The process of improvisation

This chapter presents an analysis of important features of improvisation and aims to highlight how these key features could be applied in order to understand organisational processes. A key theme is that improvisation in music illustrates a social process, and better understanding the features of improvisation can provide insight into aspects of social interaction.
The chapter draws from the research study ‘Improvisation, music and learning: an Interpretive Phenomenological Analysis,’ (Rose, 2013) in which leading musicians whose practice has been centrally concerned with improvisation were interviewed. The chapter highlights how the key themes from this study may be applicable in the range of human activity, and consequently may be relevant for understanding organisational processes. The theme titled ‘Improvisation: a human capability’ describes the process of improvisation through examples of human interaction as an essentially social process. The theme of ‘Awareness, trust and risk’ explores the finer detail of the process in the social setting. In ‘Voice and improvisation’, agency for autonomous action is described. ‘Recognising creativity’ leads to discussion of the different forms creativity. ‘Improvisation as group composition’ describes the process of improvisation’s participatory character – as a collaboration system.