Jazz Improvisation and Organizing: Once More from the Top

This is a response to the special issue of Organization Science on Jazz Improvisation and Organizing (Vol. 9, No. 5, 1998). It is a call to unpack the jazz metaphor by extending the notion of jazz, and thereby the value of the metaphor, beyond the limited definition described in the issue. In that issue, jazz was described as a process of improvising within a highly constrained structure and set of rules. Other genres of jazz, however, have gone beyond those constraints. Jazz improvisation has occurred within forms, with forms, and beyond forms. Perhaps organizational improvisation may as well.