The Routledge Companion to Improvisation in Organizations

5 The improvisational arc A sensemaking perspective

António Cunha Meneses Abrantes and Olivier Berthod

DOI: 10.4324/9781003171768-8

Introduction

Organizational improvisation (OI) is often enacted as a response to an unexpected disruption or sudden change (Hadida et al., 2015), which can either constitute a problem that must be solved or an opportunity that can be seized (Miner et al., 2001; Suarez & Montes, 2019). Abrantes, Passos, Cunha and Costa (2022) call this improvised adaptation to distinguish it from improvisational processes that are not triggered by any disruption. When organizational agents perceive the disruptive context as out of step with existing routines, the meaning ascribed to reality is broken, and the need to make sense ...