This MFA thesis explored strategies to foster open dialogue and participation among individuals and teams in workplace environments, focusing on resolving conflicts and disagreements. The work specifically targets employees in mission-driven organizations in Indonesia, examining the impact of organizational structure, culture, and power dynamics on employee participation.
Employing a blend of design research methods, including ethnography and play-based virtual workshops, the project not only collects data but also encourages participants to reflect on their experiences, discuss challenges openly, and suggest improvements. This research serves both as an information-gathering tool and a catalyst for organizational change.
Read the final paper here.
Access the digital version of the workshop here
The Transdisciplinary Design MFA academic program is a 2-year Master Program that is as a part of Parsons School of Design, The New School, New York. The program addresses pressing social, economic, political, and environmental issues by uniting the theoretical focus of the social sciences and the transformative possibilities of artistic and design practices.
The program curriculum brings together research and action-oriented approaches in the exploration of political and philosophical questions and develops operational capacities aimed at advancing equity and justice.
The collective actions people do in organizations could and have made massive impacts on our social, economic, and ecological worlds. Therefore, it's crucial to foster genuine participation and integrate diverse perspectives on organizational development.
Choosing Organization as a Site
Organizations are microcosms of the broader world, spaces where people come together to pursue common goals. The collective actions within organizations significantly impact our social, economic, and ecological spheres. Therefore, it's crucial to foster genuine participation and integrate diverse perspectives on organizational development
Autoethnography and Semi-structured Interviews
Over 11 weeks of autoethnography, I observed various forms of play, identifying key elements like the "Magic Circle" of make-believe, narrative, and social-relational dynamics. I also conducted semi-structured interviews with 12 participants from 8 organizations, learning about the essential conditions for candid conversations—shared purpose, vulnerability, and psychological safety—and the challenges in fostering these conditions.
Choosing Indonesian organizations as a Site
My personal connection to Indonesian culture deepened my understanding of how cultural and organizational structures shape power dynamics and interactions in the workplace. Characterized by collectivism, hierarchy, high-context and indirect communication, and a focus on maintaining harmony (avoiding confrontation), Indonesian workplace culture significantly influences genuine participation and open conversations. This insight sparked my interest in exploring these dynamics further.
Secondary Research & Theoretical Grounding
I applied theoretical frameworks like Sherry Arnstein's Ladder of Genuine Participation, concepts of meaningful inefficiency in civic design, and play in organizational settings to explore how these elements influence participation and power dynamics in Indonesian workplaces. My secondary research provided insights into enabling genuine participation through well-facilitated playful interactions.
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Synthesizing my auto-ethnography about Play moments around me helped me explore further on play/game format and elements as well as how it affects human relations
Prototyping Playful Methods
I continued the research by exploring different format of play and then developing play-based activities incorporating elements from RPGs, collaging, physical role-playing, and simulations. These prototypes informed the design of the activities for the virtual workshop, in which I focused on fun and engaging methods in order to enhance participation.
Virtual Workshop
I organized a 3-day virtual workshop with activities like drawing, collaging, and role-playing games designed to prompt reflection on individual’s standing in their social environment and their impact on organizational participation. The workshop also aimed to empower participants to initiate desired organizational changes. The idea was to help participants explore a new way of relating and showing up in a space while using senses, other than only talking.
Exploring and prototyping multiple type of games and playful methods to help me understand how playful methods can change the power dynamic between people in communities or organizations
Examples or participant workspace taken from the 3-day virtual workshop where I incorporated playful-methods to encourage participants to express their thoughts and concerns freely while reflecting their own experiences in having genuine participation at work.
The conversational card game and mini game I created as a part of virtual 3-day workshop. The games were designed to encourage participants to think about their impact on their environment and how there are interdependence between factors that they carry within
Play is not all about fun. In playing, people involve their imagination and create a new abstraction of the world(s), they adopt new roles as well as ways of being and relating with each other
The project's final presentation
Through the workshop and overall research, I’ve gained insights into how several structural and cultural factors influence the conditions of genuine participation.
To reach a genuine participation and connection, people need to feel comfortable showing up as they are and feeling safe expressing their honest opinions, even though it might lead to disagreement and conflict. Disagreements and conflicts are okay and necessary for genuine connection.
Play-based activities offer a design research framework through that does not privilege approaches from business management and/or industrial-organizational psychology but instead illuminates the potential of creative practice in eliciting organizational changes. Through this work, I invite decision-makers in organization to explore other means of doing research and organizational change facilitation that involve people senses like play and art.
I also learned a lot about play as a method of facilitating organizational changes, including its strengths and limitations
Strengths
Play-based activities are effective in opening up conversations around sensitive topics and helping to build a sense of psychological safety for people to open up and share their concerns about the organization. It also encourages new forms of expression and empathy, as well as collaboration with each other.
Limitations
Play-based activities cannot be the sole solution for inherently political and cultural problems in organizations; there need to be some follow-up actions to change things more structurally. For example, when we deal with financial decisions.