"The mechanistic, bureaucratic model for organizing - in which people do routine, repetitive tasks, in which rules and procedures are devised to handle contingencies, and in which managers are responsible for planning, monitoring and creating command and control systems to guarantee compliance - is no longer adequate.  Managers will face more rather than less interactive complexity and uncertainty.  This suggests that jazz improvisation is a useful metaphor for understanding organizations interested in learning and innovation.  To be innovative, managers - like jazz musicians - must interpret vague cues, face unstructured tasks, process incomplete knowledge, and yet they must take action anyway.  Managers, like jazz players, need to engage in dialogue and negotiation, the creation of shared spaces for decision making based on expertise rather than hierarchical position...."

Frank J. Barrett is one of the pioneers in linking jazz to organizational well-being and remains one of the best of this small band of thinkers.   For the full text of his "Creativity and Improvisation in Jazz and Organizations," Organization Science, 9 (1998) 5:605-622, click here. Barrett now teaches in the School of Human and Organizational Development at Fielding Graduate University.