Organizational Improvisation

Miguel Pina E. Cunha, Ken Kamoche

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2003
• ISBN:
  9781134506484
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business General
• Index: Business

The relatively new field of organizational improvisation is concerned with the pressures on organizations to react continually to today's ever-changing environment. Organizational improvisation has important implications for such subjects as product innovation, teamworking and organizational renewal, and this new book brings together some of the best and most thought-provoking papers published in recent years. This area is now emerging as one of the most important in organizational science, and this book provides a comprehensive collection suitable for students, researchers and practitioners alike.

1
Introduction and overview

Ken N.Kamoche, Miguel Pina e Cunha and João Vieira da Cunha

The chapters in this volume are part of an emergent discipline of organizational analysis which we believe now fully deserves the attention of organization theorists and practitioners. This emergent paradigm is in part an attempt to grapple with the complexities of a rapidly changing world and the need to look beyond the traditional sources of competitive advantage. The complexity of organizations indeed continues to keep theorists busy as they strive to tackle the perennial problem of how to design efficient and viable organizations and how best to respond to or anticipate new environmental challenges. These efforts have seen developments in a number of fields, from transaction cost economics (Williamson, 1979) to institutional theory (Meyer and Rowan, 1977) and the resource-based view of the firm (Barney, 1991; Grant, 1991).

Organizational improvisation is one of the more recent theoretical developments, and one which is only now beginning to capture the imagination of organization theorists. Improvisation has variously been described as the merging of planning and action, the realization of action as it unfolds, thinking and acting extemporaneously and so forth. Improvisation has slowly begun to generate some interest amongst researchers. Some people are drawn to it because it seems to offer novel interpretations of organizational action; others are no doubt curious about its potential contribution to our understanding of concepts like creativity, innovation, structure and so forth. Some are probably familiar with the manifestations of improvisational behaviour in other fields such as the arts and are interested to know how lessons from these fields can, if at all, be transferred to the field of organization studies. All these and many others are legitimate concerns. They are also to be expected in a field which is still in an embryonic stage.

Our purpose is to shed some light on these questions as well as to offer a sense of direction as to how research in organizational improvisation might proceed. We believe that improvisation is a central feature of organizational reality and indeed a definitive feature of the way we go about our day-to-day activities. Improvising takes place in much of what we do: from holding conversations to making fairly important decisions that have a fundamental bearing on our very existence. This reality is enacted in our personal lives as well as in the organizational context. There has been a growing awareness in recent years that the concept of improvisation constitutes a new opportunity to explore the nature of organizations. Indeed many researchers have been trying to understand the meaning of improvisation, the manifestations of improvisational behaviour, and the circumstances under which improvisation happens. Cunha et al. (this volume, Chapter 12) have attempted to convey a sense of these efforts.

As noted above, organizational improvisation is still in its earlier stages of development and much remains to be done before the full contribution of this research paradigm to organization science can be fully appreciated. It is with this in mind that we offer this volume of some of the most salient contributions to this emergent field. There are of course many other papers which constitute the growing corpus of knowledge on the phenomenon of organizational improvisation. We hope, however, that the few we have selected will together point to new directions for research into a field which we feel is ripe for further enquiry.

In the sections below we delve into the jazz-based literature to determine the extent to which the jazz metaphor has continued to inform the debate on organizational improvisation. We then identify what this debate means for an important aspect of organizing: structure. The discussion then turns to organizational change and how this debate relates to improvisational action. The following section proceeds to locate the nature and role of improvisation within the context of rapid change in an increasingly turbulent business world. We conclude this chapter with a look at what improvisation means within the sociocultural context insofar as improvised action is about getting things done by people. Throughout this discussion we endeavour to illustrate the contributions the chapters in this volume make to these important themes.

Lessons from jazz

The field of organizational improvisation has drawn heavily from jazz music. This was probably inevitable given the accessibility of the jazz metaphor and more importantly, the fact that jazz seems to be one of the more salient phenomena in which improvisation has been developed to a high level of sophistication. Crossan and Sorrenti (this volume, Chapter 3) have also identified the importance of improvisational theatre, e.g. the Commedia dell’arte form that emerged in Western Europe in the sixteenth century. Theorists have continued to show a healthy predilection to draw from unusual sources in their efforts to advance theory via metaphor. This quest for metaphorical explication in part represents a concern to design new approaches to tackle intractable organizational problems.

The quest to improve organizational effectiveness has seen scholars delve into metaphorical arenas as diverse as the symphony orchestra (e.g. Kanter, 1989; Sayles, 1964) and war (e.g. Hou et al., 1991). This tendency is particularly notable in strategic management where competitive pressures require organizations to be constantly on the look out for new ways to compete and to discover new sources of ‘competitive advantage’. While we do not conceive of improvisation merely as a metaphor, we recognize that its contribution to organization science will be judged, inter alia, vis-à-vis other metaphors and certainly in terms of its ‘value-added’ as a metaphor. In this regard it is helpful to gain some understanding of the nature of jazz improvisation, to appreciate its constitutive features, the implications of its essentially processual and emergent nature, as well as its limitations in assessing organizational action.

In the performing arts like jazz, improvisation refers to composing and performing in the same moment, i.e. realizing a musical performance without the benefit of deliberate planning about how each note will be executed, the order and flavour of each solo, the direction the performance will take, how long it will last, etc. With these definitions in mind, the thought of people improvising action might at first glance appear far-fetched given the structural nature of many organizations coupled with the fact that many managers have a preference for order and stability. In particular this appears even more far-fetched when the observer’s frame of reference is the field of performing arts like jazz and theatre. Surely, managers and employees cannot be compared with musicians and actors! On closer scrutiny, however, it becomes evident that there are lessons that organizations could learn from the performing arts as well as from other aspects of human endeavour.

It should be pointed out, however, that the apparent absence of structure in the improvised arts does not imply chaos, randomness or disorder, and as Hatch (this volume, Chapter 5) cautions, it is not simply about making it up as you go along. Some of the lessons derivable from the arts have been articulated by a number of authors in this emergent literature. Some of these insights are discussed in a number of the contributions in this volume. Improvisation has been developed to a high level of sophistication in performing arts like jazz music and this is probably one of the manifestations of improvisational behaviour that many readers will be familiar with. But as some scholars have argued, the inspiration to improvise can come from any number of sources. Similarly, there is much to be gained from exploring the potential contribution of a wide range of metaphors and analytical perspectives.

Following Weick’s (1992) suggestion of a jazz band as a prototype organization, Barrett (this volume, Chapter 7) demonstrates how jazz improvisation can offer useful lessons as to how organizations can be designed for maximum learning and innovation. The rationale for this exercise is partly based on Barrett’s contention that the things that managers and jazz musicians do are not all that dissimilar: they have to continuously invent novel responses without following a predetermined script and with little certainty as to the outcomes of their actions. The consequences of their actions are unfolding as the actions themselves are being enacted; and the actions are directed at a specific audience, which could be jazz enthusiasts or in the case of managers—in our view—customers, employees, investors and other stakeholders.

Barrett then proceeds to detail a number of characteristics which contain real lessons for managerial action. These include ‘provocative competence’ in order to instigate a departure from routines and recipe behaviour, treating errors as a source of learning, and alternating between soloing and supporting in order to give everyone room to think, enhance learning and distribute the leadership task. In his work on the aesthetics of imperfection following Gioia (1988), Weick (this volume, Chapter 8) elaborates the significance of a mindset which is appreciative of the failures that occur in the process of making genuine efforts to innovate. Such failure becomes normalized as an inevitable aspect of improvisation and the stigma usually associated with failure is eradicated. According to Weick, with an aesthetics of imperfection, errors are thus treated as opportunities for further learning rather than threats.

In an analysis which clearly demonstrates the nature and implications of composing and performing contemporaneously, Bastien and Hostager (this volume, Chapter 2) present a case study of a process through which a jazz band engages in a performance in front of an audience without the benefit of a rehearsal or sheet music. Their work is a rare effort to analyse an improvised jazz performance in situ and draw lessons for organizational action (see also Bastien and Hostager, 1992). The authors argue that the process of jazz improvisation is self-consciously spontaneous, creative and expressive, it is a social process and a collective approach to the process of innovation. These characteristics are clearly not alien to what we see in organizations. Bastien and Hostager identify specific musical structures and social practices which for them constitute the structural conventions in the jazz process. These include the cognitively held rulesfor creating new musical ideas, such as those for chords and chordal progressions, the song, behavioural norms and communicative codes.

In the field of product innovation, Kamoche and Cunha (2001) have drawn from jazz to isolate social and technical characteristics that they then apply to the product innovation process. These structures are based on Bastien and Hostager’s structural conventions of the jazz process. These characteristics include trust, communicative codes, performative competence, experimentation, frequent refashioning in the light of new information, audience/customer response and so forth. For Hatch (this volume, Chapter 5), jazz offers some very useful lessons as a vehicle to achieve a redescription of organizational structure which is performative, thus concerned with sensemaking, realizing action and ‘the process of becoming’. As such, organizational structure is not perceived merely as a state or an outcome, but a set of performance practices or processes.

With this re-interpretation and application of metaphor, Hatch demonstrates how jazz musicians alter the structural foundations of their performance by sustaining and creatively engaging the ambiguity inherent in the potential for multiple interpretations. This has important implications for organizations. It opens up the possibility of organizational members redefining the structures with which they operate rather than be held hostage by them. We note that social interaction and the fluidity of cultures together constitute a form of ambiguity which is constantly being refashioned through processes of sense-making, communications, leadership, and power. In this context, organizational members have access to opportunities to redefine and reinterpret social relations, the organization of work as well as their identities. Jazz musicians redefine the structure as they enact the definitive features of an improvisational performance such as ‘soloing’ (taking the lead), ‘comping’ (offering harmonic and rhythmic support to the temporary leader), listening and responding to the cues and ideas from others, and so forth.

We can begin to anticipate the application of these metaphorical contributions in activities like teamwork which involve collaboration, in particular where such collaboration requires high degrees of creativity and autonomy such as product innovation. Important features include extensive information-sharing and communications and a culture that actively fosters ideageneration (e.g. Brown and Eisenhardt, this volume, Chapter 10; Hutchins, 1991; Moorman and Miner, this volume, Chapter 11; Nonaka and Takeuchi, 1995; Tatikonda and Rosenthal, 2000). Similarly, the idea of constantly engaging and redefining the existing structures can be pursued on the basis of using real-time information flows and market intelligence that are fed into the design and development processes to respond to customer needs (e.g. O’Connor, 1998; Veryzer, 1998).

While these ideas open up new ways of conceptualizing and using structure, many issues still need to be addressed before the lessons from jazz improvisation can become more widely accepted. For example, to what extent can organizations allow ordinary members to retain tacit or implicit structures without the fear of compromising managerial control, quality or customer service? In spite of all the talk about empowerment today, will managers permit employees to redefine rules and norms and trust employees to retain these ‘in their heads’ as jazz musicians retain the tune and play around it without explicitly articulating its every constitutive melodic, harmonic or rhythmic structure? Do managers have enough faith in the organizational culture’s ability to nurture this ability to internalize the structure? Developments in surveillance and peer pressure (e.g. Barker, 1993; Sewell, 1998) suggest that the challenges are enormous but not insurmountable.

Nevertheless, we argue that many manifestations of organizational action and forms of organizing are analogous with the emergent action more often associated with the performing arts. This is so if we roll back the assumptions underpinning cognitive rationality and begin to look more closely at how people actually solve problems, discover new ways to handle unanticipated occurrences, respond to technological, cultural and competitive challenges while developing their learning capabilities. While jazz certainly offers useful lessons, it is worth recalling that, in fact, there are plenty of opportunities for people to improvise outside of the performing arts and certainly within organizations where impromptu action has to be taken. In his assessment of improvisation as a mindset, Weick (this volume, Chapter 4) identifies a number of other non-jazz settings in which improvisation takes place. These include ordinary activities like cooking, competing, travelling, the acquisition and use of language, therapy and so forth. In fact, according to Bateson (1989), the very nature of human existence is a continuing process of improvisation as we compose our lives.

Toward a minimal structure of organizing

The emergence of the improvisational paradigm has less to do with merely exploring new metaphors than finding new ways to address real organizational challenges as well as filling gaps that existing methods of apprehending organizational reality have not fully addressed. Indeed one of the underlying rationales for improvisation has to do with dissatisfaction with the enduring conception of structure. The organization theory literature has from the very beginning concerned itself with the question of structure, with writers like Burns and Stalker (1961) proposing the dichotomy of organic and mechanistic, which has led researchers to try to determine the ‘right’ amount of structure, or to specify the structural forms appropriate for certain environments.

Distinctions such as organic and mechanistic may not always be all that clear cut. In fact, as Brown and Eisenhardt (this volume, Chapter 10) found out, successful firms seemed to achieve a viable balance where some aspects like meetings, priorities and responsibilities were fairly well structured while flexibility was realized through extensive communication and freedom to improvise current products. They suggest the notion of ‘semi-structure’ to capture this phenomenon. Similarly, in Kamoche and Cunha’s (2001) improvisational model of new product development, specified elements of social and technical structures are clearly defined and rather than constrain action, actually serve as a template through which innovative action is accomplished. This template thus serves as a ‘minimal structure’.

Similarly, drawing from jazz improvisation, Barrett (this volume, Chapter 7) suggests the need for structures that are minimal, non-negotiable, tacitly accepted and which would not need to be constantly articulated. March (1991) argues that organizational adaptive processes must maintain an appropriate balance between ‘exploration’ and ‘exploitation’. The former includes, for example, search, variation, experimentation and innovation, while the latter refers to refinement, efficiency and implementation. In new service development, Edvardsson et al. (1995) emphasize the need to combine systematic modelling and fortuity. These examples illustrate the need to strike a balance between structure and flexibility. In product innovation such a balance takes on new meaning as a synthesis (e.g. Tatikonda and Rosenthal, 2000).

In jazz music, songs play an important role in keeping the musicians focused while permitting them the flexibility they need to improvise around its harmonic, melodic and rhythmic structures. As Eisenberg (1990) points out, the process of ‘jamming’ (whether in jazz or sports) provides a minimal view of organizing which at once sets out minimal commonalities and elaborates possibilities for further innovation. Finding an organizational equivalent of a minimal structure is no easy task. Various authors have suggested using credos, mission statements, product prototypes and so forth. These structures create a shared sense of orientation. They help focus action on the things that really matter while allowing individual members and teams to introduce variation within the zones of manoeuvre defined by the minimal structures inasmuc...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Illustrations
• Tables
• Contributors
• Acknowledgments
• 1: Introduction and Overview
• 2: Jazz as a Process of Organizational Innovation
• 3: Making Sense of Improvisation
• 4: Improvisation as a Mindset for or Organizational Analysis
• 5: Exploring the Empty Spaces of Organizing
• 6: Organizational Improvisation
• 7: Creativity and Improvisation in Jazz and Organizations
• 8: The Aesthetic of Imperfection in Orchestras and Organizations
• 9: Improvising Organizational Transformation Over Time
• 10: The Art of Continuous Change
• 11: The Convergence of Planning and Execution
• 12: Once Again: What, When, How and Why