Abstract

This article investigates the furniture industry to explore, first, the organization of design in relation to other functions—i.e., manufacturing, marketing, management, sales, finance, and suppliers within the New Product Development (NPD) processes, and, second, the roles that in-house designers play in these processes. The research adopted a qualitative approach. It draws on the semi-structured interviews conducted with seventeen in-house industrial designers with at least two years of work experience in the Turkish furniture industry, covering NPD processes in thirteen large furniture enterprises. Interviews are analyzed thematically via the template analysis approach. In the Turkish furniture industry, designers are formally required to take on the roles of designer, trend follower, and project supervisor. Designers also adopt the roles of design communicator, purchasing agent, and multi-skilled employee, with the aim of improving their status within the organization. Despite the breadth of their roles in the NPD, designers are not widely seen as leaders in NPD processes. Findings empirically describe where design functions and organizational roles of designers lie within the NPD process. The research has implications for design managers, design educators, and designers who wish to pursue a career in the furniture industry. It also extends the discussions on the changing role of designers in organizations in design management research, showing how the designer’s extra roles increase inter-functional communication and promote design-led activities of the organization.