Advice seeking network structures and the learning organization

Organizational learning can be described as a transfer of individuals’ cognitive mental models to shared mental models. Employees, seeking the same colleagues for advice, are structurally equivalent, and the aim of the paper is to study if the concept can act as a conduit for organizational learning. It is argued that the mimicking of colleagues’ advice seeking structures will induce structural equivalence and transfer the accuracy of individuals’ cognitive mental models to shared mental models. Taking a dyadic level of analysis authors revisit a classical case and present novel data analyses.The empirical results indicate that the mimicking of advice seeking structures can alter cognitive accuracy. It is discussed the findings’ implications for organization learning theory and practice, addressed the study’s limitations, and suggested avenues for future research

Shopping for new glasses: looking beyond jazz in the study of organization improvisation

This article calls for research on organizational improvisation to go beyond the currently dominant jazz metaphor in theory development. We recognize the important contribution that jazz improvisation has made and will no doubt continue to make in understanding the nature and complexity of organizational improvisation. This article therefore presents some key lessons from the jazz metaphor and then proceeds to identify the possible dangers of building scientific inquiry upon a single metaphor. We then present three alternative metaphors Indian music, therapy and role theory. We explore the nature of these metaphors and seek to identify ways in which they differ from the jazz metaphor. This analysis leads us to identify not merely how these alternative metaphors fill the gaps left by the jazz metaphor but also how they complement the contribution from the jazz metaphor thus further strengthening theory-building in this genre. Ultimately, our understanding of organizational improvisation will be sharpened by more incisive theoretical analysis and empirical research.

Collaborative Creativity:Information-Driven Coordination Dynamics and Prediction in Movement and Musical Improvisation

Humans collaborate with a large number of people in order to create and accomplish incredible feats. We argue that rich coordination dynamics underpin our capacity for collaborative creativity. These dynamics characterize the ways in which people are able to covary their thoughts, actions, behavior, etc. for functional purposes. We investigated the coordination dynamics of improvisation as a special case of collaborative creativity using two openly available data sets: a movement-based mirror game and jazz piano improvisation. By focusing on improvisation, the tasks elicit the need for real-time adaptation and mutual prediction based on information exchange between interacting individuals, with the creative ‘product’ being the behavioral performance itself. For each data set, we performed a transfer entropy analysis as well as an estimate of prediction decay. The combination of these two methods allows us to understand the dynamics as information-driven coordination flow and to differentiate unidirectional influence from mutual influence as well as the predictability of signals exhibited during collaborative creativity. We observed that for the mirror game, experts and novices exhibited unidirectional and bidirectional influence on each other’s movements largely independent of their improvisational experience level. Further, movement improvisation signals generated by experts were generally more predictable than those of novices. In terms of the jazz improvisation, our results showed evidence of bidirectional influence between the onset densities of coupled and one-way improvisational dyads, and the predictability of the signal did not vary systematically across these conditions. We discuss these findings in terms of differences between improvisational contexts, methodical challenges, and future directions

Collaborative Creativity:Information-Driven Coordination Dynamics and Prediction in Movement and Musical Improvisation

Humans collaborate with a large number of people in order to create and accomplish incredible feats. We argue that rich coordination dynamics underpin our capacity for collaborative creativity. These dynamics characterize the ways in which people are able to covary their thoughts, actions, behavior, etc. for functional purposes. We investigated the coordination dynamics of improvisation as a special case of collaborative creativity using two openly available data sets: a movement-based mirror game and jazz piano improvisation. By focusing on improvisation, the tasks elicit the need for real-time adaptation and mutual prediction based on information exchange between interacting individuals, with the creative ‘product’ being the behavioral performance itself. For each data set, we performed a transfer entropy analysis as well as an estimate of prediction decay. The combination of these two methods allows us to understand the dynamics as information-driven coordination flow and to differentiate unidirectional influence from mutual influence as well as the predictability of signals exhibited during collaborative creativity. We observed that for the mirror game, experts and novices exhibited unidirectional and bidirectional influence on each other’s movements largely independent of their improvisational experience level. Further, movement improvisation signals generated by experts were generally more predictable than those of novices. In terms of the jazz improvisation, our results showed evidence of bidirectional influence between the onset densities of coupled and one-way improvisational dyads, and the predictability of the signal did not vary systematically across these conditions. We discuss these findings in terms of differences between improvisational contexts, methodical challenges, and future directions

Neuroeducation: Learning, Arts, and the Brain

Excerpts presentations and discussions from a May 2009 conference on the intersection of cognitive neuroscience, the arts, and learning -- the effects of early arts education on other aspects of cognition and implications for policy and practice

Musical coordination in a large group without plans nor leaders

A widespread belief is that large groups engaged in joint actions that require a high level of flexibility are unable to coordinate without the introduction of additional resources such as shared plans or hierarchical organizations. Here, we put this belief to a test, by empirically investigating coordination within a large group of 16 musicians performing collective free improvisation—a genre in which improvisers aim at creating music that is as complex and unprecedented as possible without relying on shared plans or on an external conductor. We show that musicians freely improvising within a large ensemble can achieve significant levels of coordination, both at the level of their musical actions (i.e., their individual decisions to play or to stop playing) and at the level of their directional intentions (i.e., their intentions to change or to support the music produced by the group). Taken together, these results invite us to reconsider the range and scope of actions achievable by large groups, and to explore alternative organizational models that emphasize decentralized and unscripted forms of collective behavior