ABSTRACT

This innovative volume provides a comprehensive overview of improvisation as a pervasive organizational process, essential in ever-changing business environments.

Exploring theories of organizational action as well as contemporary challenges, it highlights improvisation’s rich potential in theory building and practice. The value and relevance of improvisational capabilities and processes in organizations are more apparent than ever: the global pandemic has forced organizations to reinvent themselves and to adapt to dramatic change on a massive scale. This surge in improvised activity starkly illustrates how the capability to improvise is key to organizational resilience: organizations that are able to improvise effectively are better prepared to bounce back and even thrive.

From the latest thinking on improvisation in organizations to future avenues for research, this volume demonstrates the rich potential for both theory building and practice and provides a valuable resource for researchers and advanced students in organizational strategy, entrepreneurship, product development, information systems, disaster management, and HRM.

chapter |25 pages

Introduction

Improvisation in organizations: A convocation, a celebration, and an invitation

part 1|65 pages

Conceptual linkages

part 2|104 pages

Improvisation process

chapter 5|20 pages

The improvisational arc

A sensemaking perspective

chapter 7|13 pages

Character and improvisation

A recursive relationship

chapter 8|20 pages

Improvisational decision making

Context, antecedents, and outcomes

chapter 10|20 pages

Practising strategizing

Novelty as a leap of faith expanding learning and improvising

part 3|102 pages

Improvisation in specific contexts

chapter 11|15 pages

Improvisation in Africa

chapter 12|21 pages

Locating improvisation in public service management

Past, present, and future research directions

chapter 14|16 pages

Professional service firms

Why is improvisation so important?

part 4|56 pages

Improvisational theater beyond metaphor

part 5|66 pages

Improvisation and new organizational forms

chapter 22|19 pages

Flow with the go

Real-time continuous improvisation in digital business ecosystems

part 6|68 pages

Conceptual expansions and conclusions

chapter 24|14 pages

Improvisation

A taste of chaos in the middle of order and a taste of order in the middle of chaos

chapter 26|18 pages

Improvisation in organization

A review with a phenomenological research agenda

chapter |8 pages

Epilogue

Improvisation in organizations: Looking ahead