The Experience of Improvising in Organizations: A Creative Process Perspective

In this paper, we explore how improvisation is experienced by people in organizations, conceptualizing improvisation as a creative process. We draw on a small number of scholarly accounts of the experience of improvising in organizations, and compare and contrast them with accounts from the performing arts. In both cases, improvising evokes simultaneous exhilaration and fear, as well as experiences of non-goal-directed action. In many organizational contexts, however, improvisation is normatively discouraged, which heightens the fearful aspect of the experience. This leads many workers to avoid improvising, using it as a method of last resort and even hiding its use. Thus, improvisation is seldom used in favorable circumstances nor practiced to the point of familiarity or expertise. We discuss the implications of these insights for research and practice of improvisation and creativity in organizations, and propose a research agenda for the experience of improvising in organizations