Organizational learning from hidden improvisation

Research has identified improvisation as a creative and open activity that can be harnessed to encourage innovation and learning within the organization. In this paper, we present improvisation as a covert phenomenon, occurring in a climate of mistrust and fear of censure, and disconnected with wider organizational learning. Drawing on qualitative evidence of a Fire Service in the United Kingdom, we explore hidden improvisation, and identify the conditions and processes that can connect these local deviations to wider processes of learning. We show that while most improvisations remain hidden and contained to avoid wider scrutiny, certain conditions of frequency, connectedness and scale escalate events to become more visible to supervisors and managers. The learning outcomes from these visible improvisations will then depend on management’s interpretation, evaluation and translation of improvising behaviours. Dependent on prior relationships of trust and credibility, middle management perform a key brokering role in this process, connecting previously hidden improvisation to wider organizational systems and structures.Publisher PDFPeer reviewe

Evolving innovation through office knowledge networks : mapping the ephemeral architecture of organizational creativity

This paper explores positive conditions for the evolution of creative innovation through informal social networks in the office. By drawing on both Social Network Analysis (SNA) and the abstracted evolutionary mechanisms of variation, selection and retention, a multilevel conceptualization of the evolutionary processes underpinning the emergence and development of ideas within an organization is put forward. In this way SNA is used to visualize not just the connectivity of individuals within the company who offer 'expert advice' and 'new ideas' in the development of these products, but also the role of mediators in this process at a digital media company, Dataco

Rule breaking in social care: hierarchy, contentiousness and informal rules

Taking a longitudinal case study approach, this article examines the process of rule breaking in a newly formed UK domiciliary care provider. In this study, the founder acted in such a manner so as to partially decouple the organization from externally imposed institutional rules and regulations, allowing the emergence of informal rules between carer and client. These informal rules increasingly guided the behaviours of care workers over time, resulting in the breach of formal strictures. Building on the dimensions of hierarchy and contentiousness, rule breaking is conceptualized here as a phenomenon which occurs as a result of the tension between competing formal and informal rules, at multiple levels throughout the organizational hierarchy

Darwinism, organizational evolution and survival: key challenges for future research

How do social organizations evolve? How do they adapt to environmental pressures? What resources and capabilities determine their survival within dynamic competition? Charles Darwin’s seminal work The Origin of Species (1859) has provided a significant impact on the development of the management and organization theory literatures on organizational evolution. This article introduces the JMG Special Issue focused on Darwinism, organizational evolution and survival. We discuss key themes in the organizational evolution research that have emerged in recent years. These include the increasing adoption of the co-evolutionary approach, with a particular focus on the definition of appropriate units of analysis, such as routines, and related challenges associated with exploring the relationship between co-evolution, re-use of knowledge, adaptation, and exaptation processes. We then introduce the three articles that we have finally accepted in this Special Issue after an extensive, multi-round, triple blind-review process. We briefly outline how each of these articles contributes to understanding among scholars, practitioners and policy makers of the continuous evolutionary processes within and among social organizations and systems

Can evolutionary theory be used to shed light on mechanisms of change?

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Developing an evolutionary/ecological approach in enterprise education

This paper presents an ecological/evolutionary approach to enterprise education. Ecological approaches are used at the University of Tasmania to heighten the awareness of students to a raft of difficult to observe environmental factors associated with developing enterprising ideas. At Sheffield University, the discovery and exploitation of entrepreneurial opportunities is viewed as a co-evolving system of emerging business ideas, and routines/heuristics respectively. It is argued that using both approaches enables students to develop a greater awareness of their situated environment, and ultimately the degree of fit between their learning process and a changing external world. The authors argue that in order to improve the chances of longer-term survival what is needed is a new level of organisation where the individual is capable of developing a representation of the external world that he or she can use to sense the appropriateness of local decisions. This reinterpretation of events allows individuals to step back and examine the broader consequences of their actions through the interpretation and anticipation of feedback from the environment. These approaches thus seek to develop practice-based heuristics which individuals can use to make sense of their lived experiences, as they learn to evolve in an increasingly complex world

An evolutionary perspective on managing the ephemeral architecture of organisational creativity

Information is widely acknowledged as a primary resource for the 21st century organisation. Strategies for managing information - its acquisition, communication, use, storage, retrieval and architecture - have gained much attention in literature and practice. We argue here that adaptability, primarily through creative innovation, is emerging as an equally critical resource ensuring organisational survival and expansion. However, mapping the processes and human activity systems which form this altogether more ephemeral architecture is a more problematic area of management. Here we principally draw upon evolutionary approaches as a useful means to further enrich the theory of 'soft' systems. In doing so we aim to provide a viewpoint from which to conceptualise the tacit complexity of organisational innovation as a human activity system supporting the transformation and evolution of ideas