Strategic Improvisation of Knowledge-Based Companies in Complex Environment

External environment of organizations includes in uncertainty, ambiguity and transformation. Therefore, making decision is very difficult for managers and traditional approaches of strategic planning are not confirmed by them because of lake of flexibility and future predictability. In these circumstances, strategic directors of organizations track an approach using the intuitive decision making skills and improvisational capabilities which result in quick decisions in facing challenges and help them improve the performance by responding to external changes quickly. Improvisation is defined as the creation of new responses, without the previous planning and certainty of its outcomes. In other words, improvisation is planning and implementation of strategy simultaneously. The purpose of this research is to survey of the relationship between the strategic improvisation and performance giving the three components of the pace of environmental responses, resilience and adaptiveness, and process agility. The population of this study is the managers of knowledge-base companies located in Science and Technology Park of University of Tehran. Data of this research is collected by the questionnaire. To analyze data, Pearson coefficient and Structural Equation Model are used. The results of research show that giving the restrictions of planning in turbulent environments, the managers can help the organization improve the performance by making improvisational decision. Strategic improvisation enhances the ability of responding to the environmental challenges, causes the organizational flexibility, and increases the agility of organization.