The Routledge Companion to Improvisation in Organizations

4 The improvisation–serendipity nexus¹

Miguel Pina e Cunha and Marco Berti

DOI: 10.4324/9781003171768-6

Introduction

Improvisation, the theme of this companion, as well as serendipity, the making of lucky discoveries (Cunha et al., 2010), are infrequent appearances in organization theory. Yet they both play important, although very different, roles in the life of organizations. Improvisation is a mundane process, used proactively or reactively, to solve problems that escape standard operating procedures or to grab unsought opportunities (Abrantes et al., 2022). Some of these unsought opportunities may have emerged serendipitously. In common, these two processes have an action orientation, comfort in the presence of the unexpected, and a creative ...