Thesis

The Plan II Honors Program at the University of Texas at Austin culminates its curriculum with a senior thesis.  Free to write about any topic, I focused on what interests me most: improvisation.  Over the course of 15 months, I researched and wrote about the relationship between improvisation (in both jazz music and theater) and modern organizational structures.  After countless revisions, I submitted the final draft in August 2009.

I plan on revisiting my thesis within a few years and making it fit for publication in an academic journal.  I included the abstract below.  You can download the entire thesis here.

ABSTRACT

Author: Bradley H. Temple

Title: Improv is Serious Business: Improvisation as a Metaphor for Modern
Organizational Structures

Supervising Professor: Randi Voss, Ph.D.

In the fast-paced, digital world of today, many organizations live (and die) careful planning, poring  over  the  intricate  details  of  agendas  and  plans.    The  theories  and  terminology  used  to describe most modern organizations grows  increasingly outdated.  Rather  than grasp  for a new, definitive set of concepts  to define these structures, one can effectively redescribe  them  through the use of metaphor and give  the old terminology new meaning.  This paper uses improvisation, the creation of an immediate response to a given situation without preparation, as a metaphor  to redescribe  many  successful  modern  businesses.    It  also  criticizes  elements  of  organizational structures  in  the status quo, such as  incentive models, and identifies alternative strategies many organizations will need to adopt in order to compete in an ever-changing market.

Through a definitive analysis of the core principles behind successful improvisation, both in  jazz music  and  improvisational  theater,  a  new  philosophy  for  organizational  improvisation develops: one  that advocates a minimal amount of order, encourages active  listening, creates an environment  that  encourages  risk-taking  and mistake-making,  adapts  dynamically  to  feedback, nurtures both  spontaneity and creativity, establishes a  framework  for  individuals  to  take  turns leading and following, and stresses the importance of individual skill sets.