Value-based conflicts experienced by junior design professionals in collaborative practice

ABSTRACT

Junior design professionals experience conflicts in collaboration with others, with value differences being one of the issues influencing such conflicts. In a retrospective interview study with 22 design professionals, we collected 32 cases of perceived conflicts. We used a grounded theory approach to analyse these cases, resulting in five conflict categories that group 24 distinct value differences arising in 10 critical moments, an event that causes the value-based conflict. Thus, value differences are underlying the perceived conflicts of junior design professionals on many different occasions during collaboration with others. Conclusions are drawn on setting up guidelines for addressing values in co-design practices and supporting junior designers in their professional development.

KEYWORDS:

• Design collaboration
• values
• conflict
• professional development
• junior designer

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank our colleagues from The Hague University of Applied Sciences and Delft University of Technology for their support throughout the research. Furthermore, we would like to thank the participants for their openness and honesty in sharing conflict experiences.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. We focus on conflicts emerging from value differences. We therefore used the term value-based conflicts to avoid confusion with value conflicts which often refers to conflicting or opposing values (van de Poel 2009; Schwartz 2012).