1st Edition
The Routledge Companion to Improvisation in Organizations
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.
Introduction - Improvisation in organizations: A convocation, a celebration and an invitation Anne S. Miner, António Cunha Meneses Abrantes, Dusya Vera, and Miguel Pina e Cunha
Part 1. Conceptual linkages
1. Improvisation and bricolage: Similarities and differences between two approaches to resource scarcity
Ricardo Coelho da Silva, Leid Zejnilovic, and Pedro Oliveira
2. Eight paradoxical tensions of organizational improvisation
Miguel Pina e Cunha, Medhanie Gaim, and Stewart Clegg
3. The Importance of referents for advancing improvisation theory and methods
Jay O’Toole, Indria Handoko, and Hendro A. Tjaturpriono
4. The improvisation-serendipity nexus
Miguel Pina e Cunha and Marco Berti
Part 2. Improvisation process: Before, during and after
5. The improvisational arc: A sensemaking perspective
António Cunha Meneses Abrantes and Olivier Berthod
6. Preparing to be spontaneous for effective organizational improvisation
Ace V. Simpson and Stewart Clegg
7. Character and improvisation: A recursive relationship
Corey Crossan, Mary Crossan, and Cassie Ellis
8. Improvisational decision making: Context, antecedents, and outcomes
Dusya Vera, Pooya Tabesh, Susana Velez-Castrillon, Ariff Kachra, and Steve Werner
9. Improvisation, routine dynamics, and temporal regularity
Kenneth T. Goh and Claus Rerup
10. Practising strategizing: Novelty as a leap of faith expanding learning and improvising
Elena P. Antonacopoulou
Part 3. Improvisation in specific contexts
11. Improvisation in Africa
Emanuel Gomes
12. Locating improvisation in public service management: Past, present, and future research directions
Ian R. Hodgkinson and Paul Hughes
13. Organizational improvisation in project management
Stephen A. Leybourne
14. Professional service firms: Why is improvisation so important?
Muriel Faden
15. Team leadership, momentum, and improvisation in extreme contexts
Bjarke Aage and Stefan Meisiek
16. Managing improvisation in dispersed settings
Massimo Magni and Likoebe Maruping
Part 4. Improvisational theater beyond metaphor
17. Improvisation as a design for organizational emergence
Lukas Zenk, Ralf Wetzel, and Markus F. Pesch
18. Improvisational theater in organizations: Between company expectations and effects on individuals and teams
Cynthia Zabel and René Mauer
19. Theatrical improvisation for organizational improvisation education
Eduardo P. B. Davel and Fernanda P. M. Barbosa
Part 5. Improvisation and new organizational forms
20. Improvising around and about boundaries in open organizations
Antonio Daood and Luca Giustiniano
21. Agility and improvisation
Allègre L. Hadida and Nathan O. Odiase
22. Flow with the go: Real-time continuous improvisation in digital business ecosystems
Pernille Rydén and Omar A. El Sawy
23. Advancing improvisation within entrepreneurship research
Michael P. Ciuchta, Lani Faith Gacula, and Cintya Gajardo-Vejar
Part 6. Conceptual expansions and conclusions
24. Improvisation: A taste of chaos in the middle of order and a taste of order in the middle of chaos
Pedro Marques-Quinteiro and Rita Rueff-Lopes
25. Strategic improvisation in loosely coupled systems
Victor Meyer Jr. and Diórgenes Falcão Mamédio
26. Improvisation in organizations: A review with a phenomenological research agenda
Demetris Hadjimichael
27. Why ever stop improvising? Why endings matter for theory and practice
Anne S. Miner and Jay O’Toole
Epilogue - Improvisation in organizations: Looking ahead
Dusya Vera, António Cunha Meneses Abrantes, Anne S. Miner, and Miguel Pina e Cunha
Biography
Miguel Pina e Cunha is the Fundação Amélia de Mello Professor at Nova School of Business and Economics, Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Portugal.
Dusya Vera is a Professor of Strategy, the Ian O. Ihnatowycz Chair in Leadership, and the Executive Director of the Ian O. Ihnatowycz Institute for Leadership at the Ivey Business School at Western University, Canada.
António Cunha Meneses Abrantes is an Associate Professor at TBS Business School, France. He is also Chair of the Team Performance Management track of EURAM.
Anne Miner is a Professor Emerita at the University of Wisconsin, USA.
"A stunning consolidation of significant work on Organizational Improvisation. This is the definitive discussion that positions improvisation as a foundation for organization studies and practices. The book models the ways in which a deeper analysis of adaptive improvisational coping can unfold.” Karl Weick, Ross School of Business and University of Michigan, USA.
