Industrial designers in labour process: An investigation on working conditions of in-house industrial designers in Turkey

Economic and social shift that became visible within 50s, have drastic effects on the notions of work, workplace and working conditions. Both organization of production processes and intellectuality of the worker have been subjected to change. Production becomes a part of people's daily life and leeks into communicational and cultural processes. End product is not just a tangible good anymore; it is a communication tool, also. Thus, production processes has changed, too. Production process has no longer determined by the organization but it is shaped by worker's subjectivity. Moreover, organizational structures also become flatten, horizontal and freed from bureaucracy and hierarchy to be able to proceed autonomous production processes. There are many different comments on dynamics of creative labor. In this thesis, Labour Process Theory is chosen as a ground theory. Lpt focuses on experiences of paid workers in profit-based organizations and investigates the realities of production processes. Basically, production process means how and under which conditions human labour turn into end product. This approach puts workers in its center, and tries to reach dynamics of production processes through worker's experiences. Thus, Lpt aims to see behind the exaggerated comments on creative industries and to grasp the real situations of workers. In these senses, Lpt is very aligned with this thesis's objectives. It investigates how creative production processes distinguish itself from other works through revealing the differences and commonalities about creative work and creative workers (Smith and McKinlay, 2009). With all of these, Lpt writers explain the differences of creative works under three articles (Smith & McKinlay, 2009). Firstly, end product and its context have been subjected to change. Most of the product contains intangible properties such as, cultural codes, norms, meanings, which produced through creative labour. Secondly, due to the different expectations on qualities of end product, production processes are interpreted differently, too. Because of the creative quality that is expected from work to carry, production processes become subjective and flexible labor processes. Instead of implementing pre-determined, rigid production definitions, manager's duty is to create autonomous area for the worker to design and interpret his/her own process accordingly with his/her needs. Thirdly, as a result of other two articles, relation between worker and employee is subjected to change. To meet the needs of subjective processes, organizations become structures where horizontal relations take place. Work places also become more home-like and friendly with off-work activities. Communication between workers is taken as a tool for managing and planned accordingly. Along with these new qualities of creative industries, definition of work is no longer limited with the activities which create exchange value directly, but definition of work contains all the processes of production which infiltrate in daily life, in re-production areas. In the same sense, work place is not just offices or manufacturing plants, but it is anywhere production occurs; houses, cafes so on. In a literature which has many different notions and comment, if a mapping is made, three main notions come to forefront that writes have agreed upon; subjectivity, autonomy and flexibility. To make worker to be able to reflect his/her personal creativity to work, production process are subjective in means that worker can identify his/her work plan. To be able to plan their processes, autonomous areas and flexible working conditions should be provided to workers. Being flexible means that working conditions which open to interpretation of working according to his/her needs of production processes. Working conditions contains many factors in itself. I prefer to gather them under three topics; a) business process; work organization, job context, b) work hours, work intensity, physical factors, cognitive factors, health and well-being, social relationships, work-life balance, financial security, violence, harassment and discrimination, c) job fulfillment and career prospects (Working condition, Eurofound). Aim of this thesis is to investigate working conditions of in-house industrial designers in Turkey in terms of flexibility and to reveal how designers interpret their own conditions regarding its effects on their design process, work and social life. The point aimed to reach is while investigating a fact with all its surroundings, also revealing personal differences on the matter at hand. Thus; for research, unstructured interview based organizational storytelling research method is selected. This method aims to reach deep and personal knowledge about how employers make sense their experiences in an organization (Boje, 2001). Aside from its audibility and validity, some countries specify some standards and minimum necessities regarding working conditions of industrial designers (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2014). In academic area, although there are some works focuses on certain parts of designers' work life (Kaygan; 2012 & 2013), there is no work on working conditions. For creative work, even if every person has his/her own design process, when it comes to the work life, design process can't be thought separately from working conditions. Even though working conditions aren't intrinsic to the design process, when designers become workers working conditions become determinative factors for both production process and so end product. In this sense, investigating working conditions of designers might reveal significant results. One other reason why working conditions are wanted to be investigated is that I heard many of my significant experiences about work and workplace from other colleagues who works different firms or sectors; sometimes we experience very similar situations. We complain about or pleasant about similar things. Thus, I want to collect these experiences as stories and analyze them in a systematic way. Certainly, it won't be just passive browsing of people's stories, it aims to compare these stories to gain insight and make sense to the matters that we all have at work. Design is an effective tool for manipulating people perception of a product. In an economy where creative labour not only produces tangible end products but also produces social and ideological environment which those products are consumed and reproduced, importance of industrial design continues increasingly. Although, writings on creative labour and new economies mostly focus on newly emerging areas such as, media, new media, advertising and so on, industrial design is an ideology produced tool for long ago. Analysis of the data collected through unstructured interviews is executed at four phases; 1) gathering: collection of stories through interviews, 2) linking: reaching general inference from collected stories, 3) fragmenting: detailed analysis of stories via clustering by subject, 4) relinking: linking clusters considering research purposes and reaching results. As conclusion, fistly, although notion of flexibility can be observed through working conditions of designers in Turkey, it mostly results against workers' interests. In literature, flexibility means conditions which can be interpreted by the worker in regard to his/her needs of production According to the interviews, in Turkey, flexibility is evaluated as uncertainty. Employers either do not allow this uncertainty or implement it as putting the most work load on employee. Flexible conditions which are detected in interviews are mostly department-specific or they occur through worker's personal effort instead of planned organizational application. Secondly, for creative work, there should be a conscious expectation of creative value from the worker. After that, employee might provide necessary environment and conditions. As it put in most interviews, value of design is underrated and misunderstood. As a third main result, most of the participants find subjectivity of the work in the research process and how they interpret their research into end product.