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1 – 10 of over 2000Ken Kamoche and Miguel Pina E. Cunha
The literature on knowledge management and organizational improvisation have emerged as important perspectives for organizing, while existing almost in parallel. Both have…
Abstract
The literature on knowledge management and organizational improvisation have emerged as important perspectives for organizing, while existing almost in parallel. Both have significant implications for, inter alia, innovation and creativity, adaptability, and management in turbulent times. Previous research has considered the role of improvisation in innovation. We build on this literature to examine the specific role of improvisation in knowledge creation. Our assessment of organizational improvisation indicates that it constitutes an important potential source of knowledge, thus opening up a new avenue for exploring the strategic as well as political significance of embedded, situated knowledge. We argue that the rapprochement of the two literatures brings about the notion of “improvisational knowledge”. We develop the significance of this form of knowledge, focusing in particular on the challenges of appreciating and appropriating it as opposed to seeking to codify it. We offer propositions and identify some avenues for further research.
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João Vieira da Cunha and Miguel Pina e Cunha
Some studies show that improvisation is a source of change, whereas others show that it is a source of stability. The purpose of this paper is to specify the factors which set the…
Abstract
Purpose
Some studies show that improvisation is a source of change, whereas others show that it is a source of stability. The purpose of this paper is to specify the factors which set the boundary between improvised change and improvised stability.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper draws on two published studies and contrasts their findings to analyze the extent to which improvisation leads to organizational change or organizational stability.
Findings
The paper suggests that the most innovative instances of improvisation reproduce some features of everyday experience. The extent to which an improvisation is a source of stability or a source of change depends on the dynamics of variation, selection and retention therein.
Research limitations/implications
Future research needs to add empirical flesh to this theoretical skeleton to push research on organizational improvisation beyond the study of its causes and into further research on its consequences.
Originality/value
The paper deals with the paradox of making sense about two apparently opposing streams of research on improvisation.
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V. Shela, T. Ramayah and Noor Hazlina Ahmad
This study explores the potential role of improvisation capability in enhancing organizational resilience. Additionally, this paper unravels novel strategies to support the…
Abstract
Purpose
This study explores the potential role of improvisation capability in enhancing organizational resilience. Additionally, this paper unravels novel strategies to support the development of organizational improvisation capability.
Design/methodology/approach
An in-depth review of the latest development of organizational resilience and improvisation provided insight into the linkages between the concepts. The current literature gap provides reasons to discuss the latest strategies to foster improvisation capability to amplify organizational resilience.
Findings
This study identifies the pertinent role of improvisation capability in amplifying organizational resilience and discusses various feasible strategies to cultivate organizational improvisation capability.
Originality/value
This research provides valuable insights to help organizations remain resilient in a disruptive environment. The study also offers cutting-edge strategies to nurture improvisation capability as a way forward to drive organizational resilience.
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José Arias-Pérez and Juan Cepeda-Cardona
This paper aims to analyze the moderating effect of technological turbulence caused by artificial intelligence on the relationship between the traditional knowledge management…
Abstract
Purpose
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.
Design/methodology/approach
The research model was tested in a sample of firms from sectors in which the adoption of intelligent robots is growing.
Findings
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.
Originality/value
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.
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Colin M. Fisher, Ozumcan Demir-Caliskan, Mel Yingying Hua and Matthew A. Cronin
Organizational scholars have long been interested in how jazz musicians manage tensions between structure and freedom, plans and action, and familiarity and novelty. Although…
Abstract
Organizational scholars have long been interested in how jazz musicians manage tensions between structure and freedom, plans and action, and familiarity and novelty. Although improvisation has been conceptualized as a way of managing such paradoxes, the process of improvisation itself contains paradoxes. In this essay, we return to jazz improvisation to identify a new paradox of interest to organizational scholars: the paradox of intentionality. To improvise creatively, jazz musicians report that they must “try not to try,” or risk undermining the very spontaneity that is prized in jazz. Jazz improvisers must therefore control their ability to relinquish deliberate control of their actions. To accomplish this, they engage in three interdependent practices. Jazz musicians intentionally surrender their sense of active control (“letting go”) while creating a passive externalized role for this sense of active control (using a “third ear”). Letting go allows new and unexpected ideas to emerge, while the metaphorical third ear can identify promising ideas or problematic execution and, in doing so, re-engage active agency (“grabbing hold”). Examining the practices within creative improvisation reveals the complexity of the lived experience of the paradox, which we argue suggests further integration among organizational research on improvisation, creativity, and paradox.
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Diórgenes Falcão Mamédio, Miguel Pina e Cunha and Victor Meyer Jr
By exploring “what is strategic improvisation in organizations?” the authors respond to advances in strategic improvisation (SI) conceptualization with an emphasis on the…
Abstract
Purpose
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.
Design/methodology/approach
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.
Findings
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.
Practical implications
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.
Originality/value
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.
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Ksenia O. Krylova, Dusya Vera and Mary Crossan
This paper aims to answer the question: how do knowledge workers’ improvisation processes promote both knowledge transfer and protection in knowledge-intensive organizations…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to answer the question: how do knowledge workers’ improvisation processes promote both knowledge transfer and protection in knowledge-intensive organizations (KIOs)? A model is proposed identifying how effective improvisation can strengthen the effect of four specific knowledge transfer mechanisms – an experimental culture, minimal structures, the practice of storytelling and shared mental models – on knowledge transfer inside the organization and knowledge protection outside of it.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper builds on a knowledge translation perspective to position improvisation as intrinsically intertwined with knowledge transfer and knowledge protection.
Findings
Improvisation is proposed as the moderating factor enhancing the positive impact of an experimental culture, minimal structures, storytelling practice and shared mental models on knowledge transfer and knowledge protection.
Practical implications
The paper argues against a “plug-and-play” approach to knowledge transfer that seeks to replicate knowledge without considering how people relate to the routines and the context and highlights to leaders of KIOs the importance of developing awareness, understanding and motivation to improvise to internalize new knowledge being transferred and to create imitation barriers.
Originality/value
The paper proposes that KIOs’ success in transferring and protecting knowledge emerges not directly from formal knowledge transfer mechanisms but from knowledge workers’ improvisation processes.
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Miguel Pina e Cunha and Stewart Clegg
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…
Abstract
Purpose
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.
Design/methodology/approach
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.
Findings
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.
Research limitations/implications
The study draws research attention to the potential of the infra-ordinary in the domains of paradox, improvisation and learning.
Practical implications
For practice, the study shows that improvisation can be a relatively trivial organizational practice as people try to solve problems in their everyday lives.
Social implications
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.
Originality/value
The study of paradox and improvisation from an infra-ordinary perspective has not been explicitly attempted.
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Mary M. Crossan and David K. Hurst
Management theory has paid scant attention to the nature and reconciliation of the tension between exploration and exploitation, in spite of its central importance to strategic…
Abstract
Management theory has paid scant attention to the nature and reconciliation of the tension between exploration and exploitation, in spite of its central importance to strategic renewal. This paper uses Hurst's (1995) ecocycle to frame the tension and employs complexity theory to examine how the tension manifests itself across levels and time. Improvisation is advanced as a process to reconcile and manage the tension between exploration and exploitation.
Jianmin Song, Shouxun Wen, Qingzhong Ren and Lu Zhang
Although knowledge has become a decisive factor in the development of firms, there has been no detailed investigation into how start-ups acquire external knowledge. In order to…
Abstract
Purpose
Although knowledge has become a decisive factor in the development of firms, there has been no detailed investigation into how start-ups acquire external knowledge. In order to narrow the research gap, this paper attempts to explore the mechanism of acquiring external knowledge in start-ups from the perspective of “environment–[sic.] structure” interaction.
Design/methodology/approach
This research develops a conceptual model regarding improvisation as an independent variable, strategic flexibility as a mediator, knowledge acquisition as the dependent variable and environmental mutation as a moderator between improvisation and strategic flexibility. Furthermore, this study collects the survey data from 277 firms and uses structural equation modeling (SEM) to empirically test the model and hypotheses.
Findings
The results show that creativity-bricolage and spontaneity-persistence have significantly positive effects on both capability flexibility and coordination flexibility. However, the positive effects of pressure-stress on capability flexibility and coordination flexibility are not supported. Meanwhile, the mediating roles of capability flexibility and coordination flexibility are supported. Finally, environmental mutation only positively moderates the relationship between creativity-bricolage and capability flexibility.
Originality/value
Improvisation can be seen as a core antecedent for start-ups to acquire external knowledge in environmental mutation. More specifically, the significant mediator is strategic flexibility to promote the relationship between improvisation and knowledge acquisition. The findings provide practical inspiration for start-ups to effectively utilize improvisation in emergencies.
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