Exploring Organizational Improvisation through the Experience of Small Business Managers

Abstract

Improvisation is an important organizational resource for dealing with unforeseen events, recurrent events typical of times of crisis, such as the Covid-19 pandemic. To analyze the phenomenon of organizational improvisation (OI) with regard to the heuristics used to achieve it, as well as its results in the business context, the narrative interview technique was used in this study to interact with 28 managers and owners of small businesses. Forty-one episodes of OI were described by the informants and analyzed using the content analysis technique. From these analyses, five categories of outcomes of OI episodes were identified, four positive and one negative. The application of seven creative tactics associated with the OI episodes in question was also evident: adaptation, copy, exaptation, frugal innovation, improvement, new combination, and nonaptation spandrels. In terms of results, emphasis is placed on the description and analysis of two episodes of OI associated with the category of Strategic Repositioning of the organization, a phenomenon that was hitherto identified in the literature as rare but possible. As for the seven creative tactics that were identified, they provided evidence that the Adaptation construct used in some OI frameworks is incomplete and restrictive in terms of possible actions.