Learning to improvise, improvising to learn: a process of responding to complex environments

Chelariu, Cristian; Johnston, Wesley J.; Young, Louise

doi:10.1016/s0148-2963(00)00149-1

Cited by 135 publications

(114 citation statements)

References 22 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…Ciborra (1999) confirms this stance, stating that: "the increasing complexity and rate of change of business circumstances put strain on and limit planning and structure in decision making" (p.91). Chelariu et al (2002) reinforce this, suggesting that the growing interest in improvisation is:…”

Section: Improvisation and The Modern Organisationmentioning

confidence: 82%

“…Significantly, they posit that adaptation, temporal compression, and innovation should be added to the original triumvirate of intuition, creativity, and bricolage (Moorman and Miner, 1998a;Moorman and Miner, 1998b), and that improvisation be considered a special learning type. Chelariu et al (2002) expands on certain elements of this work, offering a comprehensive review of the way learning interacts with improvisation, and presenting a typology of improvisation. There are also links with the use of improvisation within projects.…”

Section: A Review Of the Recent Literaturementioning

confidence: 99%

“…This trend, which side-steps traditional models of management that have been accepted for long periods within the management literature, relates to the use of organisational improvisation to explore new ways of achieving the objectives of those organisations within a number of areas. These areas include new product development (Akgün and Lynn, 2002;Moorman and Miner, 1998b;Kamoche and Cunha, 2001), cognition (Augier and Vendolø, 1999;McGinn and Keros, 2002), entrepreneurial activity (Baker et al, 2003;Hmieleski and Corbett, 2003), organisational learning (Akgün et al, 2003;Barrett, 1998;Chelariu et al, 2002;Miner et al, 2001;Moorman and Miner, 1998a), change (Brown and Eisenhardt, 1997;Macredie and Sandom, 1999;Orlikowski, 1996), time (Ciborra, 1999), planning (Crossan et al, 1996;Eisenhardt, 1997), team working , and organisational structure (Hatch, 1999;Pavlovich, 2003), amongst others.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

Improvisation within management: oxymoron, paradox, or legitimate way of achieving?

Leybourne

2007

IJMCP

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This paper considers the evolving literature on Organizational Improvisation, considering a number of different perspectives relating to its use and acceptance within a typology of modern management styles. Cunha et al.'s (1999) work is identified as a starting point, and particular attention is given to the gradual integration of improvisational working styles into the lexicon of management theory.The nature of improvisation, and its contradictory stance when considered against the understood notions of managerial control, is examined. Attention is then directed at the use and acceptance of improvisational working practices in the domain of that contemporary flexible organisation. The evidence presented here supports the oxymoronic and paradoxical nature of organisational improvisation, and offers the view that it is a valid and useful addition to the lexicon of management skills in the turbulent and fast-changing environment that persists in the first decade of the 21st century.

show abstract

Section: Improvisation and The Modern Organisationmentioning

confidence: 82%

Section: A Review Of the Recent Literaturementioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Improvisation within management: oxymoron, paradox, or legitimate way of achieving?

Leybourne

2007

IJMCP

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…"Full scale" improvisations are therefore considered to be those that highly deviate from referents and are very spontaneous, regardless of whether they work out successfully or not. As Chelariu, Johnston, and Young (2002) point out in their typology of improvisations, such highly capable instances are rare and difficult to achieve in practice. Everyday improvisations are commonly minor variances in degrees of novelty, speed, and unscripted actions, depending on the situation (Moorman & Miner, 1998).…”

Section: Improvisation: When and Whymentioning

confidence: 99%

Improvising Entrepreneurship

Duxbury

2014

Technology Innovation Management Review

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

“…They create and experiment with options to see what works, and adapt quickly to capitalize on emerging opportunities and avert impending disasters, and in the process incrementally co-create (with other agents) uncertain futures (Kawai, 2005;Snowden, 2006). This mucking about on rugged landscapes is in lieu of conducting formal strategic planning processes which, of course, are pointless exercises in marketplaces fraught with multiple plausible paths and players all destined for indeterminate places (Chelariu, Johnston & Young, 2002[cited in Holbrook, 2003]; Carlisle & McMillan, 2006).…”

Section: Strategizing: Co-evolving Emergent Outputsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Complexity-Based Agile Enterprises: Putting Self-Organizing Emergence to Work

Dyer

Ericksen

2010

The SAGE Handbook of Human Resource Management

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Organizations competing in hypercompetitive marketplaces have two possible paths to potential success. They can attempt to transform traditional bureaucracies into more nimble, adaptable, and resilient entities, which clearly is the path most traveled. Or they can try pathbreaking, which involves adopting a completely different organizational paradigm: the complexity-based agile enterprise (C-bAE). C-bAEs have no a priori hierarchies, no a priori organizational structures, and no a priori business strategies. They rely instead on ongoing interactions among self-organizing participants operating at the edge of chaos to form and reform, strategize and re-strategize on the fly. Does this work? We don't know for sure, although there is some solid theory and a little bit of evidence to suggest that it might -that under the proper conditions, these progressive dynamics may well engender a stream of novel and yet coherent products, services, and solutions capable of delivering a series of temporary competitive advantages and, thus, the possibility of long-term survival. This paper explores the promise, with particular emphasis on the process of mobilizing or creating the conditions that foster the constant co-creation of emergent organizational forms and innovative outputs.

show abstract

Learning to improvise, improvising to learn: a process of responding to complex environments

Cited by 135 publications

References 22 publications

Improvisation within management: oxymoron, paradox, or legitimate way of achieving?

Improvisation within management: oxymoron, paradox, or legitimate way of achieving?

Improvising Entrepreneurship

Complexity-Based Agile Enterprises: Putting Self-Organizing Emergence to Work

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About