This article calls for research on organizational improvisation to go beyond the currently dominant jazz metaphor in theory development. We recognize the important contribution that jazz improvisation has made and will no doubt continue to make in understanding the nature and complexity of...

This paper discusses how new competitive landscapes invite organizational scholars and practitioners to adopt a new organizational mindset. The proposed new mindset does not negate the importance of the traditional functions of management, but invites a reexamination of how they are expected to...

This paper argues that in face of the changes occurring in the organizational world, management education should consider the need to rethink some of its premises and adapt to the new times. The need to complicate management learning due to increased complication in competitive landscapes, is...

Globalization and localization seem to be opposite concepts – a thesis and its antithesis. Nonetheless, managers seem to be able to handle the paradox posed by these two contradicting tensions by enacting, via action, a synthesis that allows for the co-presence of a high level of global...

This paper argues that the apparent contradiction in current conceptualizations of time in organizations (e.g., Chronos vs. Kairos) is only apparent, and that a synthesis between these opposing poles is both possible and desirable. We propose improvisation (where time to plan converges with time...

We draw on evidence scattered across thick descriptions of organizations to outline an alternative model of routine. Instead of defining routine as a process of compliance with prescribed rules and procedures we define it as a process of deviation from the prescribed elements of organizations,...

In an article published in 1995, Paul Shrivastava coined the notion of an ecocentric management paradigm. The ecocentric paradigm provided an integrated and holistic view of the organization at peace with the natural environment. This paper updates the idea of ecocentricity and enriches it with...

Increasingly, managers live in a world of paradox. For instance, they are told that they must manage by surrendering control and that they must stay on top by continuing to learn, thus admitting that they do not fully know what they do. Paradox is becoming increasingly pervasive in and around...

We discuss why surprises, defined as events that happen unexpectedly or expected events that take unexpected shapes, are important to organizations and should be considered in the organizational literature. The concept of organizational surprises is unpacked on the basis of a typology built...

Research shows that HR practices play a crucial role in postmerger integration by facilitating employees’ identification with the new company. However, the effects of identity and identification dynamics upon these practices have yet to be examined. We draw on an ethnographic study of a merger...