Management Learning

Improvisation has been treated largely as if it were a conceptual monolith: all improvisations are similar. We challenge this theorizing by distinguishing forms of improvisation in organizations (semi-structured, episodic, subversive, resistive) and by exploring ways in which these forms interrelate in improvisational sequences. Improvisation is not just something individuals do; it is a learned capacity that organizations can manage. We introduce the dimension of improvisational formality and informality, adding a political dimension to the study of the topic. By combining forms in process sequences, we organize the existing literature under a systematic perspective facilitating theory development via an integrative understanding of how improvisation produces learning.

Is organizational innovation always a good thing? When is innovation negative? What are the damaging effects of innovation? In this article, it is argued that innovation has negative impacts on organizational performance when the newly introduced knowledge is not compatible with an organization’s prior knowledge. In this instance, an organization may experience knowledge loss or organizational dysfunctions, such as avoidance, resistance, struggle, alteration, and conversion processes. To avoid the negative impacts of innovation, we suggest that organizations should first recognize the incompatibility between the new knowledge and prior knowledge and then reformulate the newly introduced knowledge. Implications for theory and research are offered as well as suggestions for practice.

Analogous to long-sightedness, hyperopia describes the condition of being able to grasp with acuity matters which are far removed from current experience (temporally, spatially or cognitively) while encountering difficulty in interpreting and acting on that which is close at hand. We examine data from a top management team’s activity in which they collectively display a hyperopic approach. A single in-depth field study is analysed retroductively to examine the plausibility of potential causal mechanisms that might explain the emergence of hyperopia. In the case examined, hyperopia appears to emerge from a strategic learning approach that emphasises foresightful learning mechanisms while neglecting experiential learning from direct exposure to operations. To avoid the emergence of pathologies of managerial approaches, such as hyperopia or myopia, practitioners are encouraged to engage with balanced strategic learning mechanisms of varying temporal, spatial and cognitive scope.

Against the background of a marked lack of studies exploring the role of language and more particularly interlingual translation in the travel of ideas and practices across organisational contexts, this article provides an analysis of an attempt by a group of managers to translate a set of corporate values into Polish from English. The findings reported serve to demonstrate the relevance of such translation processes to the transfer of knowledge and practices within multinationals. By prompting sensemaking around a value-laden text, the studied translation exercise is shown to have encouraged discussions around understandings of local needs and preferred meanings which served to trigger debates and reflections around local identity and affinities with the parent company. In doing so, it provided a ‘situated platform’ through which participants exercised a collective agency aimed at establishing what were perceived to constitute appropriate and productive accommodations between local and extra-local pressures. At the same time, the translation is shown to have been very much shaped by material interests and priorities, notably the performance expectations embedded in the subsidiary’s relationship with its parent. As a result, care needs to be taken not to overstate the role of such translations in facilitating locally driven cultural adaptations.

Following a strand of narrative studies pointing to the living conditions of storytelling and the micro-level implications of working within fragmented narrative perspectives, this article contributes to narrative research on work stories by focusing on how meaning is created from fragmented stories. We argue that meaning by story making is not always created by coherence and causality; meaning is created by different types of fragmentation: discontinuities, tensions and editing. The objective of this article is to develop and advance antenarrative practice analysis of work stories by exploring how different types of fragmentation create meanings. This is done by studying the work stories of job and personnel consultants and by drawing on the results of a narrative, ethnographic study of a consultancy. The analysis demonstrates how work stories are social practices negotiated, retold, edited and performed by the storyteller in an ongoing process allowing tensions, discontinuities and editing between failures and achievements, between dreams and work realities and between home and work life. We argue that by including different types of fragmentation, we offer a new type of antenarrative practice approach that offers a contemporary method for exploring meaning creation in work stories.

Relatively little practice-based research explores situated learning beyond the level of basic skill development. This article seeks to expand our understanding by focusing on the situated development of high-level creativity in the practice of haute cuisine and the role of the master–apprentice relationship in this development. Much has been written on what creativity is and where it happens, but little is known about how it is developed. By using an insider to investigate highly creative practitioners, namely, world-renowned chefs, this research provides the necessary contextual understanding for studying and explaining the development of high-level creativity in this field.

Self-determination theory serves as the primary explanatory mechanism in this article of significant differences in the outcomes of leader development interventions. A total of 445 organizational administrators in a year-long leadership professional development programme are categorized based on their self-determination. Self-determination is categorized by the initial choice in programme participation and the pursuing choice in programme content and methods. The empirical results show differences based on self-determination categorizations in terms of self-assessments and subordinate assessments. However, the significant differences are not as expected in all cases. Theoretical and empirical contributions are discussed that inform researchers and practitioners.