The Carnegie School of Fashion Design

• In Event: 2451 - Section on Organizations, Occupations, and Work Refereed Roundtables (1 hour)
  In Refereed Roundtable 60min: Table 17. Organizational Change and Decision-Making

Abstract

Between 1955 and 1980 an interdisciplinary group of professors at Carnegie Mellon founded what has come to be called the “Carnegie School” of administrative theory. Many of its concepts have become familiar or at least recognizable—among them satisficing, bounded rationality, and the “garbage can” model of organizational choice. Yet while Carnegie theory has been widely applied in organizational behavior, political science, economics, psychology, and management, it rarely gains a cultural hearing. After summarizing the group’s main contributions, I apply theoretical concepts like channeling and satisficing to an occupational task beset with uncertainty—fashion design. Drawing on 11 months of ethnographic data from Indian export suppliers, I describe what forecasting data actually looks like and how designers use embedded routines to process it. Fashion forecasting is neither strictly a dictatorial nor inspirational force, but is processed according to the logic of uncertainty absorption. Designers respond with selective attention to the most popular forecasting reports. This finding may help to explain why dynamic conformity is inherent to fashion phenomena.

Author

• Alexander Hoppe, University of Pennsylvania