企业为何要即兴运作:对中国企业战略决策风格的一个检验

文章以中国企业为研究对象,全面探究了其战略决策中的即兴运作行为,认为即兴运作作为一种可供选择的战略行动模式而值得关注.文章的研究结论表明:即兴运作在中国企业是一个较为普遍的现象.企业对战略行动的选择是由多种因素综合驱动的,当企业的组织记忆水平越高、企业家导向越明显以及所面对的竞争环境不确定性程度越高时,企业就越可能采取即兴运作的战略行动方式;即兴运作虽然会对战略行动绩效产生负面影响,但组织柔性会显著降低其负面作用.     

包容型领导对员工即兴行为的影响:工作卷入的中介作用

员工即兴行为是企业应对外部环境动态性、复杂性和模糊性的有效抓手。虽已有研究对包容型领导和员工即兴行为之间的关系进行了探究,但目前对二者之间的作用机制知之甚少。论文从社会交换理论视角出发,基于458份问卷数据,实证了包容型领导与员工即兴行为的关系,研究结果表明:包容型领导正向影响员工即兴行为,工作卷入在包容型领导和员工即兴行为之间起部分中介作用,员工主动性人格正向调节包容型领导和工作卷入之间的关系。     

国外即兴研究的文献计量学分析

对国外即兴研究的进展状况进行了总结。以6个外文数据库——EBSCO、SAGE Premier、JohnWiley、Elsevier Science、Emerald和Taylor为文献检索源,对1991—2012年国外即兴研究文献进行检索。利用文献计量学方法对文献数量、发表期刊、主要作者和关键词进行统计分析,并利用文本挖掘方法、可视化软件Refviz以及信息熵方法对研究主题及其演化规律进行了分析。     

遗忘还是即兴?一个有效克服组织惰性的交互模型

克服组织惰性以实现持续成长是转型期企业面临的主要问题。但如何有效克服组织惰性这个问题一直没有得到很好解决。为此,本文以环渤海经济带的177家高技术企业为样本,从组织遗忘和组织即兴视角构建组织惰性的克服机制模型,并进一步探究环境动态性在其中发挥的作用。研究发现：（1）组织遗忘和即兴有助于克服组织惰性;（2）组织遗忘和组织即兴具有交互效应,二者的交互效应更有助于克服组织惰性;（3）环境动态性在组织遗忘和组织惰性的关系间起到调节的作用;（4）环境动态性在组织即兴和组织惰性的关系间起到调节的作用。     

Project management and high‐value superyacht projects: An improvisational and temporal perspective

This article considers specific elements of the project management of high‐value deliverables in an under‐researched sector. Specifically, it looks at ways in which change is accommodated in complex projects where scope, delivery, and cost are relatively inflexible. An emerging literature considers improvisational working within project‐based work, which dilutes the “plan, then execute” paradigm that has shaped project work for some time. This research contributes to the temporal and rhythmic aspects of work in this area, linking with extant theory on, among other areas, punctuated equilibrium and organizational “rhythm,” and identifies parallels between improvised project work and established academic theory.     

The dark side of organizational improvisation: Lessons from the sinking of Costa Concordia

High-reliability organizations operate in highly regulated sectors in which the main concern is ensuring the safety of people and goods. Despite high levels of formalization, organizations have to be sensitive to contingent situations and ready to face the unexpected, so the role of the people in command remains crucial. When unanticipated events and contingencies arise, organizational improvisation comes into its own. Improvisation is the deliberate fusion of design and execution in a novel production entailing the cognitive, rational, and event intuitive interpretation of prescribed rules and standards of conduct at various levels of aggregation. Standardization and improvisation are often represented as two conflicting demands rather than as necessarily interdependent; hence, the possible presence of improvisation in high-reliability organizations has been left underexplored. While most of the extant studies on improvisation have stressed the wisdom of improvised choices, not all improvisations are so successful. In this article we illuminate the dark side of organizational improvisation by analyzing the notorious case of the sinking of the Costa Concordia. The case shows how conformity to the formal adoption of standards and compliance to them can provide a shelter under which impromptu adaptation can be pursued, expressing the negative side of improvisation.     

创业企业即兴行为研究现状探析与未来展望

利用手边当时可得的资源即时地构建和执行应对策略的即兴行为是创业企业应对环境不确定性、克服资源短缺困境的常见选择。尽管过去十五年来创业企业即兴行为(entrepreneurial improvisation,EI)的研究获得了蓬勃发展,但研究成果相对碎片化,散乱且未经系统梳理的研究阻碍了其发展成为一个有前途的研究领域。本文从创业即兴概念内涵、前置变量(触发因素和发生条件)以及结果变量等方面出发,对现有创业企业即兴行为研究进行分析和总结,并在此基础上进一步细化研究的概念框架,从创业即兴的特征与分类、内部组织因素和外部环境因素对创业即兴的影响、创业即兴对企业持续性创新的影响等方面提炼了值得未来研究密切关注的前沿主题。借此赋予创业即兴这一概念以研究的合理性和前景性,帮助引导创业者/创业团队思考即兴行为的重要性,以进一步推进其在创业实践及研究过程中的发展。     

Performing Under Pressure: Winning Customers Through Improvisation in Team Selling

The sales presentation is one of the most challenging and dynamic aspect of the sales process. Often-times, the presentation is composed of teams. The purpose of this study is to examine how improvisation manifests itself in the context of the sales team presentation. Utilizing the theoretical foundations of team dynamics and relationships, unplanned behavior, and emotional intelligence, a model of sales team improvisation is developed. A two-phase research design was employed via qualitative in-depth interviews from buyers and sellers followed by a quantitative survey of experienced sales team professionals. Our results find that improvisation impacts the relationship between emotional intelligence and team presentation performance outcomes. Although team selling is common in practice, a dearth of research exists in the sales literature. This study contributes to the growing body of knowledge on team dynamics and emotion in selling. Additionally, this study is one of the first to specifically investigate improvisation in the high pressure context of sales team presentations.     

The paradox of a marketing planning capability

Strategy scholars have long debated the value of formal planning, and research has offered inconsistent support for planning to enhance firm performance. Given these mixed empirical effects, we draw from the resource-based view of the firm to illustrate a paradox firms may face. In particular, a strong marketing planning capability may not only reduce the incidence of postplan improvisation but also contain inherent process rigidity. Since both of these can also increase performance, results illustrate a performance paradox in marketing planning. Rebecca J. Slotegraaf (rslotegr@indiana.edu) is an assistant professor of marketing in the Kelley School of Business at Indiana University. Her research focuses on the nature and effect of organizational resources, marketing capabilities, and deployment actions on competitive advantage. She received her Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. In addition to this publication in theJournal of the Academy of Marketing Science, she has also published several articles in theJournal of Marketing Research. Peter R. Dickson (dicksonp@fiu.edu) is the Knight-Ridder Eminent Scholar in Global Marketing at Florida International University. He was previously the Arthur C. Nielsen Jr., Chair of Marketing Research at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and before that the Crane Professor of Strategic Marketing and a professor of industrial design at the Ohio State University. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Florida. Thirty of his articles on buyer and seller behavior have been published in leading marketing journals.     

Sink or Swim: Empowering Leadership and Overload in Teams' Ability to Deal with the Unexpected

The notion of improvisation has recently emerged in managerial studies as a viable solution to flexibly dealing with unexpected occurrences in work environments. However, past research on team improvisation has overlooked the contingencies that allow teams to effectively improvise. Drawing upon demand‐control theory, we investigate how empowering leadership and overload affect the improvisation‐performance relationship in the context of 48 work teams. Our results suggest that empowering leadership positively moderates the relationship between improvisation and performance, while overload attenuates the same relationship. Moreover, we found a joint effect of overload and empowering leadership influencing the improvisation‐performance link, such that improvisation is most positively related to performance when empowering leadership is high and overload is low. Conversely, we found that empowering leadership is particularly detrimental to the improvisation‐performance relationship when team members perceive high degrees of overload. Our findings make important contributions to the extant team literature as well as to the emerging literature on team improvisation. We outline several significant insights for HR managers and team leaders who are responsible for supporting teams that face unexpected events in the work environment. © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.