Throughout this series, I've been exploring design's relationship to intangible materials - from Krippendorff's trajectory toward discourses, through metaphors and counterfactual thinking, to the dichotomies that structure design thinking. In this final post, I want to examine a distinction that feels increasingly central to my experience at SCÖ: the gap between performance and substance.
This isn't about theatrical performance or sports performance. It's about the difference between appearing to do something and actually doing it. Between the surface presentation of an organisation and what happens inside it. Between the formal structures organisations adopt and how they actually operate.
Myth and Ceremony
In their foundational 1977 paper, sociologists John Meyer and Brian Rowan argued that organisations don't just adopt structures because they're effective. They adopt structures because those structures are legitimate - because they signal that the organisation is modern, rational, and competent.
"Socially created norms in institutional environments are called myths. They can spread quickly, through imitation, and they can be adopted by public organisations without producing instrumental effects, that is, they may sometimes function as 'window dressing'" (Christiansen et al., 2007, p. 8).
This is a startling claim. Organisations might adopt practices not because those practices work, but because adopting them signals the appearance of working. The practices function symbolically rather than instrumentally.
Meyer and Rowan call these adopted structures "rationalized myths" - ideas presented as scientifically grounded methods for achieving goals, even when their actual effects are uncertain or disappointing:
"When a myth is rationalized this implies that the members of an organization have become convinced - by apparently scientific arguments - that it is an effective tool for achieving specific organizational goals. Despite this, organizations often experience situations where the instrumental effects of adopting a popular recipe do not match expectations" (Christiansen et al., 2007, p. 8).
The key insight is that legitimacy and effectiveness are not the same thing. An organisation can be highly legitimate - signalling all the right things to its environment - while being largely ineffective at its stated purpose. And vice versa.
I explored the constitutive dimension of this - how ceremony doesn't just signal legitimacy but actively produces it - through Giesen's and Matthews' work on sacred performance. Meyer and Rowan's "rationalized myths" function like what Giesen calls sacred concepts: representations whose meaning is bound up with collective identity rather than empirical content. The ceremony is not merely symbolic. It is constitutive poesis - performance that makes the organisational reality it appears merely to describe.
Decoupling
How do organisations manage when the structures they adopt for legitimacy don't actually improve operations? Through decoupling - maintaining a gap between formal structure and actual practice:
"From a myth perspective, one expects that decisions and concrete action are frequently decoupled" (Christiansen et al., 2007, p. 14).
Decoupling allows organisations to satisfy competing demands simultaneously. They can adopt fashionable practices to appear modern and competent, while continuing to operate in ways that actually work (or at least, in familiar ways). The formal structure becomes a kind of facade - visible from outside, but not directly connected to internal operations.
This isn't necessarily cynical. Organisations face genuine tensions between external legitimacy demands and operational requirements. Decoupling can be a pragmatic response to impossible situations:
"Although popular concepts may be too vague or unsophisticated in relation to the complexities of an organization's tasks, or else perceived as out of step with basic values and norms within an organization, modern organizations will nevertheless experience pressure from the institutional environment to incorporate them because they are seen as up-to-date and legitimate ideas and recipes" (Christiansen et al., 2007, p. 8).
The organisation might know that the fashionable practice doesn't quite fit its situation. But refusing to adopt it would signal backwardness or incompetence. So it adopts the practice formally while continuing to operate practically in established ways.
Organised Hypocrisy
The Swedish organisational theorist Nils Brunsson takes this analysis further with his concept of organised hypocrisy. Organisations routinely say one thing, decide another, and do a third. This isn't individual dishonesty but a structural feature of how organisations cope with incompatible demands:
"Disconnects between what people say and do, and gaps between the public image conveyed by organizations and what happens inside them, are well-known in organization studies... In fact, it has been shown that many organizations, who continuously have to handle goal conflicts, ambiguity, and conflicting demands of different stakeholders, routinely make different appearances in different contexts - saying one thing, deciding another, and doing a third - and thus engage in 'organized hypocrisy'" (Hallonsten, 2023, p. 3).
Talk serves a different function than action. Decisions serve yet another function. An organisation might talk about innovation to satisfy funders and the media; decide to launch innovation programmes to satisfy managers and consultants; but act in ways that maintain existing operations to satisfy frontline staff who know what actually works.
Brunsson suggests we should understand this "descriptively and analytically, rather than pejoratively". Organised hypocrisy may be a "necessary strategic tool for organizations to cope with incompatible demands". But Hallonsten rightly notes that "in public organizations, that live off taxpayers' money, organized hypocrisy is probably as unethical as the wording suggests".
Empty Innovation
Hallonsten's own concept of empty innovation extends this analysis to the current obsession with innovation in policy and management:
"In this book, a starting point and conceptual viewpoint is the empirically identified discrepancy between empty innovation and real innovation" (Hallonsten, 2023, p. 3).
Empty innovation is "an alluring surface, but no substance" - vast resources spent on appearing to be innovative rather than on the difficult, long-term work of actually innovating. Innovation events, glossy strategies, entrepreneurship programmes, innovation labs - all the trappings of innovation culture, decoupled from the messy reality of genuine novelty creation.
The result is what Hallonsten calls "the yawning abyss between the surface - the grandiose but largely empty talk and action of managers, administrators, communication officers, and similar - and the substance - the reality of organizational work processes as experienced by the professionals who make up the 'operating core' of organizations".
This resonates uncomfortably with my experience. How much of what I observe in innovation projects is performance rather than substance? How much is designed to signal innovation rather than to achieve it?
Design as Legitimation
What does this mean for design practice - particularly design practices like service design, design thinking, and human-centred design that have become fashionable in public sector contexts?
The uncomfortable implication is that design itself can function as a "rationalized myth" - adopted for legitimacy rather than effectiveness. A project can have all the trappings of design (workshops, post-it notes, journey maps, prototypes) while producing little genuine change. The design performance substitutes for substantive transformation.
Consider how design is often described in policy contexts:
"A myth perspective emphasizes that formulated goals are primarily symbolic in character and are not meant to be instrumentally effective" (Christiansen et al., 2007, p. 10).
Are the "user needs" articulated in design workshops meant to be instrumentally effective - actually shaping how services operate? Or are they primarily symbolic - demonstrating that the organisation listens to users without necessarily responding to what users say?
This connects to my earlier discussion of dichotomies. The dichotomy of determinate vs indeterminate problems becomes crucial here. Design performances often assume determinate problems - clear issues with calculable solutions. But the problems design claims to address (homelessness, health inequality, employment) are fundamentally indeterminate. The performance of certainty masks the reality of intractability.
Implications for SCÖ
How does this apply to the project I'm embedded in? The ESF programme funding vocational rehabilitation innovation has all the characteristics of what Hallonsten calls the "innovation complex":
- Glossy strategies promising transformation
- Fashionable methodologies (data science, machine learning, service design)
- Events, workshops, and networking opportunities
- Indicators and metrics that measure activity rather than impact
- Pressure to demonstrate innovation regardless of actual results - a pattern of goal displacement that is already becoming visible
The formal structure of the programme requires "innovation" to be performed - visible activities that demonstrate novelty and progress. But the substance of vocational rehabilitation - the difficult, slow, relational work of helping people find sustainable employment - may be largely decoupled from this performance.
I find myself caught in this gap. My role as industrial doctoral researcher and service designer is itself part of the innovation performance. But what would it mean to work substantively rather than performatively? To focus on the difficult reality of vocational rehabilitation rather than the shiny surface of innovation?
Perhaps the most honest contribution design can make is precisely this: to make visible the gap between performance and substance. Not to add another layer of performance (the performance of "making things visible"), but to create genuine confrontation with what the work actually involves, what it actually achieves, and what it actually fails to achieve.
This is risky. Organisations don't usually welcome exposure of the gap between surface and substance. They need that gap to manage incompatible demands. Exposing it threatens the legitimacy structures they depend on.
But without such exposure, we're left with what Hallonsten describes: "every minute and every thought spent on empty innovation means one minute and one thought less spent on real innovation". Every hour spent performing design is an hour not spent on the substance of helping unemployed people find work that suits them.
This series has traced a path from design's engagement with intangible materials (discourses, metaphors, counterfactuals, dichotomies) to a fundamental question about design's own relationship to substance and performance. Perhaps the most important "social material" design works with is the gap between what organisations say they want to do and what they actually do. And perhaps the most important design question is whether our own practice widens or narrows that gap.
Next: Social Defences in Design
References
Brunsson, N. (1989/2002). The Organization of Hypocrisy: Talk, Decisions and Actions in Organizations. Liber.
Christiansen, T., Lægreid, P., Roness, P., & Røvik, K.A. (2007). Organisation Theory and the Public Sector: Instrument, Culture and Myth. Routledge.
Hallonsten, O. (2023). Empty Innovation: Causes and Consequences of Society's Obsession with Entrepreneurship and Growth. Springer.
Meyer, J.W., & Rowan, B. (1977). Institutionalized Organizations: Formal Structure as Myth and Ceremony. American Journal of Sociology, 83(2), 340-363.