Power, politics and improvisation: Learning during a prolonged crisis

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has caught most organizations off guard. They have had to adapt their operations rapidly, and with the pandemic persisting, continuously improvise. While such an external jolt to organizations might unsettle operations, it does not remove the fact that organizations are sites of power relations and political activity. In this article, we examine the influence of power and politics on learning from improvisation, through a qualitative longitudinal case study of an Australian university during COVID-19. We trace improvisations with the use of the social media platform WeChat, which was eventually adopted, after several changes in forms of improvisation, as part of the response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Our study contributes to the literature on learning from improvisation, and explains how different forms of improvisation morph into one another under the simultaneous influence of power relations and learning.

Scaling up and scaling down: Improvisational handling of critical work practices during the COVID-19 pandemic

“…A reflection from these findings is that tensions may have an impact on the learning potential during improvisational handling as they may cause segregation between employees, become barriers to organisational learning while dealing with challenges and new problems during fast changes, and lead to an undesired development of the organisation. Similar findings from other studies during the pandemic are addressed by Meisiek and Stanway (2022), who emphasise the means of power relations, that relations between individuals and groups have an impact on learning during a crisis, and that these aspects need to be taken into account to enable learning from a longterm perspective. During crisis requiring improvisational handling in an organisation, there is a high potential for individual learning and increased discretion performing tasks.…”

“…The findings identify challenges concerning learning opportunities during the crisis in the initial phases of the pandemic. These challenges encompassed tensions based on different needs or contradictory demands that may occur, hence needed to be considered during fast-paced changes in organisations ( Meisiek and Stanway, 2022 ; Smith and Lewis, 2011 ). One identified tension was the employees’ different exposures to health risks due to COVID-19 at workplaces.…”

“…Furthermore, in fast-changing organisational environments, multiple tensions and contradictions may arise requiring attention to the impact of global, dynamic and contradictory demands that may occur ( Smith and Lewis, 2011 ), and therefore also need to be considered during improvisational handling. Learning during such crises plays a vital role in facilitating organisational transformation, however, there is a need to take power relations and group interactions into account when exploring long-term learning outcomes of improvisations ( Meisiek and Stanway, 2022 ).…”

“…Although there are some initial studies on improvisation related to the COVID-19 pandemic, for example, highlighting different strategies for handling new demands for change (Cox et al, 2021), reflective practice to support the process of rapid improvisation (Bryson and Andres, 2020) and the need to loosen control to facilitate organisational improvisation (Lloyd-Smith, 2020), this potential for organisational development warrants further investigation. In addition, there appears to be a lack of previous empirical research on improvisation and learning in organisations (Cunha et al, 1999;Easterby-Smith, 1997;Kamoche et al, 2003aKamoche et al, , 2003bMeisiek and Stanway, 2022;Vendelø, 2009;Vince et al, 2002).…”

Learning under lockdown: sensing, feeling and learning to work from home

“…Despite the upheaval and hardships caused by the pandemic, it also opened up opportunities to reimagine and, to an extent, reshape work and life practices "after lockdown" (Latour, 2021), including examining how improvisation and power dynamics shaped learning processes? during this prolonged crisis (Meisiek and Stanway, 2023). Our paper seeks to contribute to the burgeoning post-lockdown literature (e.g.…”