The Experience of Improvising in Organizations: A Creative Process Perspective

In this paper, we explore how improvisation is experienced by people in organizations, conceptualizing improvisation as a creative process. We draw on a small number of scholarly accounts of the experience of improvising in organizations, and compare and contrast them with accounts from the performing arts. In both cases, improvising evokes simultaneous exhilaration and fear, as well as experiences of nongoal-directed action. In many...