Related Experiment Video
Updated: Jun 28, 2025
05:26
Enactive Phenomenological Approach to the Trier Social Stress Test: A Mixed Methods Point of View
Published on: January 7, 2019
6.7K
Power, politics and improvisation: Learning during a prolonged crisis.
Stefan Meisiek1, Bonnie Rose Stanway1
1The University of Sydney Business School, Australia.
Management Learning
|April 11, 2024
Summary
Organizations learned from improvisation during the COVID-19 pandemic by adapting operations. Power dynamics and politics influenced how improvisations evolved, particularly with the adoption of WeChat.
Area of Science:
- Organizational Studies
- Sociology of Organizations
- Management Science
Background:
- The COVID-19 pandemic necessitated rapid operational adaptation and continuous improvisation in organizations.
- Organizational environments are inherently sites of power relations and political activity, even during crises.
Purpose of the Study:
- To examine the influence of power and politics on organizational learning from improvisation.
- To trace the evolution of improvisational strategies during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Main Methods:
- A qualitative longitudinal case study was conducted.
- The study focused on an Australian university's response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
- Improvisations involving the social media platform WeChat were traced.
Main Results:
- Different forms of improvisation emerged and transformed over time.
- Power relations and organizational learning simultaneously influenced the morphing of improvisational strategies.
- The adoption of WeChat as part of the pandemic response was a result of evolving improvisations.
Conclusions:
- Organizational learning from improvisation is significantly shaped by power dynamics and political activity.
- Understanding the interplay between power, politics, and learning is crucial for organizational adaptation during crises.
- The study provides insights into how organizations navigate emergent challenges through evolving improvisational practices.
Related Concept Videos
01:04Social Facilitation
32.0K
Not all intergroup interactions lead to negative outcomes. Sometimes, being in a group situation can improve performance. Social facilitation occurs when an individual performs better when an audience is watching than when the individual performs the behavior alone. This typically occurs when people are performing a task for which they are skilled.
32.0K
04:49Robbers Cave
14.3K
During the 1950s, the landmark Robbers Cave experiment demonstrated that when groups must compete with one another, intergroup conflict, hostility, and even violence may result. At the Oklahoman summer camp, two troops of boys—termed the Rattlers and the Eagles—took part in a week-long tournament. During this time, their negativity culminated in derogatory name-calling, fistfights, and even vandalism and destruction of property. However, this work also revealed that such tension...
14.3K
01:21Cognitive Learning
239
Cognitive learning is based on purposive behavior, incidental learning, and insight learning.
E. C. Tolman's theory of purposive behavior emphasizes that much behavior is goal-directed. He argued that to understand behavior, we must look at the entire sequence of actions leading to a goal. For instance, high school students study hard, not just due to past reinforcement but also to achieve the goal of getting into a good college.
Tolman introduced the idea that behavior is influenced by...
E. C. Tolman's theory of purposive behavior emphasizes that much behavior is goal-directed. He argued that to understand behavior, we must look at the entire sequence of actions leading to a goal. For instance, high school students study hard, not just due to past reinforcement but also to achieve the goal of getting into a good college.
Tolman introduced the idea that behavior is influenced by...
239
03:20The Stanford Prison Experiment
23.2K
The famous and controversial Stanford Prison Experiment, conducted by social psychologist Philip Zimbardo and his colleagues at Stanford University, demonstrated the power of social roles, social norms, and scripts.
23.2K
01:12Hindsight Biases
3.4K
Hindsight bias leads you to believe that the event you just experienced was predictable, even though it really wasn’t. In other words, you knew all along that things would turn out the way they did. Can you relate this to the phrase "Hindsight is 20/20" now?
3.4K
02:05Self-Presentation: Self-Monitoring and Self-Handicapping
39.0K
People can go to great lengths to protect their self-image and present themselves in ways that they want others to see them. Sociologist Erving Goffman presented the idea that a person is like an actor on a stage. Calling his theory dramaturgy, Goffman believed that we use “impression management” to present ourselves to others as we hope to be perceived. Each situation is a new scene, and individuals perform different roles depending on who is present (Goffman, 1959). Think about...
39.0K