jazz improvisation and organizing.pdf

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ORGANIZATION SCIENCE, 2000 INFORMSVol. 11, No. 2, MarchApril 2000, pp. 227234

Jazz Improvisation and Organizing:Once More from the Top

Michael H. ZackNortheastern University College of Business Administration, 214 Hayden Hall, Boston, Massachusetts 02115

[email protected]

AbstractThis is a response to the special issue of Organization Scienceon Jazz Improvisation and Organizing (Vol. 9, No. 5, 1998). Itis a call to unpack the jazz metaphor by extending the notionof jazz, and thereby the value of the metaphor, beyond the lim-ited definition described in the issue. In that issue, jazz wasdescribed as a process of improvising within a highly con-strained structure and set of rules. Other genres of jazz, how-ever, have gone beyond those constraints. Jazz improvisationhas occurred within forms, with forms, and beyond forms. Per-haps organizational improvisation may as well.(Improvisation; Innovation; Metaphor; Organizing; Or-ganizational Forms)

As a former jazz musician1 and a current organizationscientist, I read the Organization Science special issue onJazz Improvisation and Organizing (Vol. 9, No. 5, 1998)with great interest. I, too, have been using the jazz meta-phor for many years. I found the issue to be enlighteningand exhilarating in many respects. It was exciting to seethe spirit of innovation and improvisation played out inthis forum. Hopefully, more of us will be encouraged toimprovise in the creation and delivery of the knowledgeof our field. However, in other respects, I found the ma-terial to be inconsistent with many of its own assertions.

MICHAEL H. ZACK Jazz Improvisation and Organizing

228 ORGANIZATION SCIENCE/Vol. 11, No. 2, MarchApril 2000

Improvisation Is Represented as aHighly Constrained ProcessThe term jazz can refer to a wide range of improvisa-tional behaviors and can be appropriated in many differ-ent ways, depending on the genre being referred to. Thedegree of improvisational structure, in particular, is a keyelement that varies with genre. For the jazz neophyte (theprimary audience targeted by the authors of this issue),even highly structured forms can sound chaotic. There-fore, to demonstrate to this audience that some forms ofimprovisation do exhibit manifest and latent structure, thefocus was on more traditional structured forms of jazzsuch as swing. However, overemphasizing the structureof traditional improvisational genres may limit the powerof using jazz as a metaphor for innovation.2

The swing form of jazz described by Barrett and Pe-plowski (1998) is a highly structured, rule-bound activity.

. . . . [J]azz is guided by a non-negotiable framework that con-strains what the soloist can play (Barrett and Peplowski 1998,p. 558).

Jazz improvisersfollow those chord changes like theyre a road map. To playoutside of those chord changes is to break a rule. You cant dothat (Barrett and Peplowski 1998, p. 559).Most of the audience at the symposium conference per-

formance, especially those not frequently exposed to jazz,were able to enjoy the Swing jazz performance becauseit challenged their ear to some degree (the improvisedsolos were not completely predictable), yet was wellwithin the tonal language they were familiar with andcould make sense of (the chord sequences and tonal res-olutions were highly predictable and, to those familiarwith the tunes, fully determined). We often improvisesimilarly in organizations by behaving in ways that aremarginally or incrementally unexpected but well withinthe bounds of the grander scheme of socially, politically,and organizationally expected behaviors.

Lewin (1998) described the special issue as focusingon jazz as a metaphor for the flexibility of human capitalat the individual and organizational level. If by jazz wemean the traditional genre as played and described by

Barrett and Peplowski (1998), then flexibility comes fromtreating the basic form of the tune as a structured plat-form from which can be derived many outcomes (tunevariations) as combinations of existing resources and ca-pabilities (i.e., sequences of notes) within that structure.Platforms are an accepted approach for enabling organi-zational flexibility and variation while maintaining somedegree of structural stability and routine (Kogut and Ku-latilaka 1994, Meyer and Lehnerd 1997, Sanchez and Ma-honey 1996). This is not unlike a job shop in which alimited set of predefined processes, capabilities, and re-sources is dynamically mixed and matched to provide anextremely wide (although bounded) range of products andservices in a responsive yet efficient way. However, if weaccept the job-shop view of improvisation, then we maybe selling short the jazz metaphor and the notion of im-provisation in general.

Jazz Improvisation Has Evolved WellBeyond Structured SwingTo place the structure of swing jazz in context, lets lookat a brief (and admittedly oversimplified) history of jazz.New Orleans jazz (1890s to 1920s) represented the pre-cursor of swing (1930s and 1940s). Both were structuredmusic forms in the sense described by Barrett and Pe-plowski (1998). Bebop (1940s and 1950s), the next majorgenre, made several important breaks with swing. Swingimprovisation emphasized the notes of the chords form-ing the basic structure of the tune. There were goodnotes and bad notes (Barrett and Peplowski 1998). Be-bop extended the notion of what could be consideredgood music by using those notes formerly considered badto create new and interesting harmonies. Bebop musiciansmade use of chromatics (notes halfway between othernotes) as passing tones in much more complex tonalsequences. They created more complex rhythmic empha-sis than merely staying to the straight swing groove. Fi-nally, in later bebop, the musicians improvised the chordsas well as the notes. They improvised notes that impliedpassing chords, secondary chords that linked the pri-mary chords of the tune. They reharmonized tunes by


ORGANIZATION SCIENCE/Vol. 11, No. 2, MarchApril 2000 229

spontaneously substituting a new and usually more com-plex set of chords that not only changed the sound of thebasic tune, but provided even wider opportunity to im-provise notes. Beginning in the 1960s, musicians such asJohn Coltrane, Miles Davis, Sun Ra, Sonny Rollins, EricDolphy, Oliver Lake, and Ornette Coleman continued topush the notion of what was considered a good note orharmonic structure. They even challenged the basic con-cept of harmonic structure itself.

Swing dismisses possibilities for improvisation thathave become accepted within other jazz genres. In swingjazz, for example, breaking the rules regarding whichnotes are appropriate to play results in noise (Barretand Peplowski 1998). Those same wrong notes, how-ever, produce what is often considered to be interestingand, to some, beautiful dissonances as heard, for example,in the modal jazz style pioneered by Miles Davis.

In the introduction, Lewin (1998, p. 539) makes ref-erence to the need for theories of organizational evolu-tion, renewal, or mutation. Yet, there is very little to sug-gest that the performance of traditional swing jazzrepresents anything evolutionary, or that those jazzgroups mutate in any significant way within a given per-formance. So where does the evolution referred to byLewin (1998) come from? Not necessarily from withinthe structure or performance of swing, but from musicianslike Charlie Parker and Ornette Colemen who hear themusic differently. The evolution from New Orleans jazzto swing to bebop to postbop freer jazz forms can trulybe viewed as a paradigm shift, rather than as one partic-ular jazz group improvising, mutating, or renewing itselfover time (although this does happen, especially withinthe freer forms of jazz improvisation). In fact, proponentsof particular jazz idioms can become quite entrenched intheir own worldview.

Breaking the improvisation rules of the current genreis typically called playing outside, as in outside thenorm or outside the accepted musical structure. Asjazz became more modern, the musicians increasinglyused outside notes and broke with the notion of fixedharmonic structure (Hatch 1998). While the tunes werestill precomposed, their basic structure was no longer

fixed. Rather, structure became one more field for impro-visation. Taking improvisation to its limit, jazz groupslike The Fringe began in the 1970s to base their impro-visation on a few notes or a tonal concept and improvisedessentially their entire performance.3 Within this genre,notes, structure, and harmony emerge spontaneously.There are no harmonic or scalar constraints on what notesmay be played. The musicians are spontaneously and si-multaneously improvising the rules for improvisation aswell as the performance itself. Hatch (1998), character-izing musical structure as a safety net for improvisation,likened free jazz to working without a net.

Playing Outside May Be the TruestForm of ImprovisationTo evoke the metaphor, several authors in the special is-sue described examples of jazz improvisation. However,the effectiveness of these examples was mitigated bythose authors having to limit, for this particular audience,their descriptions of what constitutes jazz improvisationprimarily to structured swing. To expand the metaphor,the key question to ask is what are the musicians impro-vising?

Barrett (1998) suggested that to spark improvisation,Miles Davis surprised his band and disrupted routine bycalling unrehearsed songs and choosing foreign keys.While certainly a catalyst, these disruptions more closelyrepresented minor variation within a familiar structure(consistent with a swing-jazz notion of improvisation).Neither unrehearsed songs nor odd keys represent muchof a challenge for an experienced musician. The tuneshave been played over and over, and form a shared lan-guage, as Barrett and Peplowski (1998) suggested (anddemonstrated in their unrehearsed performance). Stan-dard music training has students playing extensively indifficult keys. With practice, no key is more difficultthan any other, as all are based on the same formulaicWestern scale.4 The ability to transpose tunes among keyson the fly is considered a standard skill. Even the oddmodal tonality used by Davis in his prefusion period usedthe same scales, but starting on notes different than do.Where Davis truly disrupted routine, however, was in his



postbop period by challenging the language and rules ofimprovisation themselves (for example, compare his al-bums Miles Smiles or Bitches Brew to his early beboprecordings).

Weick (1998) similarly suggested that discontinuity inthe form of unusual harmonic structures applied to stan-dard tunes may spark improvisation. He cites the exampleof Sonny Rollins reharmonizing tunes such as Home onthe Range and Tennessee Waltz, tunes not typicallyused for improvisation and which do not follow the stan-dard chord progression of the tune I Got Rhythm (IGR).While this is a good example of improvising the basicharmonic structure of a tune, these tunes are asormoreharmonically predictable and mundane than thestandard IGR chord changes. It takes a true master likeRollins to get anything new out of tunes like IGR orHome on the Range. However, it is not the simple tunethat sparks the improvisation; it is the ability of SonnyRollins to reharmonize that gives new life and meaningto these simple tunes, a skill he also applies to complextunes. That is, he spontaneously improvises the harmonicstructure (chords) as well as the notes, regardless of tune.

Weick (1998) endorsed descriptions of improvisationthat included working with the unexpected; composing atthe moment; and reworking precomposed material anddesigns in relation to unanticipated ideas conceived,shaped, and transformed under the special conditions ofperformance. But key questions that must be asked are:What is it that is unexpected? What is it that is beingspontaneously composed? What is the depth to which thematerials are being reworked? Are we talking about im-provising notes over chords as in traditional jazz, newchords and harmonic structures as in bebop, or the rulesof improvisation themselves as in postbop?

While improvisation is grounded in forms and memory(Weick 1998), each improviser must determine to whatextent they want to improvisewithin those forms, withthose forms, or outside those forms? Variation on atheme, an old concept used even within classical com-position, is one notion of improvisation. But the embel-lishment typified by swing jazz is just one limited formof variation. Bebop experimented with those forms byextending the notion of what constitutes good harmonic

structure, but it still acknowledged structure. CharlieParkers solos, for example, were not formless. Bebopscontribution to improvisation at that point was that withinan accepted chord form there were many more notes thatcould sound good (if you were able to hear it that way)than were being played by more traditional musicians.Parker redefined improvisation by playing every conceiv-able combination of notes that fit within the harmonicform. Parker had phrases and statements he often re-peated, but he was able to construct a virtually infinitenumber of different combinations of those elements. Oth-ers went even further to challenge the notion of form it-self. Thus improvisation does not always come out of amelody as pretext for real-time composing, as suggestedby Weick (1998). The melody may be left unstated andremain open for improvisation. Perhaps this could be con-sidered metaimprovisation. The pretext for improvisationbecomes improvising a pretext for improvisation.

Barrett (1998) suggested that errors are an improvisa-tional spark. In some genres perhaps. But, what does itmean to break the rules imposed by structure when youare improvising the structure and the rules themselves?There are no chordal structures by which to define a badnote. There is no regular beat by which to define disori-entation to the rhythm. There is no groove in the tra-ditional sense of jazz. The groove comes from band mem-bers having a deep sense of oneness with the mutual,spontaneous act of creation of form rather than the indi-vidual creation within form.

Taking the limited view of jazz expressed in this issueconstrained Berliners (1994) interpretation of Konitzsfour stages of improvisation (cited by Weick 1998). Ber-liner did not conceive of improvisation as encompassingthe basic structure of the tune itself; therefore the rangeof improvisational behaviors may be greater than thatsuggested by Weick. Interpretation is a matter of closelyrecreating a composition. Embellishment is the stuff ofstructured jazzimprovisation within a set of strongrules. Variation is the stuff of bebopextending the no-tion of harmonic structure and the rules for picking goodnotes. Improvisation, then, would refer to the maximalinnovation that comes from improvising the entire com-position spontaneously: its premise, its harmonic struc-ture, its tonal language, and the actual sounds played.



The Spirit Is Right, But the MetaphorNeeds StrengtheningWeicks quoting of Ryles (1979, p. 129) description ofimprovisation as the pitting of an acquired competenceor skill against unprogrammed opportunity, obstacle orhazard seems to be right on target. The contention isaround what we mean by unprogrammed opportunity.

In traditional jazz and, to some degree, bebop, unpro-grammedness is a matter of choosing tonal sequenceswithin a meaningful, predefined structure. Enjoyment inlistening to a performance comes from the ability to pre-dict the harmonic progression and make sense of the im-provised notes within that familiar harmonic context andset of improvisational rules. Some like their music to behighly predictable, some like it less so, but most want itto make enough harmonic and musical sense, given whatthey know about harmonic structure, that they are not toosurprised by the notes being played. This is a matter ofmanaging or tolerating uncertainty.

In freer forms of bebop and postbop jazz, unpro-gramedness is less a matter of predicting than of sensemaking. Often the listener is not able to immediatelymake sense of the performance, and for some, that is asource of delight. This is a matter of tolerating ambiguityand equivocality. These listeners not only have a hightolerance for ambiguity, but find it to be a source ofbeauty, exhilaration, and creative freedom. They mustsuspend their interpretive process, stop looking for struc-tures in memory by which to make sense of the perfor-mance, and just accept it in the moment. This is not unlikeBarretts (1998) description of jazz groups as a model of

diverse specialists living in a chaotic turbulent environment;making fast, irreversible decisions; highly interdependent onone another to interpret equivocal information; dedicated to in-novation and the creation of novelty (p. 605).

Rehearse Improvisation Not RoutineThis is not to suggest that the ambiguous remains so in-definitely, or that order does not evolve from improvisa-tion. Even free jazzers fall into familiar musical conver-sations, not unlike the improvisational actors describedby Mirvis (1998). Mirvis (1998) suggests that groups

practice improvisation. But again, interpreting that pre-scription depends on what we mean by improvisation.Rehearsing the same old tunes using the same old chordchanges does provide an ability to spontaneously createembellishment. And that may be quite appropriate to aparticular jazz performance or business process. The ex-ercises used by Second City (Mirvis 1998) are gearedmore towards expanding, rather than reinforcing, the lan-guage and structure of innovation and improvisation. Re-hearsing maximal improvisation, however, requires prac-ticing communication that builds a deeply sharedlanguage, worldview, and an understanding of thegroups purpose, mission, and belief system, one part ofwhich is to abhor complacency. Organizations need to beopen to new ways of listening and observing, to askinggood questions, and to accepting what they dont know.They need to suspend judgment and interpretation to ac-cept the apparent anarchy, noise, and confusion that maymerely represent unfamiliarity rather than chaos.

Jazz Improvisation Is Like ConversationIf organizations are like jazz, and jazz is like a conver-sation (Weick 1998), then perhaps we ought to look atorganizations and jazz using the conversation as a frame-work. Straight interpretation of a music score, as done bysymphonic orchestras, is like delivering a preparedspeech. It is nonconversational. The amount of improvi-sation is minimal. The speech may change slightly de-pending on the context and the speaker, but by and largeit stays the same. Swing jazz, while more conversational,represents a highly structured and predictable conversa-tion guided by strong rules and expectations. This is anal-ogous to strict turntaking and the use of adjacency pairs(i.e., highly predictable statement and response pairs) inlinguistics (Goffman 1981; Schegloff 1987, 1992), and isoften scripted (Gioia and Poole 1984). A typical scriptedconversation utilizing adjacency pairs might proceed as

Me: HelloYou: HelloMe: How are you?You: FineMe: Have a good day



Figure 1 Genres of Improvisation

Music Genre Extent of ImprovisationKonitzsStages Organizing Metaphor Communication Metaphor Dynamics

Classical Minimal to none Interpretation Functional hierarchy Formal; structured; predefined,linear Rigid

Traditional jazz/swing Constrained within strongstructure

Embellishment Job shop/processplatform

Predictable but flexible scripts;adjacency pairs Flexible

Bebop Extensive; harmony andbasic tune structure canbe modified

Variation Network Complex but structuredconversation

OrganicPostbop Maximal; content and

structure emergeImprovisation Functional anarchy Emergent, spontaneous, mutually

constructed conversation Chaotic

You: ThanksMe: ByeYou: Bye

But most of us dont talk like this most of the time. AsGoffman pointed out, these types of conversational struc-tures

. . . are found in the artful dialog of the theater and in novels

. . . Ordinary talk ordinarily has less ping-pong (Goffman 1981,p. 35).Ordinary conversation is pervasively improvisational.

It is more interplay than dialog, lodging people togetherin an intersubjective world in which participants mutuallyand iteratively create meaning out of interaction (Goff-man 1981, Rogers 1986, Tannen 1989). Preallocating theorder and length of turns is characteristic of ritualistic orceremonial interaction (Schegloff 1987). Spontaneousconversation, on the other hand, implies a local, unpre-dictable, emergent, and mutually constituted allocation ofturntaking, complete with interruptions, digressions, sidequips, nonverbal cues, and remarks made out of sequenceor embedded within other sequences. Bebop approachesthis notion of conversation, but it is most fully constitutedwithin the free jazz genre.

And interactive conversation, as with less structuredgenres of jazz, is spontaneously constituted based on acompromise between future intention and past expres-sion. Conversation is retrospective in the sense that what

one says creates a context for further communication.However, we do not express ourselves one word at a time,but rather attempt to make full coherent sentences fromentire thoughts. Those coherent thoughts are a product ofprior conversation, but not exclusively. There is a balancebetween past, present, and future and the simultaneousongoing remarks of others. So too in jazz improvisation.Meaningful improvisation demands that the musicianlook ahead at what he or she will be playing so that thesolo is not just a series of disconnected notes each decidedonly by the previous one, but rather a set of notes pre-conceived as a coherent whole. In more modern forms ofjazz, the other members of the group are not merelycomping, playing the scripted chord changes as the soloistperforms. Rather, everyone is reacting to everyone else,and it is truly a fully connected conversation that has in-finitely more possibilities. And as in real conversation,the group may never return to the original point of de-parture.

In SummaryI have summarized these thoughts in Figure 1. Four musicgenres (viz., classical, swing, bebop, and postbop) aredescribed according to the extent of improvisation, aremapped to Konitzs stages, assigned metaphors of orga-nizing and communication, and labeled as to the extentof dynamism or flexibility, as raised by Lewin.



Classical music represents minimal improvisation,and its performance is described as interpretation. Clas-sical orchestras are similar to functional hierarchies en-gaged in structured, predefined, and linear communica-tion such as that of a speech. They are rigid.

Swing represents constrained improvisation within awell-structured context, and its performance is describedas embellishment. It reflects the job-shop or platform ap-proach to organizing and improvising and is conversa-tionally reflective of the strict turntaking and adjacencypairs of ritualistic communication and scripted ex-changes. It offers structural flexibility

Bebop represents extensive modification of the tuneusing a wider range of notes and rhythm and may involvesome modification to the harmonic structure of the tuneitself. Its performance is characterized as variation and isrelated to a network form of organization engaging incomplex but structured conversations. It is organic.

Postbop represents maximal improvisation of the con-tent, structure, and rules of improvisation, and its perfor-mance is described as improvisation. It reflects what maybe best described as a functional anarchy5 engaged inemergent, spontaneous, interactive, and mutually con-structed conversation. Its dynamics are chaos.6

I am not proposing that there is no negotiated structureor preexisting basis on which to communicate and im-provise, either in jazz groups or other types of organiza-tions. I am saying that those elements that are open toimprovisation go well beyond the notion of improvisationdescribed in this issue. The jazz metaphor is extremelyuseful, but we must push it further. We need to unpackthe metaphor so that we dont end up using it merely asa vehicle into which we force-fit our existing ways ofthinking, merely because jazz is different, and using it asa metaphor sounds hip, hot, or cool. Lets really impro-vise.

Endnotes1Alumnus of Berklee College of Music (http://www.berklee.edu).2It is probably worth noting here that I am a great fan of swing, anddo not intend this to be taken as criticism of the genre itself.3The trios musical outlook is free and all of the pieces at this concert

were conceived on the spot. Appropriately all composer credits aregiven as by The Fringe, and in the main they are simple melodic hooks

on which the players hang their personal statements. (From theAmazon.com review notes to The Fringes album Its Time for TheFringe).4The Western tonal system is founded on a tonal interval call an octave.This is the tonal distance between a given note and a second whosepitch (soundwave period) is exactly double that of the first note (e.g.,standard middle A is 440 Hz, and its octave would be 880 Hz). Theoctave interval is divided into 12 halftones, each with a soundwaveset at a precise mathematical ratio to the starting tone. The major scale(i.e., do, re, me, fa, sol, la, ti, do) is made up of the first, third, fifth,sixth, eighth, tenth, and twelfth halftones plus the octave. The remain-ing intermediate tones are what we call sharps (halftone above thenearest primary note) and flats (halftone below the nearest primarynote).5The use of anarchy here refers to its definition as a theory of thecooperative and voluntary association of individuals and groups as theprinciple mode of organized society (Random House Dictionary ofthe English Language. 1973).6Chaos is used here in the sense of chaos theory, which treats chaos aseffectively unpredictable behavior arising within a minimally deter-ministic nonlinear dynamical system.

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Accepted by Alan Meyer; received January 1999. This paper was with the author for one revision.

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