Table Of ContentExperiencing Risk, Spontaneity
and Improvisation in
Organizational Change
The perspective of complex responsive processes draws on analogies from
the complexity sciences, bringing in the essential characteristics of human
agents, understood to emerge in social processes of communicative
interaction and power relating. The result is a way of thinking about life in
organizations that focuses attention on how organizational members cope
with the unknown as they perpetually create organizational futures together.
Providing a natural successor to the editors’ earlier series Complexity and
Emergence in Organizations, this series, Complexity as the Experience of
Organizing, aims to develop this work further by taking very seriously the
experience of organizational practitioners, and showing how adopting the
perspective of complex responsive processes yields deeper insight into
practice and so develops that practice.
This book introduces and explores the possible meanings of the idea of
‘working live’. It makes sense of the sense-making experience itself,
drawing attention to the way ideas and concepts emerge ‘live’ in all
conversations in organizations. An appreciation of the open-ended,
improvisational nature of ongoing human communication becomes key to
such an understanding. The chapters explore:
• How various forms of improvisation in social interaction can inform ways
of appreciating how those links are forged.
• How these insights can illuminate the challenges of managing,
developing and changing organizational practices.
The editors’ commentary introduces and contextualizes these experiences as
well as drawing out key themes for further research.
Experiencing Risk, Spontaneity and Improvisation in Organizational Change
will be of value to readers looking for reflective accounts of real life
experiences of working live in organizations, rather than further prescriptions
of what life in organizations ought to be like.
Patricia Shaw is Associate Director of the Complexity and Management
Centre at the Business School of the University of Hertfordshire and also an
independent consultant. She is one of the editors of the Complexity and
Emergence in Organizations series.
Ralph Stacey is Director of the Complexity and Management Centre at the
Business School of the University of Hertfordshire and Director of the
Doctor of Management programme run by the Centre. He is one of the
editors of the Complexity and Emergence in Organizations series, and editor
of five books in this series.
Experiencing Risk,
Spontaneity and
Improvisation in
Organizational Change
Working live
Edited by
Patricia Shaw and Ralph Stacey
First published 2006
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada
by Routledge
270 Madison Ave, New York, NY 10016
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group
© 2006 Patricia Shaw and Ralph Stacey
This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2006.
“To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s
collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.”
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced
or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now
known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording,
or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in
writing from the publishers.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Experiencing risk, spontaneity and improvisation in organizational
change : working live /
Patricia Shaw and Ralph Stacey, [editors].
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0–415–35128–6 (hard cover) – ISBN 0–415–35129–4 (soft cover)
1. Organizational change–Social aspects. 2. Organizational sociology.
3. Work–Social aspects. I. Shaw, Patricia, 1953– II. Stacey, Ralph D.
HD58.8.E983 2006
302.3’5–dc22 2005017599
ISBN 0–415–35128–6 (hbk)
ISBN 0–415–35129–4 (pbk)
Contents
Notes on contributors viii
Series preface ix
Preface xi
1 Introduction: working live 1
Patricia Shaw
● Response to a planned intervention 3
● Predictability and spontaneity 6
● Commitment 7
● The experience of spontaneity and ‘working live’ 10
● The emergence of legitimizing explanations 12
Editors’ introduction to Chapter 2 17
2 Theatre, improvisation and social change 19
Preben Friis and Henry Larsen
● Involving the audience 21
● Reflections on our way of working 26
● Keith Johnstone and his way of understanding theatre
improvisation 29
● Other ways of understanding improvisation in theatre work 33
● Relating organizational improvisation to theatre improvisation 39
Editors’ introduction to Chapter 3 44
3 Risk and ‘acting’ into the unknown 46
Henry Larsen
● Prologue 46
● Contributing to organizational change: improvised theatre
influences power relations 50
vi • Contents
● Understanding spontaneity 55
● The notion of social control 58
● Power as dependency 59
● Mainstream understanding of power 61
● Linking power and spontaneity 62
● Power and spontaneity: a paradox 63
● Fiction and reality in theatrical performance 64
● Conclusion 69
Editors’ introduction to Chapter 4 73
4 Presence and spontaneity in improvisational work 75
Preben Friis
● The Grindy Company 76
● Fact and fiction 77
● Theatre improvisation 80
● Teaching improvisation 81
● Social interaction as improvisation 86
● Spontaneity 87
● Presence 89
● Improvising in organizations 91
Editors’ introduction to Chapter 5 95
5 Leading in the moment: taking risks and living with anxiety 97
David Walker
● Planning the development of Ariadne 100
● Complexities of leading and following 102
● First steering group meeting 103
● Leadership in the moment 106
● The live interview 106
● Leadership as process 108
● Present moment 109
● Ariadne day 2: the challenge leading to a moment of meeting 114
● Ariadne leaves Minos 116
● Understanding anxiety 117
● Conclusion 122
6 Complex responsive processes as a theory of organizational
improvisation 124
Ralph Stacey
● Organizations understood as complex responsive processes
of relating 128
Contents • vii
● Communicative interaction 128
● Relations of power 134
● Choices arising in acts of evaluation 136
● The thematic patterning of human experience 137
● But how do strategy and planning feature in this account? 138
Index 142
Contributors
Preben Friis is Actor and Director at the Dacapo Company, Denmark,
which provides consulting support internationally for organizational
change. He was awarded the degree of Master of Arts by research from
the Master’s/Doctorate of Management programme at the University of
Hertfordshire.
Henry Larsen is Research Director and Organizational Consultant at the
Dacapo Company, Denmark. He was awarded the degree of Doctor of
Management at the University of Hertfordshire.
Patricia Shaw is Associate Director of the Complexity and Management
Centre and Visiting Professor at the Business School of the University of
Hertfordshire and an independent organizational consultant.
Ralph Stacey is Professor of Management, Director of the Complexity
and Management Centre and Director of the Doctor of Management
research programme at the University of Hertfordshire.
David Walker is a Clinical Psychologist and Group Analyst with some
twenty-five years’ experience working within the United Kingdom’s
National Health Service (NHS) as a clinician, supervisor, manager and
leader. At the time of writing he was Director of Therapies in a mental
health NHS Trust in London. He is currently employed as clinical leader
in a therapeutic community in Norway and also works independently as a
group analytic psychotherapist and organizational consultant in Norway
and the United Kingdom. He was awarded the degree of Doctor of
Management at the University of Hertfordshire.
Series preface
Complexity as the Experience
of Organizing
Edited by Ralph Stacey, Douglas Griffin
and Patricia Shaw
Complexity as the Experience of Organizing is a sequel to the highly
successful series Complexity and Emergence in Organizations also
edited by the editors of this series. The first series has attracted
international attention for its development of the theory of complex
responsive processes and its implications for those working in
organizations. The perspective of complex responsive processes draws on
analogies from the complexity sciences, bringing in the essential
characteristics of human agents, namely consciousness and self-
consciousness, understood to emerge in social processes of
communicative interaction, power relating and evaluative choice. The
result is a way of thinking about life in organizations that focuses
attention on how organizational members cope with the unknown as they
perpetually create organizational futures together. This second series aims
to develop that work by taking seriously the experience of organizational
practitioners, showing how taking the perspective of complex responsive
processes yields deeper insight into practice and so develops that practice.
Contributors to the volumes in the series work as leaders, consultants or
managers in organizations. The contributors provide narrative accounts of
their actual work, addressing questions such as: What does it mean, in
ordinary, everyday terms, to lead a large organization? How do leaders
learn to lead? What does it mean, in ordinary everyday terms, to consult
to managers in an organization? How does the work of the consultant
assist managers when the uncertainty is so great that they do not yet know
what they are doing? What does executive coaching achieve? What
happens in global change programs such as installing competencies,
managing diversity and assuring quality? Why do organizations get stuck
in repetitive patterns of behaviour? What kinds of change can be
facilitated? In considering such questions in terms of their daily
