Craft and Industrialization: Uncovering the Plasticity and Frontier of Craft

Craft as an approach to work has been proposed as an alternative to industrial mass production. While industrialization has led to the replacement of craft logic with industrial logic to create uniformity and scale operations, the role of craft in industrialization remains ambiguous. Building on the analysis of engineering work performed at an R&D laboratory in the pulp and paper industry, we explore how and why craft enables industrialization. Our findings reveal how elements of craft manifest in engineering work by helping to transform ideas into useful objects, balancing scientific accuracy with practical usefulness, and fostering a sense of community and identity within the engineering field. These findings point to the plasticity of craft logic , suggesting that elements of craft can be transferred into new contexts and reinterpreted to address new objectives. Considering that these activities took place in an R&D laboratory that drove industrialization, they also reveal the existence of a craft frontier that escapes standardization by providing a context for crafting candidates for future standards. Craft frontier enables the coexistence of craft and industrial logics, where craft can contribute to industrialization by establishing foundations for managerial control without being absorbed into it.