & Schneider,
1993).2 Larson (1993) discusses architects who choose to lose money on projects they
care for, a phenomenon that echoes Blaus (1984) famous reference to the Daedalian risk
inherent in architectural practice.3 The Daedalian risk seems to be an interesting point of
difference between architectural firms and many others in the creative industries. It
emphasizes the highly disciplined creative ethos that is internalized in the professional
socialization of many architects, particularly those who have been trained within theoretically based architectural degrees in universities, rather than in more vocational, practice-oriented contexts. While the ethos of the architect as an artist trained in studio-based
architectural education may be well inculcated, the ethos of the architect as a professional agent in a complex organization that is also a business is less well-developed.
Architecture, particularly in those moments of punctuation between the dominance of
a particular school, is a discourse in which different players compete to gain recognition
that gives architects elite status and lifts them above the level of the small or purely local
practice (Larson, 1993: 100). Architecture functions as a field in which reputations are
made through competitions and commissions, which owe far more to peer review by
other architects than to judgements by clients. Reputation depends primarily on publications, awards, professional societies, ranking in important design competitions, lectures,
nominations to juries in awards programs or elite schools, faculty appointment in a
renowned school in sum, the marks of recognition bestowed by esteemed fellow architects, educators, and architecture critics (Larson, 1993). Thus, while reputation is built
discursively amongst communities of practice able to appreciate and negotiate complex
significations of style, a living is earned by translating this prestige into projects that
clients will fund. It is in this space that we investigate EA.
Research design
Research context
Earth Architects (EA) was a strong idea firm (Larson, 1993: 100) focused on innovative
design. Owned and directed by three equal directors, EA was established in 1999 and
grew rapidly so that in 2008 it had offices in two major cities and 25 employees.4
Responsible to the directors were four associate directors who led flexible teams of 16
relatively young and inexperienced architects, and two support staff.5 The firms directors belonged to The Royal Institute of Architects, responsible for accrediting, evaluating
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Brown et al.
and promoting the interests of architects and architecture. Participants described EA as

informal, dynamic, and task-focused. Unlike many larger architectural practices EA had
not diversified into project management or surveying, having chosen instead to focus
solely on creative architecture (including site supervision). It was not only commercially
successful but also rich in symbolic capital within the architecture profession, being
highly acclaimed for its design accomplishments and numerous national architecture
awards. While small, EA was a cosmopolitan firm in that it had successfully transcended
the local to become a player within the international architecture scene. Frequent media
coverage of its buildings in German, UK and Australian design magazines, and its representation at global architectural events such as the Venice Biennale of Architecture and
the Rotterdam Architecture Biennale, were indicators of its reputation within a broader
architectural discourse.
Staff at EA said that the focus of the firm was Architecture with a capital A, and that
this tended to override financial considerations: We looked at our value chain and we
have found that the most important thing is the architecture culture although it does not
make any money (Oban, director). There was a consensus that their primary concern
was to design really unique buildings that were sensitive to all the particularities of
the site (Kylie, graduate architect): Whats interesting for us architecturally in each
project will guide you where more time is spent . . . You need to find that groove for
each project really . . . And you dont know where you are going to be led either at the
start of a project (Robert, architect). Moreover, in translating ideas into designs employees emphasized the non-routine nature of their creative processes and the scope they
had for pursuing architectural aesthetics: I mean at the end of the day . . . we cant be
making any money off that project, its a beautiful design and the only reason were
doing it is because its a beautiful design, like we absolutely, you love the architecture
so you push for it. But from a pure commercial sense it just doesnt make sense (Adam,
associate director).
Data collection
The primary data for this research were collected between April 2006 and December
2007. The study was framed by an initial intention to produce an ethnographic account
of the work experiences of participants in EA. Twenty-five interviews, one with each
member of the organization, were conducted in the companys offices and meeting
rooms. The interviews were semi-structured, between 60 and 90 minutes duration, and
24 were audio-taped and professionally transcribed.6 On average each interview transcript had a length of approximately 800010,000 words. We asked a broad range of
questions concerned with the organization and creative work, such as: What is unique
about EA? What are the biggest hurdles to creativity? and How does teamwork work
at EA? We also attended and took hand-written notes in design meetings (20 hours), two
directors strategy retreats (40 hours), four one-day associates meetings (30 hours), and
made three site visits to ongoing building projects. Our formal data collection was complemented by frequent informal conversations with members of EA, and a wealth of
internal company documentation, including the 80-page office manual, working papers
and other publications.
532
Data analysis
We analysed our data informed by an understanding that language is a primary medium
through which power is expressed and shaped (Clegg, 1975; Fairclough, 1989), and
should thus be the main focus of efforts to analyse how work practices were subjectively
constituted through discourse. In line with previous theorizing based on qualitative
research we sought to assess our findings by moving iteratively back and forth between
data and theory employing a multi-stage inductive approach. At a relatively early stage,
inspired by Cleggs (1975) pioneering account of language games on construction sites,
we became interested in how power relations structured the everyday lives of EAs members in the architectural office (see Kornberger & Brown, 2007).
First, we needed to identify power at work in these everyday texts. The transcripts and
other data sources were read and instances of talk indexing relations of power were identified and coded following the open coding paradigm recommended by Strauss (1987). The
process resulted in the identification of a large number of categories that were more or less
continuously revised as new ideas and analytical opportunities presented themselves.
Using an initial coding we wrote a lengthy generalized account of what it meant to be an
architect at EA and the working practices that governed organizational life, which led us
to re-think how specific codes related to each other and to a further process of collapsing,
comparing, integrating and discarding ideas and quote material. What is deemed important in the persona of the architect as a creative designer is a sense of unique identity as
members of a practice; a commitment to what is recognizable as professionalism, and an
espousal of creativity as a supreme value. To affirm their power in relations with stakeholders outside the firms practice the central focus is on the need to assert identity, professionalism and creativity as the accounts that best serve the interests of the firm in
negotiating projects. These issues lead to a positivity of power mirrored in executive discourse about the firm; however, while there is no shortage of discourse positioning EA in
these terms there are other relations of power at work that, in contrast to the discourses of
creativity, professionalism and identity, are less overwhelmingly positive; indeed they
include some sense of negation and restriction on the part of respondents. Thus, we came
to identify as master codes identity, professionalism, and creativity as linked to aspects
of power. It is from this final coding that the article has been generated.
It is important to note that, as we interviewed them about EA, our interviewees also
narrated their own identities. Every interview is always an opportunity for identity work:
the stories they told us are similarly attempts to make sense of their past, as well as wishful
thinking about the future. As has often been noted in organization studies, work identities
are subjectively available to people as self-narratives that organize experiences, facilitate
sensemaking and promote individuation (e.g. Brown & Humphreys, 2002; Clarke et al.,
2009; Worthington, 1996). Using a qualitative methodological framework, it is important
to reflect on the data in relation to the self-presentation of the interviewees.
Creativity, organizing and power at Earth Architects

In this section, we analyse creativity and identity discourses at EA as effects of power.
While these are intimately related, for ease of presentation we present our analysis in
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Brown et al.
four sections. First, we discuss how individuals said that they oriented to commonly
shared understandings of how creative work should be conducted. Second, we demonstrate how staff said that their creative work emerged through routine diagramming
processes, and that how this was mostly the preserve of senior architects. Third, we consider how employees talked about their selves, and how commitment to the organization
was engineered through cultural assumptions that mandated high performance. Fourth,
we illustrate how members defined themselves as specifically EA professionals rather
than undifferentiated service providers, and how this was enforced through processes of
surveillance and discipline.
The silent hierarchy

Senior staff at EA said that structure constrained creativity and intuition, and made many
statements, both publicly and in our interviews with them, that what they desired was an
open and democratic office in which employees were involved and empowered in
operational and strategic matters. Oban, a director, stressed that any formal office structure or defined routines would restrict creativity and interaction, and that structures and
routines (such as job descriptions) should be kept to a minimum. The two key discursive
phrases that the directors employed to describe their ideal of an open and democratic
office were distributed intelligence and dispersed authorship. Distributed intelligence referred to their stated preference that decisions should be made locally by an
individual confronted by a specific issue, while dispersed authorship implicated their
understanding that EA should function as a collective of equals with minimum hierarchy.
More junior members of staff, however, stated that while authority structures at EA were
generally impalpable, the firm was not un-hierarchical, and that a silent hierarchy tacitly structured their creative work:
. . . theres a silent hierarchy in this office, and in that respect its something that people would
think. They talk about it not existing, but its there, well it is for me, I definitely feel that.
(Rose, graduate architect)
. . . you feel this silent hierarchy going on . . . I would say that theres a certain language of Earth
Architects which is collaborative. If you try and step outside the collaborative language then
hierarchy comes back in.
(Adam, associate director)
While directors were evidently proud of their putatively egalitarian approach, less senior
individuals were adamant that Whenever the boss walks in, you straighten up and start
looking busy (Abbi, trainee), and that EAs latent hierarchy and tacit rules were typically
learned by newcomers through breaching behaviour (see Garfinkel, 1967):
There are a lot of rules . . . The rules come from five years of working somewhere where you
are told or emailed that thats not the right thing to do, not the Earth Architects way of doing
things. Lets not do that any more. So you dont do it any more. But its not like the Ten
Commandments. You just remember that the last time that happened, dont do that again. Even
534
like just the way that you talk to each other in the office. Whether or not something is not
respectful or something. Those kinds of things. You dont write that down every time . . .
(Christine, associate director)
In short, being creative did not mean being free to do anything at all; it meant being free
to do what fully socialized EA architects should do, and indeed did in response to
processes of learning and correction: There is like a EA way of just getting through the
project (Karen, interior designer). Thus did the language of creativity and freedom
coexist with a tutelary practice that undercut and contradicted the directors espousals
regarding the democratic and distributed nature of EA. It was in employees construed
understandings that they ought to embrace and act upon seniors corrections of their
conceptions and creative conduct that power was exercised. As an individual who had
worked for EA since almost the inception of the organization commented about the need
to fit in:
I have had to work with almost everyone in the office at some stage and Ive had to explain to
them how I think the director wants things to be done. So therefore Im not one where I sit and
say this is how things have to be done, but I do explain to people this is whats happened in the
past. I know this is what [EA] likes. You have to decide where you are going to fit in.
(Julia, associate director)
In this quote we see two powerful mechanisms at work: first, Julia evokes the idea of an
organizational memory that one has to absorb in order to fit in. The second dimension
of fitting in is not cognitive but social: one has to fit into the social networks and
relations within EA. The poetry of an open and democratic office as espoused by the
directors looked very different once it was translated into the prose of everyday
organizational life: while there were almost no explicit rules, the tacit organizing of work
resulted in a silent hierarchy.
The routinization of creative work

At EA staff talked about the importance of design conscience, by which they meant
working on unique and imaginative solutions to the technical problems they faced, their
fixation on experimentation and exploration, and their lack of regard for issues of organizational efficiency. The directors in particular pushed the development of a distinctive EA
philosophy that differentiated it from other architectural practices: the emergent design
philosophy was, the directors posited, a key outcome of the office-wide more-or-less continuous conversations about the production of ideas. Yet, while directors and employees
tended to define creativity in opposition to routine, and to talk about the pre-eminence of
architecture and aesthetics in their day-to-day work, they also recognized that ideas had to
be captured and formalized, generally through diagramming processes:
The diagram then becomes a kind of process of discovery, of delay that reveals. And here is one
of the fundamental principles in the Firms ethos: that drawing or diagramming things produces
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Brown et al.
a kind of knowledge that is not attainable outside of this process of diagrammatic lines and
models. [. . .] In other words, that the drawing produces its own kind of knowledge.
(George, director)
As the director explains in the quote, drawing produces a unique knowledge that cannot
be obtained outside the architectural process. This insight is interesting in several respects:
first, from a professional perspective, the skills of an architect (e.g. drawing) are linked to
knowledge production that can be claimed as the area over which architects have
jurisdiction (see Abbott, 1988). In other words, drawing and the knowledge it reveals
legitimize architecture as a professional body. Second, drawing is made a powerful
mechanism that sets the parameters of design work. As one graduate architect explains:
. . . that basic idea at the start, usually its like a diagram and everything that we do in that project should relate back to that one idea . . . everything is based on that philosophy or
architecture.
(Peter, graduate architect)
Moreover, the power/knowledge that centred on these processes of esoteric knowledge

and diagram production was for the most part the privilege of the directors of the firm: .
. . we understand that their [directors] ideas, you know, come above yours basically
(Peter, graduate architect). The drawing process, which defines and legitimizes
architecture as a profession, and represents the mechanism that shapes the design of
buildings (Nayak, 2008), has thus to be seen as a central axis around which power
relations are structured. Junior staff members were generally occupied with more
mundane tasks associated with, for example, documentation, project management and
contracts, and claimed ignorance of the the deeper theories that drove the directors: I
dont think I fully understand the philosophical depths of where the directors are coming
from (Kim, graduate architect). The directors understood this invisible division of labour
by framing their work as a world of poetics (design) and the work of their staff as a world
of techne (documentation), and institutionalized this through a set of inclusionary/
exclusionary practices that sanctioned the directors to focus on key creative issues, and
left juniors to deal with the more prosaic requirements of the office:
I think theres an awareness that all of that kind of thinking is happening but I think its much
more of a part of the directors experience of EA than it is say for the staff. Particularly because
as soon as youre off the design process and you, you know into the next stage of the job so if
youre documenting or youre doing contract admin and stuff all of a sudden that doesnt even
factor in. And theres an awful lot of architecture thats not about design.
(Jessica, graduate architect)
Id probably say that it [ideas development] does operate mainly at the very top level. And
generally, I guess, the majority of the kind of philosophical ideas etcetera are tossed around
between those guys [directors].
(Charles, associate architect)
536
Even the most senior architects at EA, though, said that a considerable portion of their
time was spent on routine organizational tasks, especially as they related to technical
considerations and external constituencies such as building companies. The rhetoric of a
concern for Architecture thus contrasted with that centred on the need for staff to
address practical issues, a tension that senior staff said they sometimes found hard to
broker:
I think its part of that schizophrenic nature of the practice. Ultimately you are interested in
creative design ideas but there is the more technical side to it that you have to understand as
well . . . no matter how creative the project is, underlying it there are still, not the uncreative,
but the more mundane aspects to each project that you have to deliver a building . . . the industry around is very structured in how information is managed . . . at the end of the day you do
have to assimilate that back into a structured system in terms of drawings and specifications and
communicating with clients.
(Robert, architect)
While even senior staff experienced the schizophrenic nature of EA (being torn between
creativity of design ideas and mundane technical and organizational routines), the
directors monopolized the poetics of design. This bolstered their position within EA,
enabling them to claim responsibility for the production of professional knowledge (for
external constituencies), while internally, their diagrams put them ultimately in control
of the design of buildings. As such, the creativity of the poetics of architecture exercised
important power effects.
Being an EA architect
Staff at EA defined the identity of their organization as being focally concerned with
Architecture with a capital A. In line with the rhetoric of an open and democratic office,
ideas and creative design, combined with a laissez-faire attitude, meant that even junior
staff were encouraged to indulge in time-consuming artistic work:
The directors have established that the practice operates to ensure that architectural ideas and
narratives are the primary driver over all else. In EA all else supports this primary source and
the firm has been seen to ruthlessly cut out all that gets in its way. The outcomes are, therefore,
the generation and progression of ideas.
. . . my interests which is more about, you know, building models for the process of design not
show the client the finished result . . . you know, thats the nice thing about the office, is if
youre working on a project but you want to make a model, then you can make a model, you
dont have to go and feel bad about wasting time.
(Martin, graduate architect)
It was not unusual, they said, for the firm to become so fixated on intriguing design
possibilities that it produced dozens of models and, in so doing, over-run agreed budgets
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Brown et al.
with clients. As Kylie (graduate architect) said: Ive never associated money with
design time. The point that was made consistently was that people at EA were
passionate about architecture (Rose, graduate student). This was translated into work
norms that prescribed that individuals should work long hours on stressful projects with
enthusiasm:
It feels like 24 hours a day is expected, in an exaggerated way. I feel like its never enough. No
matter how many hours I do . . .
(Kylie, graduate architect)
. . . everyone is working all the time.
(Karen, interior designer)
Many people said that they work 80, 90 hour weeks a lot of the time, but did so quite
happily (Martin, graduate architect) because they felt pride in being part of a highperforming team that made them, after a successful client presentation, feel like a
unified force (Rose, graduate architect). A trainee described the often stressful process
and the resulting outcome as follows:
. . . when youre finished a project like, youre pretty proud of yourself because you like
what youve done. And then, yeah, I think its kind of like when people tell about they
become parents because it really hurts during birth, but when theyre done, theyre ready for
the next one.
(Saskia, trainee)
There seemed almost to be a cultish dimension to employees articulations of their

commitment to Architecture, which they lived out through their affiliation with EA.
This meant that the directors did not need to say to staff you work, you work (Emil,
architect), because everyone knew that others were also working hard:
. . . theyll [employees] work that five hours and theyll go, you know, thats not good enough
so Im going to take it home and they keep going. And because that happens and because pretty
much everybody in that office does that, I feel the pressure to do that too. And I feel that pressure is huge . . .
While junior employees said that they were happy and enthusiastic about working for
EA, they also suggested that the firm and its directors were exploitative and bullying, and
only nurturing in ways which best served the companys interests:
I feel like Im being bullied not to say no. But passively bullied.
I guess it [leading] is done with fear and enthusiasm . . .
538
Being an EA architect meant to subscribe to the rhetoric of creativity, openness and

democracy, whilst working long and stressful hours to be able to combine the rhetoric
with the demands of reality. Staff described the power mechanism through which this
was achieved as passive bullying and characterized leadership as a mixtum compositum
of fear and enthusiasm. Importantly, power was not exercised directly; rather, broken
through the prism of creativity, it shaped EA in capillary fashion.
Professionalism and invisible walls

Staff were adamant that they were professional architects, and that at EA the discourse of architecture is architecture too. Buildings are part of the discourse. So architecture becomes a discipline of which buildings are but the experiments (Christine,
associate director). In particular, they were keen to differentiate between themselves as
professionals and service providers whose function was merely to satisfy the expressed
needs of clients:
We are not a service provider. We do projects that are interesting to us. We are professionals.
(Oban, director)
We dont just do what people ask us to do were a profession.
Their conception of their selves as professionals was associated with an insistence that it
was part of their remit to interpret clients briefs, and to work with them to find building
solutions that satisfied both EAs aesthetic aspirations as well as their clients needs for
functionality:
I would say that EA is definitely not a service provider . . . I think you are, if you are an architect, you go in and you look at a brief and you see much more than what youre given. And
youve then got to develop, youve got to develop that. And so someone might come up to you
and say right, I want this house built. And you say well thats a completely missed opportunity what you should be doing is this [. . .] you are definitely providing a professional sort of
opinion.
(John, associate director)
Yeah I guess we do tend to probably bang away at the door to get our ideas through as much as
we can . . . The way it would seem to work is almost trust us its going to be an amazing view.
(Charles, associate architect)
Relatedly, staff talked about their enthusiasm, passion and pride that they took in
their work rather than just getting things out the door (Karen, interior designer). This
same attitude was, they said, carried into architectural competitions. As a major source
of procurement of new work, for competitions senior EA architects submitted designs
that they hoped would win business, but which did not compromise the integrity of the
unique EA design philosophy:
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Brown et al.
Yeah you do [win pitches], but at the same time that pitch was what we wanted to do and it just
happened to coincide with what the client wanted to do. I think thats very much what, in competitions and things like that, that Oban [director] goes for. Its very much the attitude is well
were going to present a project that well obviously we look at the brief, but our interpretation
of the brief is very much our interpretation of the brief, its not the clients. Its not another
architects, its very much how we want to do the project.
(Adam, associate director)
People at all levels were insistent that they were not just professional architects, but
specifically EA professionals with a distinctive set of skills and modus operandi. This
meant that rather than simply delivering a service according to a template, they had
always to act as professional EA employees. What this entailed in practice was never
clearly articulated, though it evidently served a disciplinary function, encouraging junior
staff to invite monitoring from seniors:
Yeah, I think EA has a very clear way of doing things and they have a clear way of wanting to
relate to people and wanting to relate to clients and establish a position with clients about how
EA works . . . I think it does put a lot of responsibility on the project architect to understand
what EA would be wanting or how they would be wanting to respond to [a] situation. Which is
why I feel that I want to check a lot of stuff with the directors.
Junior staff said that they greatly valued their status as professional EA architects, but
that they also found the lack of clearly expressed routines and ethos of unconstrained
design-creativity somewhat anxiety-provoking. The junior architects had, in dealing
with external constituencies and formulating their designs, to operate according to an
implicit rule of anticipated reaction, so as to present to clients ideas that that they felt
senior colleagues would appreciate. Clearly, the professional ideal, as embodied by the
directors, exercised power over more junior architects, a point that Schn makes in his
analysis of a reflective conversation between an architect and a student (Schn, 1983).
Failing to conform to the local EA rules regarding what constituted acceptable
professional behaviour or design work was an uncomfortable experience an experience
that one of our interviewees summarized succinctly:
Youre almost getting smacked constantly because youre not actually, you dont see an end
result coming . . . There is, there is a lot of invisible walls.
Discussion
The imagery associated with the creative industries is overwhelmingly positive: the
dominant representation is of a free-floating, value creating, avant-garde creative person who does not only draw upon, and produce culture but also creates tangible value
in the economy.7 Creative workers increasingly can be seen as the heroic figures of a
post-industrial utopian future. In these representations organization plays little role at
540
all. The assumption is that creatives occupy informal, free-wheeling organizations

that promote creativity and innovation over any other value. In one view from organizational analysis of cultural industries, Lampel et al. (2000) argue that creativity
is a resource that cannot be organized. Our article challenges this understanding
and argues that talk about creativity and creative identities does not exist outside of
power relations.
Creativity as an effect of power

It has been argued that the nature of architectural work requires special management
practices to handle the creative temperament within an organizational frame: Of all the
challenges facing the profession, the problems of motivating architects and sustaining
office morale and performance might be the most difficult to address (Gutman, 1988:
110). Blau even suggests that architectural practice might make as much sense as the
term bureaucratic art (1984: 10), perhaps because, as professionals, architects are equal,
but in working for a firm there are clear hierarchical differences that map on to zones of
creativity in practice. Blau (1984) found in her study that 98 percent of interviewees
stated that the distinctive characteristic of architecture, compared to other professions,
was that it dealt with art and creativity. For her respondents this relation produced motivational problems: the discrepancy between what architects are actually doing and what
they think they should do led to low commitment (Blau, 1984). We did not find low commitment at EA; despite the bureaucratic aspects of the ways in which the art in Architecture
is constituted, the commitment, cohesion and motivation were high. The question is: how
was this accomplished?
As the political theorist Haugaard (1997: 69) has argued, Power is the consequence
of petty confrontations between actors fighting within or over a regime of truth production. It is produced through the strategies and tactics of local conflicts carried out by
actors with specific strategies and objectives, rather than being the effect of some capacities to access resources, or realize real interests, or counter ideologies that obscure these.
Power is always embedded in those forms of rationality with which actors will, they
think, be held accountable. From an organizational perspective, the power that the junior
architects experienced at EA was one with which the directors aspired to create a common sensemaking frame (Colville et al., 1999; Weick, 1995) or, as Haugaard (2000) has
posited, a common practical consciousness, a normative control mechanism that is
common in knowledge intensive firms (Alvesson, 1995; Starbuck, 1992). EAs culture
displayed similar schizophrenic tendencies. Work in the firm was rationalized and justified in terms of a greater collective interest (Jackson & Carter, 1998: 51). Or, to interpret
Townley (1998: 193) from another context, when she suggests that before a domain can
be governed or managed it must first be rendered knowable in a particular way, how the
employees learn to know the firm is through the idealization of creativity even in the
midst of the mundaneity of practice.
The phrase creative industry is an apparent oxymoron: to be creative and to be
industrious seem to summon up different and alternate tropes. Not surprisingly the tension between the terms was very evident in EA as employees steered between the worlds
of techne and poetics. They reconciled this tension, that is, that they were working in an
541
Brown et al.
environment that apparently provided many degrees of creative freedom while structuring how this liberty was used, through reference to an ethical ideal of their creative
individual and collective identities even in apparent contradiction of lived experience.
Organizing creativity institutes the injunction to Be Creative! at the heart of its moral
and organizing compass. Thus, EAs power operated largely through facilitative mechanisms, using forms of institutionalized regulation to achieve their effects, by the continuous and relatively stable presence of a series of ideals, expectations, received
truths, standards and frameworks that provoked individuals to govern their lives in
quite particular ways (Allen, 2003: 82):
Subjects are constituted by the spacing and timing of their own activities as much as they are
by those of others who seek to influence their behaviour; their conduct is shaped as much by
what they absorb and imagine the truth of their circumstances to be as it is by the physical
layout, distribution and organization of their settings.
(Allen, 2003: 83)
The mechanisms of power also include the code of generalized symbols which guides
the transmission of symbols to which Luhmann (1979: 111) attends. In the case of EA,
these are central to the way the facilitative use of power to be creative was organized, as
we see in the tropes and rhetoric of creativity. We know from Foucault that power and
knowledge are inextricably intertwined. The myth of the creative professional expressing
him/herself and producing meaning does not, typically, explicitly acknowledge power.
However, power can be seen in the textual interstices of some of our interviewees, such
as Roses account of what we could term the joy of work, a joy that simultaneously
produces invisible walls, silent hierarchies and unified forces.
In short, talk about creativity and creative organizations does not flourish outside of
power relations, but are an effect of them. Signature architects, as traders in meaning, are
governed very subtly: not through bureaucratic power; not through dynamics of teamwork as Barker (1993) analysed; not through empowerment and motivational exercise
that get people to work for organizational objectives. Nor are they governed purely
through power/knowledge regimes, as in a disciplinary context. Perrow (1986) once
remarked that professionals embody rules, meaning that professional organizations can
be bureaucracy-lite because professionals already have internalized the rules of practice as a result of their professional training. However, with creative architects this is not
so clear: their training tends to express the rhetoric of creativity while immediate initial
practice often contradicts this. Hence, to keep contradictions at bay, creative power structures experience in ways that are reflexive on a future-perfect (Schutz, 1967) ideal of
what being a creative professional will be while in the here-and-now, one lives only for
those moments of being in a unified force that allow glimpses of the promised land,
tantalizingly embodied in the figure of the senior Architect. They position the idea of
creativity in a way that everyday practice cannot deny, as an aesthetic light on the hill,
pointing to a more perfect future state. The contradictions between these worlds are often
experienced in tandem during the same work day, even when the work is differentiated.
All EA employees were enveloped in a culture of celebratory creativity that entailed that
even though discourses about practices sometimes conflicted, with tensions between
542
professional values and organizational realities of briefs and cost constraints, creative
power provided the ethical fibre that made sense of it all. The fulcrum of these dynamics
was the identity of being an Architect.
Creative architects, as professionals engaged in market relations, are subject not only
to normal disciplinary and organizational power relations but also those that are condensed through the brief: the nexus between the architects professional identity and the
market of opportunities for practice. Design-focused architects are often strongly resistant to those power relations that are imposed in the brief the instructions as to the
nature of the desired object. The brief, in ostensibly shaping and framing what and how
they will do what they do, imposes limits on their creativity. In limiting their creative
autonomy it limits their power to talk and draft into being that which is creatively possible in favour of that which the clients resources and imagination can envisage. In order
to realize her creative ideas, the architect has to negotiate and renegotiate her joint sensemaking with the client. The built object invariably emerges as a product of such a
negotiated order (Strauss et al., 1963). Hence, much of the work of architects is expressed
in discourse around the brief, drawing on the particulars of the professional identity to
negotiate the always indexical conceptualization of the building as a complex project, to
present to the world something that embodies their professional ambitions sometimes
despite the clients brief.
In terms of organizational discourse this indexical conceptualization of the building
finds its mirror image in terms of the discourses that circulate internally, as we have
seen. On the one hand, there is the celebration of creativity and EAs unique identity in
which all are engaged in an egalitarian expression of the firms essential identity; on
the other hand, there are the silent hierarchies and the contradictions of being professional by second-guessing what professionalism (as specified by the senior partners)
demands. Hence, the authentic discourse of being an EA architect is already constituted in terms of a dominant imaginary provided through interpretation of the senior
partners practice. This is not a simple matter of power being exercised causally; nor is
it a matter of hegemony. Junior members of the firm are engaged in a voluntarist sensemaking of the contradictions that they see modelled in EAs practice. As they make
sense of these contradictions discursively they begin to construct an imaginary that
works as a relation of power with which they seek to shape their practices. These are
neither dependent subjects being pushed around, causally, by the directors nor are they
judgmental dopes whose consciousness is hegemonized. It is in their imaginary that
becoming and being an EA architect is constituted in terms of specific modes of rationality (see Clegg, 1975). In this article, we have identified these modes as ways of
being professional, managing identity and, as we discuss next, positing this identity as
essentially creative.
Creative identities as effects of power

The case illustrates how architects subjective construction of their selves as creative professionals was disciplined by discursive practices of creative power. These structured a
domain of possible action and subjectivity that conditioned practice and made the situated
tensions of the creative person employed as a mundane worker both intelligible and
543
Brown et al.
practicable (see Maister, 1986). In this respect, the study is similar to Orrs (1996) analysis
of how the fantasy of the hero operated to sustain the work identities of photocopy repair
technicians; here the fantasy was more of a future perfect projection that was personified in
the here-and-now by the rhetoric and practice of the directors, as the type of Architects that
all should aspire to become. The architects identification of themselves as a community of
expressive artists, architectural heroes whose creative power constituted what Lacan has
described as a fantasy-scenario, gave their reality consistency and maintained their sense of
self (Contu & Willmott, 2007). Asserting creativity is a constant refrain; even when the
architects bemoan that they are not being creative they are positioning themselves not in
terms of who they are but what they aspire to be. While the hero is a potent trope in Western
mythology that implicates superhuman abilities, for the junior architects at EA the hero role
that subjects enacted preserved the fantasy of artistic freedom in the face of bureaucratic
art. Even though they may now be lower case architects the identity of being specifically
EA-professionals is significant in this regard: it tells architects who they will want to
become and how they will become it. Of course, on a less elevated level their hero-identities were counter-balanced by that awful lot of architecture that is not about design, as one
of our interviewees put it (see Gilbert & Mulkay, 1984).
At EA, as in other high commitment organizations, individuals uncritically assumed
the subjectivities made available to them, a phenomenon that Burawoy (1985) has discussed as strategizing ones own subordination. Their subjectively construed identities
were products of power, irreducible to an internal core of meaning but rather continuously constituted and constructed (Townley, 1998: 199) by individuals intent on realizing the project of the self (Grey, 1994: 482). EA was a social locale in which
self-reinforcing surveillance served to replicate, reinforce and monitor processes of
mutual control. Self-review was not, it seemed, discrete, but more-or-less continuous:
under the panoptic gaze the individual becomes the principle of his own subjection
(Foucault, 1977: 2023). Within this milieu, as Fournier (1999) has argued, professionalism constituted a disciplinary logic or software of control (p. 293) that, potentially at
least, allowed for control at a distance through the construction of notionally appropriate professionalized identities and conducts. In illustrating this, our article is also a
contribution to debates on discursive control within the professions.
At EA, being a professional architect meant learning how to constitute creative
architectural projects, using conceptions and terminology sanctioned by, or at least
consonant with, those of the directors, especially where these gained recognition in
the broader professional community. In order to legitimate their claims to competence, junior architects not only had to promote themselves as becoming technically
competent, and already creatively gifted, but as able to understand problems and to
articulate solutions from a corporate EA perspective. In doing so they also did deference to the directors. It was this requirement that, in part, operated to control the
margin of indeterminacy or flexibility that junior staff had in the conduct of their
work. Employees were, nevertheless, able to comment reflexively on their subject
positions, and in doing so implicitly understood how power was being exercised over
them by the directors. In short, they were not passive consumers of designated identities but knowingly compliant in their quest for achievement of an idealized identity
(see Thornborrow & Brown, 2009).
544
Conclusions
In this article, we have analysed how creative power structures everyday work life in one
architectural practice; architecture, though, feeds on cultural capital that is global by
nature it connects the dream of being part of a global profession that has a mission
beyond the immediate work that one may be doing; it is for this reason that the design
competitions, the prizes, the models, and the placement of designs in prestigious journals
and books were of such importance to EA. Successful architectural performance was, in
a Goffmanian sense, linked closely to convincing representations of architecture. Books,
competitions and other representations function as media to express creative design
beyond the (narrow) boundaries of what clients would commercially fund and aesthetically acknowledge. Although our case study has started to delineate the contours of what
we have termed creative power, future research needs to focus on the micro-practices of
everyday organizational life and analyse discursive regimes that constitute creativity.
Further studies could also focus on the different media in which creativity is performed,
and how they effect power relations between professionals, clients and others. In accomplishing this we will not only learn about practices of so-called creative industry members but also about other kinds of knowledge-intensive firms. From the aestheticization
of late modernity we witness the increasing intrusion of design into the provision of the
consumed environment. In this context, other professionals that are preoccupied with the
category of imagination might start to share the liminal space of Architecture as
Bureaucratic Art, shaped and structured by creative power.
Notes
1 Earth Architects (EA) is a pseudonym.
2 Worthington (2005) has delivered an interesting report on the Future for architectural education in Ireland that outlines how creative and commercial skills should be balanced in the
education of architects.
3 In Greek mythology Daedalus was a renowned and highly skilled craftsman.
4 In order to protect the firm and its employees we have decided to keep the country in which
EA operated confidential.
5 The ordinary nomenclature of the firm is to refer to the three owners and partners as directors.
6 One interview was conducted by phone and could not be recorded.
7 Whilst beyond of the scope of this article, it would be interesting to analyse the discourse of
Creative Industries as ideology that promises to combine creativity and commerciality, breaking the old conflict between culture and commerce. The latest report Staying ahead: The economic performance of the UKs creative industries, commissioned by the Department for
Culture, Media and Sport of the UK government and written by The Work Foundation, explains:
The creative industries are important sources of employment and wealth generation . . . But
they are more than that. They are the means by which the nation displays expressive value
a source of pleasure, components of wellbeing and the replenishment of our collectivelycreated culture and their growth demonstrates the increasing worth we attach to it. The
process of expressing value, involving risk-taking, experimentation and imagination, has a
wider cascade effect. The more creative and vigorous the core of our national creativity, the
more creative and vigorous are likely to be the creative industries and the wider economy
and society.
(The Work Foundation, 2007: 188)
545
Brown et al.
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Brown et al.
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[Email: stewart.clegg@uts.edu.au]
Chris Carter is from Cornwall and works as a Professor of Management at the University of St
Andrews, Scotland. His research and teaching span the disciplinary areas of organization theory
and critical accounting. His PhD was awarded by Aston Business School, where he was supervised
by David C Wilson. [Email: cc67@st-andrews.ac.uk]

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Human Relations

'Invisible walls' and 'silent hierarchies': A case study of power relations in an

The Tavistock Institute

>> Version of Record - Mar 26, 2010

Invisible walls and silent

University of Technology, Sydney, Australia

University of Technology Sydney, Australia

Human Relations 63(4)

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