Notes on improvisation and time in organizations

Abstract

Business Process Re-engineering has not been able to eradicate improvisation from economic organizations. On the ashes of this failed program of modernization, it is high time to take a serious look at the phenomenon of improvisation: its structure, dynamics and forms of occurrence in both emergency and routine situations.

The study of such a ubiquitous human practice reveals that even in highly structured organizations improvisation is a well grounded process that can be leveraged to face those situations where rules and methods fail.

Improvisation, seen as an ex-temporaneous process, opens up alternative approaches to cope with time in business. `Lifting out' the constraints posed by clock time, one can envisage the importance of those `moments of vision' that represent the elusive core of entrepreneurial behaviour. In the background of impromptu action, as well as of a more authentic notion of time, lies what is missing from the managerial models in good currency: human existence and experience.