Faculty Workshop
Responses to Organizational Surprises in Startups:
The Impact of Improvisation and Memory on Response Outcomes
March 14 , 12:00 – 1:30 PM
Social Ecology I, Room 306
Yan Gong
Professor of Strategy
Paul Merage School of Business
University of California – Irvine
Discussants
Christine Beckman
Paul Merage School of Business
UCI
Calvin Morrill
Department of Sociology
UCI
Biography
Yan Gong joined the Merage Faculty at UCI in the Fall of 2007. His research focuses on capabilities, routines and unexpected events in entrepreneurial firms. His current research explores dynamic paths of how new firms develop routines and capabilities, and how they respond to surprise events in entrepreneurial processes. His research has appeared in the Handbook of Organizational Routines and Frontiers of Entrepreneurship Research.
Abstract
This paper offers a conditional framework of improvisation, in a context of organizational responses to surprise events. We propose that two key factors related to organizational knowledge use will shape whether a specific response to a surprise will have value to the organization. First, we argue that intermediate levels of improvisation during responses create conflicts on knowledge deployment that reduce the chances of an effective response. In contrast, both lower and higher levels of improvisation will have a relatively more positive impact on organizational outcomes. Second, the organization’s direct and indirect memory represents a reservoir of potential activities and interpretive schemes, which in turn enhances the chances that its surprise response will have a valued outcome. Finally, we propose that the value of improvisational response is enhanced by the presence of high levels of organizational memory. We test these ideas using a sample of 141 surprise events identified from 1,725 pages of interview transcripts, over 1,000 pages of informant self-rating reports, and rater assessments of these materials. Our study contributes to theories of improvisation, organizational learning, and emerging theories of organizational surprise.