The Socio-technical Designer as Wizard and Juggler

In the Netherlands what is called the Modern Socio-Technical School — an approach to integral organizational renewal — is well developed. This theory of practice is mainly concerned with design of organizational structures, which leads to an important point of criticism: the Dutch approach is an expert driven form of social engineering, lacking an effective, process-oriented intervention strategy. The approach does not know how to deal with power in organizations. Here we do not accept that this criticism is an inevitable characteristic of the Dutch approach. The criticism is used as a trigger to search for the contours of a process-directed intervention strategy, which fit in the design theory.