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The purpose of this article is to establish the efficacy of jazz improvisation as a useful metaphor to understand and implement features that contribute to excellent service performances.

The paper begins by presenting services as performances that often require flexibility and adaptability in their enactment. It then offers the metaphor of jazz improvisation as a means to comprehend and communicate the dynamics of such flexibility and adaptability. Jazz elements are used to illustrate their application to service delivery issues.

Similar to jazz, services deal with complex and real time delivery circumstances; this makes services prone to uncertainty at the service encounter. Lessons from jazz offer service managers guidelines for improvisation by each player in their ensemble that can enable them to adapt to customers and produce a coherent and cohesive performance.

The jazz improvisation metaphor offers a template and guidelines to comprehend and enact principles pertaining to adaptability in services contexts that may be useful for managers in designing service delivery and training frontline service employees.

This paper aims to analyze the moderating effect of technological turbulence caused by artificial intelligence on the relationship between the traditional knowledge management strategies of personalization (tacit knowledge) and codification (explicit knowledge), and organizational improvisation, which refers to the firm's ability to generate ideas and respond to changes in the technological environment in real time. Until now, individuals have played a key and indispensable role in organizational improvisation since they are the owners of tacit knowledge and users of explicit knowledge.

The research model was tested in a sample of firms from sectors in which the adoption of intelligent robots is growing.

Both personalization and codification have a positive and significant influence on improvisation, the former to a greater extent. Nevertheless, when technological turbulence caused by artificial intelligence occurs, the relationship between personalization and improvisation is weakened, whereas the link between codification and improvisation is strengthened.

Contrary to the pre-digital literature consensus, explicit knowledge is becoming the new major driver of organizational improvisation, while tacit knowledge sharing is losing strength and relevance. This finding may be a first indication that intelligent robots are the new exponents of improvisation for their ability to respond to changes in the environment in real time because of a combination of explicit knowledge, beyond being a mere support tool for humans.

This study investigates the mediating role of improvisation behavior in the relationship between employees' perceptions of procedural justice and their job performance, as evaluated by their supervisors, as well as the invigorating role of their organization-based self-esteem in this process.

Survey data were collected in three rounds among employees and their supervisors in Pakistan.

An important factor that connects procedural justice with enhanced job performance is whether employees react quickly to unexpected problems while carrying out their jobs. This mediating role of improvisation is particularly salient to the extent that employees consider themselves valuable organizational members.

For organizations, this study pinpoints a key mechanism—willingness to respond in the moment to unanticipated organizational failures—by which fair decision-making processes can steer employees toward performance-enhancing activities. It also reveals how this mechanism can be activated, namely, by ensuring that employees feel appreciated.

Improvisation represents an understudied but critical behavioral factor that links employees' beliefs about fair decision-making procedures to enhanced performance outcomes. This study shows, for the first time, how this beneficial role can be reinforced by organization-based self-esteem, as a critical personal resource.

By exploring “what is strategic improvisation in organizations?” the authors respond to advances in strategic improvisation (SI) conceptualization with an emphasis on the challenges of combining unplanned but deliberate responses to relentlessly changing environments, in which strategy becomes increasingly improvised.

An integrative review was conducted with the potential to develop new theoretical approaches to research problems. This literature review resulted in an introductory SI framework.

The authors propose a SI conceptual framework combining foundation, structuration and capillarization. While foundations comprise extemporaneity, novelty and intentionality, considered as triggers for the manifestation of SI, in this study structuration refers to the combination of a minimal structure and a reassessment process in response to unexpected situations. Capillarization means interaction patterns characterized as spontaneous, dynamic and collaborative. This framework leads to the definition of SI as an impromptu deliberate action stream, combining unplanned responses with intentional actions sustaining the convergence of strategy and operation, to integrate and reconfigure resources at the strategic level.

SI in practice considers reconfiguring the internal and external forces to deal with unexpected events and impromptu deliberate responses to face rapidly changing environments. This would enable practitioners and managers to prepare for eventualities that evolve dynamically and spontaneously, and unpredictable imminent global crises.

The authors conducted the first study mapping improvisation as a strategic organizational level phenomenon. SI is recognized as operating across levels, from the tactical and functional to the strategic.

The purpose of this paper is to examine two predominant export decision‐making orientations emanating from normative and descriptive decision theory, namely planning and improvisation and their coexistence within exporting firms. In addition, contingencies under which one may be more appropriate than the other for optimal performance consequences are identified.

A qualitative study was conducted with UK exporters by way of in‐depth interviews. The results were analyzed using within‐ and cross‐case displays of in‐vivo and literature‐based codes, based on Miles and Huberman's recommendations.

The study reveals widespread use of improvisation in export functions, and its co‐existence with export planning for enhanced decision‐making. In addition, resource‐ and capabilities‐based moderators are identified that may affect the ways in which planning and improvisation are related to export performance.

This is a preliminary study which addresses the two export decision‐making orientations together for the first time. Further quantitative research is needed to formally test the conceptual model developed.

Export decision‐makers often feel guilty about improvising, believing that planning is the accepted norm. Avoidance and covert use of improvisation, however, are not necessary. Indeed, export improvisation can have many positive consequences for the export function, especially when combined with export planning.

Research on export decision‐making has tended to focus on normative decision theory (from which planning emerges), largely overlooking descriptive approaches which identify improvisation as a valid decision‐making orientation. However, in today's global and competitive environment, better performance consequences are increasingly to be found in the faster and more creative export decisions that improvisation can afford. This study addresses for the first time how benefits can be drawn from employing a combination of export planning and improvisation.

Employee improvisation is valuable in seizing opportunities, creating radically new ideas and dealing with unexpected events. It is increasingly important for new ventures in unpredictable environments. However, as an important organizational factor, the mechanism of leadership style on employee improvisation has not been fully explored. Against this background, the purpose of this study is to examine the impact of entrepreneurial leadership on employee improvisation. Specifically, drawing on cognitive-affective processing system framework and regulatory focus theory, the study investigates the dual mediating role of workplace spirituality and positive affect between entrepreneurial leadership and employee improvisation and the moderating role of promotion focus in such relationships.

Using time-lagged data from 327 leader–employee dyads from new ventures in China, the study tests all hypotheses using hierarchical multiple regression and bootstrapping analysis in IBM SPSS 26.0.

The results reveal that entrepreneurial leadership is positively related to employee improvisation, and this link is mediated by workplace spirituality and positive affect. Additionally, moderated path analysis indicates that promotion focus strengthens the direct effect of workplace spirituality and positive affect on employee improvisation and the indirect impact of entrepreneurial leadership on employee improvisation.

The findings also provide some practical suggestions for managers on how to promote employee improvisation. Managers can promote employee improvisation by cultivating their entrepreneurial leadership. The results also constitute valuable information for new ventures in terms of suggesting steps that can be taken to promote employee improvisation in the workplace, particularly in regard to employees' cognition and affect. In addition, personality traits such as promotion focus should also be considered in recruitment.

The study makes an original contribution by showcasing the complex cognitive and affective mechanism of entrepreneurial leadership on employee improvisation. Through the dual mediating role of workplace spirituality and positive affect, the study expands the research results on employee improvisation and enriches the application of cognitive-affective processing system framework in the entrepreneurship field. The study also provides deeper insights into promotion focus research by exploring the boundary conditions of employee improvisation.

This paper aims to describe the hidden presence of improvisation in organizations. The authors explore this presence through George Perec’s notion of the infra-ordinary applied to the study of the learning organization and its paradoxes.

Most studies of paradox and improvisation are qualitative and inductive. In this conceptual paper, the authors offer a conceptual debate aiming to redirect conceptual attention on studies belonging to the domains of learning, improvisation and paradox.

The authors defend the thesis that improvisation is an example of a paradoxical practice that belongs to the domain of infra-ordinary rather than, as has been habitually assumed in extant research, the extraordinary.

The study draws research attention to the potential of the infra-ordinary in the domains of paradox, improvisation and learning.

For practice, the study shows that improvisation can be a relatively trivial organizational practice as people try to solve problems in their everyday lives.

Most organizations depend upon the capacity of their members to solve problems as these emerge. Yet, organization theory has failed to consider this dimension. As a result, organizations may be unintentionally harming their capacity to learn and adapt to environments by assuming that improvisation is extra-ordinary.

The study of paradox and improvisation from an infra-ordinary perspective has not been explicitly attempted.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the effect of perceived supervisor support on individual improvisation, and the mediating role of the psychological empowerment and improvisation-related self-efficacy in that relationship.

The data were collected in 2011 from the large municipal organization. The total sample size was 593. The partial least square analysis conducted to estimate the mediation effects of empowerment and self-efficacy on the relationship between supervisor support and individual improvisation.

The findings of the study show psychological empowerment and improvisation-related self-efficacy as mechanisms through which supervisor support affects individual improvisation.

Limitation of the study is that it concerns only one organization. The study extends understanding of the factors effecting on individual improvisation in organizations and invites management to pay attention to the mechanisms through which they can affect their subordinates. In a broader sense, the results of this study suggest organizations to develop their management system to better empower their subordinates to stimulate creativity, innovation, novel solutions to face the environmental turbulence.

The practical implications of this study invite management to pay attention to the mechanisms through which they can affect their subordinates. In a broader sense, the results of this study suggest organizations to develop their management system to better empower their subordinates, which thereby could stimulate organizational creativity, innovation, and novel solutions to face the environmental turbulence.

The study provides originality by examining the factors effecting on individual improvisation in organizations and by examining the effect of multiple factors, both individual level-and organizational-level factors on individual-level phenomenon (improvisation). The results of the study are valuable for organizations aiming to foster organizational creativity and innovation.

The purpose of this paper is to describe how top management teams' expertise in comprehensive and intuitive decision-making contributes to effective improvisational decision-making in times of crisis. Also, improvisational decision-making, as a means for balancing or transcending the dualities of comprehensive and intuitive decision processes, enables the three strategic decision-making processes to coexist and contribute to decision-quality when in crisis.

After providing a general overview of comprehensive, intuitive and improvisational decision-making and introducing paradox theory, this paper offers a conceptual model of the link between improvisational decision-making and decision quality in crisis situations. Three boundary conditions are discussed: expertise in comprehensive decision-making, expertise in intuitive decision-making and the paradoxical balanced combination of comprehensive and intuitive decision-making. Two brief cases are included to illustrate the theory.

Although comprehensive and intuitive decision-making are rooted in distinct information processing approaches with different cognitive demands and at times contradictory logics, they can be combined in unique ways when senior executives improvise decisions in crisis situations.

Particularly in the contexts of crises, it is critical for managers to understand the value of improvisational decision-making and the balanced combination of decision-making tools available to them in order to make rapid and quality decisions. Potential action research interventions are suggested.

This paper offers an integrated model of decision-making, encompassing comprehensive, intuitive and improvisational processes and highlights the combinatory and synergistic nature of these approaches in a crisis.

This paper focuses on individuals' improvisation in organizations. The extant literature in this area examines improvisation as either a predictor or an outcome variable. However, there is still considerable confusion about the essence of improvisation and its individual-level determinants. To address these deficiencies, we discuss the differences between improvisation, creativity, and intuition, integrating insights and theories from those fields. Then, we propose a comprehensive model describing a process that includes contextual and individual level variables, which leads to improvisation. Finally, we discuss the theoretical and practical implications of our model and suggest avenues for future research.