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An inductive study of improvisation in new product development activities in two firms uncovered a variety of improvisational forms and the factors that shaped them. Embedded in the observations were two important linkages between organizational improvisation and learning. First, site observations led us to refine prior definitions of improvisation and view it as a distinct type of real-time, short-term learning. Second, observation revealed links between improvisation and long-term organizational learning. Improvisation interfered with some learning processes; it also sometimes played a role in long-term trial-and-error learning, and the firms displayed improvisational competencies. Our findings extend prior research on organizational improvisation and learning and provide a lens for research on entrepreneurship, technological innovation, and the fusion of unplanned change and order.

This research examined cooperation between 136 industrial buyers and suppliers. We identified four domains of potential cooperation: flexibility, information exchange, shared problem solving, and restraint in the use of power. Using an iterated games framework, we predicted that (1) anticipated open-ended future interaction, or extendedness, and (2) frequency of contact will increase the chances that a pattern of cooperative behavior will occur, but (3) performance ambiguity will decrease such chances. Regression analysis results indicated that extendedness and frequency are associated with joint cooperation. Neither simple structural theories of cooperation nor interactive models stressing commitment would fully predict these results, which support the potential value of interactive perspectives on interorganizational cooperation in particular and on interorganizational relationships in general. Research on interorganizational relationships has traditionally stressed the importance of fixed organizational traits (Aiken & Hage, 1968; Galaskiewicz, 1985; Pfeffer & Salancik, 1978). Looking at cooperation in particular, researchers have sought to identify fixed antecedents to cooperative relationships. Aiken and Hage (1968) tried to identify internal organizational characteristics that would lead to cooperation. Later theorists have argued that resource dependency and uncertainty will affect both levels and types of collaboration (Pfeffer & Salancik, 1978; Williamson, 1975). At a higher level of analysis, theorists have observed that the political economy may affect the formation of organizational coalitions (Berg & Zald, 1978) and that institutional environments may promote or even require cooperation (Contractor & Lorange,

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Arguing that organizational memory affects key new product development processes by influencing the (1) interpretation of incoming information and (2) the performance of new product action routines, the authors introduce four dimensions of organizational memory, including the amount and dispersion of memory. Data from 92 new product development projects indicate that higher organizational memory levels enhance the short-term financial performance of new products, whereas greater memory dispersion increases both the performance and creativity of new products. They also find, however, that under some conditions of high environmental turbulence, high memory dispersion actually detracts from creativity and has no effect on financial performance. Under conditions of low turbulence, high memory dispersion promotes higher levels of creativity and short-term financial performance. These findings provide some initial evidence that knowledge is not an unconditionally positive asset and suggest that developing and sustaining valuable organizational memory may require attention not only to the appropriate levels of memory but also to managing subtle aspects of memory dispersion and deployment. These results imply that if organizations fail to understand the subtle ways in which different features of organizational memory influence product development, they may fail to harvest the full value of organizational learning.