ABSTRACT
This chapter aims to improve the way people talk about organizational improvisation, using the vehicle of jazz improvisation as the source of orienting ideas. It describes with two brief descriptions of the complexity involved when musicians compose in the moment. The chapter reviews several definitions intended to capture holistically what is happening when people improvise. It looks at the selected details in improvisation, namely, degrees of improvisation, forms for improvisation, and cognition in improvisation. The chapter examines the implications for theory and practice. The idea of improvisation is important for organizational theory because it gathers together compactly and vividly a set of explanations suggesting that to understand organization is to understand organizing or, as Whitehead put it, to understand "being" as constituted by its "becoming". The concept of improvisation also engages several concepts in mainstream organizational practice and likewise suggests ways to strengthen them.
