Organizational Improvisation as a Tool for Sustained Adaptation to Environment: a Model Based on Persian Poetry

A review of organizational improvisation concept, which entered from jazz music into organizational studies and was well-accepted, reveals that there are strong roots and rich records of this concept in Persian poetry. Indigenous improvisation concept not only facilitates the introduction of organizational improvisation to Iranian managers, but also is an opportunity to develop its conceptual frameworks. In order to generalize results to organizational settings, this interdisciplinary, qualitative research was conducted based on the grounded theory method and interviews with Persian literature professors as well as a focal group of Ph.D. management students. Results suggest that in order to strengthen organizational improvisation, which leads to responsive, agile and balanced organizations, development of some organizational resources should be taken into consideration, such as: general knowledge and diverse skills, promotion of tools for quicker interpretation of environmental changes, internal and external organizational memory, infrastructures needed for rapid analysis of existing options, coherence and trust among employees, flexibility of provision and supply systems, improvement of organizational information flow, and finally, improvement of change acceptance skills in human resources. In addition to these capabilities, the emergence of organizational improvisation requires creation of exploratory culture and a minimal organizational structure with an external environment which encourages innovation, breaks habitual boundaries and fosters organizational improvisation.