The Routledge Companion to Improvisation in Organizations

26 Improvisation in organization A review with a phenomenological research agenda

Demetris Hadjimichael

DOI: 10.4324/9781003171768-33

Introduction

Organizational improvisation (OI) is broadly understood as the capacity to engage in unplanned and purposeful action in response to changing circumstances in the context of organizations (Chelariu et al., 2002; Cunha et al., 2017; Hadida et al., 2015). The capacity to improvise has consistently been documented to be important because organizations are often faced with novel and unforeseen situations. For instance, during the climb out of US Airways Flight 1549, on 15th January 2009, the aircraft struck a flock of birds causing the aircraft's engines to lose all power. Unable to steer the aircraft ...