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Expecting the Unexpected? How SWAT Officers and Film Crews Handle Surprises

April 2011
Academy of Management Journal 54(2):239-261

DOI:10.5465/AMJ.2011.60263060

Authors:

New York University

Organizations increasingly face surprises with regularity, yet little is known about how they develop the responses to unexpected events that enable their work to continue. We compare ethnographic data from two types of organizations that regularly deal with surprises, a police SWAT team and film production crews. We find that individuals engage in organizational bricolage, restructuring their activities by role shifting, reorganizing routines, and reassembling the work. Organizational bricolage depends on the sociocognitive resources that group members develop by drafting agreement on the work, reinforcing and elaborating task activities, and building cross-member expertise.

Developing and Using Sociocognitive Resources to Engage in Organizational Bricolage in Response to Surprises

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Commonalities and Differences between Film Production Crews and the SWAT Team

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Continued

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EXPECTING THE UNEXPECTED? HOW SWAT OFFICERS AND

FILM CREWS HANDLE SURPRISES

BETH A. BECHKY

University of California, Davis

GERARDO A. OKHUYSEN

University of Utah

Organizations increasingly face surprises with regularity, yet little is known about

how they develop the responses to unexpected events that enable their work to

continue. We compare ethnographic data from two types of organizations that regu-

larly deal with surprises, a police SWAT team and film production crews. We find that

individuals engage in organizational bricolage, restructuring their activities by role

shifting, reorganizing routines, and reassembling the work. Organizational bricolage

depends on the sociocognitive resources that group members develop by drafting

agreement on the work, reinforcing and elaborating task activities, and building

cross-member expertise.

On the set of a horror film, three weeks’ worth of

scenes were filmed in the rooms of a large mansion.

During the first week, the crew was shooting a dra-

matic slaughter scene on the top floor, in which the

victim was electrocuted while falling into a hot tub.

However, the crew forgot to account for displace-

ment and as the actor in the scene fell into the hot

tub, the water overflowed, spreading over the floor.

As the water cascaded down through the glass chan-

delier in the mansion’s entryway, a production as-

sistant announced over the walkie-talkie, “I’m on

the first floor and there is water dripping on my

head!” The flood shorted out the electricity in the

entire mansion, halting production.

In preparing to execute a search warrant on a sus-

pected drug house, officers on the SWAT team re-

viewed pictures, film, and diagrams of the location.

With this information, the team sketched out the

approach they would take during entry, and agreed

on how they would distribute themselves inside the

location once they broke the door down. During the

drug raid, after the officers rammed the door down,

they found that the suspects had modified the inside

layout of the apartment and the walls and rooms

were not in the configuration they expected. As the

officer describing the event noted, “You expect a

hallway, and there’s a wall.”

Scholars have begun to devote attention to sur-

prise as an important part of organizational life

(Lampel & Shapira, 2001; Weick, 1995; Weick &

Sutcliffe, 2001). A surprise is a break in expecta-

tions that comes from situations that are not antic-

ipated or do not advance as planned (Cunha, Clegg,

& Kamoche, 2006) and encompasses any element

within an organization that is unexpected and

draws attention away from the standard progres-

sion of the work. Surprises are interesting because

they exemplify the remarkable ways in which or-

ganizations face uncertainty and adapt, offering

opportunities for exploration of organizations’ po-

tential for “robust action” (McDaniel, Jordan, &

Fleeman, 2003; Weick & Sutcliffe, 2001).

Scholars have characterized surprises in terms of

variation in both their sources and their outcomes.

Surprises are generated by events as well as pro-

cesses (Cunha et al., 2006) and can emerge from

situations of limited knowledge and system com-

plexity (McDaniel et al., 2003). Surprises also differ

in their consequences for organization members,

which vary in part on the degree to which a collec-

tive understanding of a situation falls apart (Weick,

1993). At their most negative, surprises that consti-

tute “cosmology events,” such as the Mann Gulch

blaze described by Weick (1993), can overwhelm

organization members, with devastating results. A

more commonplace—and positive—outcome of

surprises is organization members’ mindful engage-

ment with situations, coupled with recognition of a

need for change and action (Jett & George, 2003).

For instance, the unexpected injuries that trauma

teams deal with do not directly threaten organiza-

tion members, but do drive them to action (Klein,

Ziegert, Knight, & Xiao, 2006).

Most organizations face unexpected events of the

less catastrophic variety. And whether surprises

arise from internal complexity and lack of fore-

sight, as in the film crew example above, or from

external events, as in the SWAT team example,

Both excerpts are from the authors’ field notes.

娀Academy of Management Journal

2011, Vol. 54, No. 2, 239–261.

239

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members of organizations need to respond in ways

that enable their work to continue. When the elec-

tricity goes out, a film crew does not simply stop for

the day but instead works to resume shooting as

soon as possible. Similarly, regardless of whether

the house is configured as expected, SWAT officers

press on to arrest the drug suspects. Film crews and

SWAT officers encounter surprises such as these as

a regular part of their experience. Regrettably, re-

searchers know less than we should about what

enables these and other organizations to handle

unexpected events and readily continue their work.

If, as some have argued, organizations are in-

creasingly facing surprises (Cunha et al., 2006;

Scott, 2004), it becomes important to go beyond

charting variation in surprises to delve into what

makes organizations capable of robust action when

they occur. In this article, we are interested in

determining how organizations that regularly and

successfully respond to surprise are prepared to

shift their work as their circumstances change.

How do organizations develop the collective re-

sources needed to continue with their work after

encountering a surprise? Answering this question

requires not only studying organization members’

responses to the unexpected, but also investigating

the processes that enable them to be responsive. To

explore this question, we compared the practices of

two types of organizations that expected, antici-

pated, and sometimes embraced, the unexpected:

film production crews and a SWAT team. These

two organizations closely interacted with their en-

vironments and treated surprises as a routine part

of their daily activities. We found that they used

organizational bricolage to respond to surprises by

shifting roles, reorganizing routines, and reassem-

bling their work. We identify the processes that

enabled them to respond to surprises and continue

their work, showing how these organizations devel-

oped a set of sociocognitive resources to draw on

when engaging in bricolage.

HANDLING ORGANIZATIONAL SURPRISE

Scholars have found that when surprises disrupt

expectations, organization members respond by en-

gaging in problem solving and trying to recreate the

order that has been lost. To be able to quickly

resume their work, they must have both the ability

and the resources to respond to new conditions in

an emergent manner. For instance, studies of “high-

reliability” organizations that face surprises depict

resilience as the product of developing the ability

to detect, contain, and rebound from problems (We-

ick & Sutcliffe, 2001). Resilience is characterized by

mindfulness, which engenders an appreciation for

the details of a situation (Langer, 1989; Weick &

Sutcliffe, 2001). It is enacted through improvisa-

tional action in which “knowledgeable people self

organize into ad hoc networks to provide expert

problem solving” (Weick, Sutcliffe, & Obstfeld,

1999: 100).

Improvisational action is particularly important

in organizations that are trying to innovate. In these

cases, improvisational organizational action leads

to learning, problem solving, and change (Barrett,

1998; Eisenhardt & Brown, 1998; Weick, 1998). For

example, Miner, Bassoff, and Moorman (2001: 314)

showed that organizational improvisation, “the de-

liberate and substantive fusion of the design and

execution of a novel production,” is a responsive

form of real-time organizational learning. They

demonstrated that when facing design issues, tim-

ing problems, and unanticipated customer-gener-

ated opportunities, organizations create novel be-

haviors, artifacts, and interpretations that enable

them to respond (Miner et al., 2001).

Bricolage also has been shown to help individu-

als and organizations innovate and harness entre-

preneurial opportunities (Baker & Nelson, 2005;

Barrett, 1998; Moorman & Miner, 1998; Weick,

1993). Building on Levi-Strauss (1966), Baker and

Nelson defined bricolage as “making do by apply-

ing combinations of the resources at hand to new

problems and opportunities” (2005: 331). Although

the literature on improvisation has a focus on novel

outcomes and solutions, scholars studying brico-

lage emphasize the antecedents of those responses

and outcomes. A central element in bricolage is the

ability of bricoleurs to draw from the pool of re-

sources at hand to assemble products or processes

that respond to situations they encounter (Baker &

Nelson, 2005; Miner et al., 2001). This enables bri-

coleurs to use a set of resources accumulated

through experience (Orr, 1990) to routinely create

order out of chaotic conditions (Weick, 1993).

Whether people in organizations engage in mind-

fulness, improvisation, or bricolage in response to

uncertain or surprising situations, their emergent

action is supported by the presence of preexisting

organizational resources. Responses to surprise

rely on elements already available in an organiza-

tion—the material, social, and cognitive resources

accumulated through its daily work (Baker & Nel-

son, 2005; Miner et al., 2001). Organizations stock-

pile troves of supplies and the tools needed to make

use of them, building up material resources

through their regular activities. Entrepreneurial bri-

coleurs might combine spare electronics compo-

nents to begin a new business troubleshooting un-

derground cables (Baker & Nelson, 2005) or use

available wood and lorry gears to build wind tur-

240 AprilAcademy of Management Journal

bines (Garud & Karnoe, 2003). Likewise, incident

response teams, knowing they will face large fire

emergencies, keep trucks laden with equipment

and tools at the ready (Bigley & Roberts, 2001).

A second set of resources is located in social and

cognitive processes. For instance, Moorman and

Miner (1998) argued that the procedural and de-

clarative memory of an organization can affect the

coherence, novelty, and speed of improvisation. In

the same fashion, effective jazz improvisation de-

pends upon players’ collective knowledge of jazz

grammar and syntax—the patterns of musical pro-

gression, “licks,” and phrases of jazz masters—that

musicians use as a base for their shared improvisa-

tional work (Barrett, 1998; Bastien & Hostager,

1988). Social and cognitive resources are also

needed for organizations to respond to crises. Stud-

ies of disaster preparedness and hospital teams, for

instance, have shown that having prearranged pro-

tocols helps organizations structure responses to

emerging demands (Bigley & Roberts, 2001; Faraj &

Xiao, 2006). Similarly, shared role systems have

been found to enable action in response to dynam-

ically evolving situations facing medical trauma

teams, ship navigators, and firefighters (Hutchins,

1990; Klein, Ziegert, Knight, & Xiao, 2006; Weick,

1993). And Majchrak, Jarvenpaa, and Hollingshead

(2007) argued that group-level cognitive systems

could prove vital for responding to disasters.

Taken together, these prior studies suggest that

the material, social, and cognitive resources in or-

ganizations warrant attention, as they can be im-

portant tools for responding to unexpected situa-

tions facing organizations. However, research is

less informative about the creation and accumula-

tion of these resources, especially the social and

cognitive processes involved. For instance, Bigley

and Roberts (2001) described the structuring mech-

anisms, constrained improvisation, and cognition

management methods of teams responding to emer-

gency situations, but they touched only briefly on

implications for organizations trying to develop the

resources to implement these systems. Similarly,

the work of Miner and colleagues (Miner et al.,

2001; Moorman & Miner, 1998) shows the benefits

of cognitive resources such as organizational mem-

ory for improvisational action, but this work does

not explain how organizations develop that collec-

tive knowledge. Finally, although scholars describe

the troves of resources used in bricolage (Baker &

Nelson, 2005; Ciborra, 1996), they have paid little

conceptual attention to the processes by which or-

ganizations build the social and cognitive capacity

to engage in bricolage.

In this study, by comparing how two organiza-

tions regularly respond to surprises, we pinpoint

the processes that enable them to handle unex-

pected events in the course of their activities. We

find that what enables a SWAT team’s and a film

crew’s organizational bricolage in response to sur-

prises are sociocognitive resources: the collectively

held knowledge about how a task is performed and

how activities advance. We demonstrate how these

sociocognitive resources develop during ongoing

organizational activities such as drafting agreement

on work, reinforcing and elaborating task activities,

and building cross-member expertise. Comparing

the processes of two types of organizations also

allows us to focus close attention on the role that

the structural context has in shaping responsive-

ness, showing how the features of the work influ-

ence how groups respond to the unexpected events

they face.

METHODS

To understand how organizations respond to sur-

prise, we investigated two settings in which uncer-

tainty was pervasive and, as a consequence, sur-

prises occurred with some regularity. A police

SWAT team is an ongoing group of officers orga-

nized to respond to situations in which the typical

training of police officers is insufficient, such as

situations that threaten high levels of force or vio-

lence, those involving multiple suspects, and

drawn-out situations in which patience and quick

action may both be desirable. In this context, sur-

prises appear as breaks in members’ expectations of

how the mission is unfolding. Thus, surprises can

include mistakes, changes in suspects’ behavior,

such as taking hostages in response to the officers’

actions, and other changes in the environment.

Film productions are structured as temporary or-

ganizations in which an occupationally specialized

set of participants come together to produce a sin-

gle film and disband once the task is completed. In

film sets, surprises appear as breaks in members’

expectations of how the different aspects of the

work of the film crew will progress. As for SWAT

teams, surprises include not only mistakes and

changes in the organizational environment, but

also unexpected difficulties in crafting an original

product, such as dealing with animals or working

to implement a director’s artistic vision of a scene.

These two settings provided abundant opportu-

nities to gather data on surprises and how the or-

ganizations prepared for and responded to them.

People in both settings were often challenged by

events in their environment and in the execution of

their work that could impede their progress. Al-

though surprises were expected, it was impossible

for people to know in advance the form a surprise

2011 241Bechky and Okhuysen

would take, what its source would be, or which

members it might involve. Moreover, organization

members faced severe time pressure as they carried

out their tasks. As a consequence, their responses

quickly followed these unexpected events, making

the link between surprises and responses to them

evident. Thus, these were ideal settings in which to

explore how people responded to and prepared for

surprises, as they provided many opportunities to

observe these processes in depth. Below, we de-

scribe how we collected the data on these processes

and discuss the differences and similarities in these

two settings in more detail.

Data Collection

We gathered the data for this analysis in separate

studies of one SWAT team and four film produc-

tion crews. In both cases, we focused on developing

an in-depth understanding of how the ongoing day-

to-day work of these groups was accomplished.

SWAT team. Our data were drawn from a police

department in a suburb of a large metropolitan city

in the U.S. South. All 18 members of the SWAT

team agreed to participate in interviews. The tenure

of members on the team ranged from one month to

17 years; however, 12 of the officers had been on

the team for more than 5 years. Officers partici-

pated in semistructured interviews lasting between

45 minutes and three hours. The second author

(Gerardo) conducted 22 interviews over a three-

month period, focusing on the tasks of the group

and including descriptions of possible missions for

the team and details about typical training days.

Interviews also covered the goals of the team, its

composition, and its structure. The interviews pro-

gressed to questions regarding the tasks and roles of

each interviewee within the team, which elicited

detailed descriptions of activities that the individ-

ual engaged in. For example, marksmen were asked

to describe how their role was different from others

on the SWAT team, what additional training they

participated in, and what special responsibilities

the position entailed during different types of mis-

sions. In our presentation of findings, the data on

the police SWAT team are drawn from interview

transcripts unless otherwise specified.

Data collection also involved observation during

three briefing and four training sessions. During

these sessions, Gerardo observed the activities that

individuals were engaged in, took field notes, and

transcribed them each evening. However, he was

not able to accompany the team on missions, be-

cause of the inherent danger. Of particular note are

the training sessions, where it was possible to ob-

serve how officers reacted to surprise and where

they spent time describing situations where sur-

prises had occurred. Gerardo also engaged in con-

versations with individual officers to follow up on

activities during training. Finally, he gathered

archival information, including a “Manual for

SWAT” describing this particular team’s organiza-

tion, training schedules, and certification guide-

lines, as well as tactical officer magazines, televi-

sion documentaries, and archival material for

SWAT teams in general.

Film production. The first author (Beth) con-

ducted an ethnographic study of four different film

sets. Two of these were small, short-term produc-

tions. One was a commercial for a telephone com-

pany that took place over several days and involved

50 people, and one was a music video filmed over

five days with a crew of 35 people. Two sites were

sets for full-length movies, including an indepen-

dently produced horror movie with a budget of $2

million lasting five weeks and involving 50 crew

members, and a movie backed by a major Holly-

wood studio with a budget of over $100 million and

a crew of 175 members, which shot on location for

six weeks.

Beth was a participant observer in all four proj-

ects. In three of them, she worked as a production

assistant, completing duties such as making copies,

helping individual departments (e.g., lighting and

wardrobe), “locking up” locations, and running er-

rands. At the fourth site, she was an observer and

assisted the office production crew as needed. On

the set, Beth would jot field notes in a small pad,

focusing on the content of interactions between

informants, and she would then expand these notes

every night. Participant observation allowed her to

gather substantial data on how crew members’

daily activities contributed to their responses to

surprises. In our presentation of findings, the data

on film sets are drawn from the expanded field

notes unless otherwise specified.

Beth also gathered archival material, such as

daily schedules and scripts from each of the proj-

ects, as well as published insider accounts and

documentaries about the film industry. She infor-

mally interviewed members of the film crews

multiple times during shooting. Unstructured in-

terviews of three production managers, two inde-

pendent producers, and two studio executives un-

connected to these projects provided additional

information about how crew members dealt with

the uncertainty of the work.

Research Settings

Like many organizations, the film production

crews and the SWAT team worked on tasks whose

242 AprilAcademy of Management Journal

complexity dictates specialization and high inter-

dependence. Here, we briefly explore the common-

alities in and differences between the two settings

to lay the groundwork for understanding how they

developed responses to surprise; Table 1 gives

more details. Two theoretical similarities make

these particular organizations interesting and

unique. First, both the film crews and the SWAT

team operated under pervasive uncertainty with

both internal and external sources. This uncer-

tainty was internally driven both by the potential

for mistakes and the simultaneity in the execution

of tasks, which made coordination errors likely.

Moreover, both organizational types faced uncer-

tainty stemming from their exposure to the external

environment, particularly the weather, since tasks

were often completed outdoors. Second, time pres-

sure for quick execution constrained the tasks car-

ried out by both SWAT team and film crews, albeit

for different reasons. The film crew members were

concerned that longer schedules would cost more

money, and the SWAT team members were worried

about increasing levels of danger as time passed.

Three key dimensions of difference between the

settings are also important for understanding the

context in which organization members prepared

for and responded to surprise: the negative conse-

quences of surprises, the continuity of member-

ship, and the temporal pattern of the work. First,

the negative consequences of unexpected events

were qualitatively different. For the film crews,

these consequences were mostly cost-based, but for

the police team the consequences—potential phys-

ical harm or even death—were more severe. The

SWAT team and the film productions also differed

in terms of continuity of membership: officers

maintained long tenure and stable membership on

their team, but film crews worked on temporary

TABLE 1

Commonalities and Differences between Film Production Crews and the SWAT Team

Aspect Film Production Crews SWAT Team

Commonalities

Time pressure Pressure for quick execution Pressure for quick execution

Need to avoid delays in schedule because

of the significant costs of staff and

equipment

Need to execute missions quickly to reduce

danger from suspects to officers, bystanders,

and themselves

Pervasive uncertainty Internally driven Internally driven

Simultaneity of execution leads to high

potential for coordination difficulties

Simultaneity of execution leads to high

potential for coordination difficulties

Creative leeway of director and

cinematographer

Dependence on external environment to

complete tasks

Dependence on external environment to

complete tasks

Weather Weather

Bystanders Bystanders

Suspects

Differences

Negative consequences of

surprises

Costs money Severe physical harm

Need to redo work by resetting and

reshooting a scene

Armed suspects and weaponry can lead to

physical harm or death

Need to extend the production schedule

Continuity of membership Temporary projects Coherent team with long tenure

Membership changed across projects (70

percent new to each other)

Stable membership over many years

Some roles changed across projects Attended training schools together

Work flow Single production period Short, uncertain missions

Weeks or months to finish shooting Minutes or hours of high tension, uncertainty,

and danger

Intervals of high activity interspersed

with transition periods in which crew

made changes to the set and equipment

Long periods between missions devoted to

group training and rehearsal

2011 243Bechky and Okhuysen

projects with changing membership and roles on

each project. Finally, the temporal pattern of the

work progressed differently for the two groups. The

SWAT team engaged in long periods of training and

rehearsal, punctuated by short missions under high

tension with few opportunities to pause in execu-

tion. The film productions, in contrast, were orga-

nized as single spans of weeks or months of work

but with many lulls in activity between moments of

filming.

Analytic Approach

While working on separate field-based research

projects, one a study of coordination in temporary

organizations (Bechky, 2006) and the other a study

of routines in group action (Okhuysen, 2005), we

had served as friendly readers and theoretical

sounding boards for each other. In the course of our

frequent conversations, we became aware of a strik-

ing similarity between the two settings that neither

of us was exploring in our other papers: the perva-

sive nature of surprise. This parallel led us to a

deeper exploration of similarities and differences

in the two settings that confirmed that a joint ex-

ploration of responses to surprise was possible and

potentially useful. We therefore combined the two

independently collected data sets to develop a

comparative analysis of responses to surprise.

We used a grounded theory approach (Strauss &

Corbin, 1990) to analyze how these organizations

routinely responded to surprises. This inductive

approach enabled us to uncover the processes by

which these organizations created the sociocogni-

tive resources necessary for their real-time re-

sponses. Our analysis was based on comparisons of

responses to surprises both within and between the

two settings. Although there are no established

guidelines for pooling ethnographic data sets, re-

cent work (e.g., Bechky, 2008; O’Mahony & Bechky,

2006) has followed Barley’s (1996) prescription for

comparative ethnographic analysis. We did the

same, as detailed below.

We had both conducted separate field studies, so

the analytical process began with each of us con-

ducting an emic analysis of the data that captured

the participants’ perspectives on the situations they

faced. We had separately arrived at the conclusion

that dealing with uncertainty and surprise was a

major element of the work conducted in these set-

tings. Therefore, as a first step, we collected spe-

cific instances of surprises, responses, and resolu-

tions in each of our settings.

In the next step, through a process of comparison

and contrast, we developed more generalizable cat-

egories. Pooling data for an unplanned comparative

ethnography requires a different analytic process

than that of a planned multiple case study (Eisen-

hardt, 1989). We did not have a priori categories

that we used in collecting data to frame our initial

analysis but drew instead on initial similarities

among the categories of surprises, responses, and

resolutions that we each developed. During this

step, we met often and exchanged data memos and

commentaries, cycling through the data, the emer-

gent categories in our analysis, and the literature to

develop categories to link our findings to more

generalizable concepts (Miles & Huberman, 1984).

Comparative analysis of two settings by two re-

searchers offers analytic opportunities but also

presents challenges. Since we collected data sepa-

rately, we thought it important to share the raw

data within these categories with one another to

help with the conceptualization process. Then we

questioned one another repeatedly as to the mean-

ing of the raw data, which helped us take advantage

of multiple passes (singly and jointly) through the

pooled data. We paid particular attention to the

similarities and differences in what happened in

each setting and tried to ground our conclusions in

the specifics of each setting to maintain causal

complexity (Ragin, 1989).

As one example, we found evidence in both set-

tings that people seemed to address surprises by

using materials already at hand. For instance, film

crew members often talked about putting supplies

“on hold,” and SWAT officers discussed having a

“box of toys” available for responding to unex-

pected situations. As we progressed in our analysis,

we combined these examples and categorized them

under a heading of “accumulating resources.”

Turning to the innovation and entrepreneurship

literatures, we discovered similarities between this

category and explanations involving improvisation

and bricolage. We analyzed our categories more

deeply in light of these literatures. Because making

do with the materials at hand and returning to the

task quickly were the central characteristics of

these responses, rather than novelty, we chose to

label this action “organizational bricolage” (Baker

& Nelson, 2005; Garud & Karnoe, 2003) instead of

“improvisation” (Miner et al., 2001; Moorman &

Miner, 2001).

Revising our categories with respect to the brico-

lage literature led us to uncover how organizational

bricolage in response to surprises in our settings

was rooted in social interaction focused on devel-

oping shared knowledge. This, in turn, led us to

greater scrutiny of the processes underlying organ-

izational bricolage. Using the constant comparative

method (Glaser & Strauss, 1967), we identified how

members engaging in organizational bricolage drew

244 AprilAcademy of Management Journal

on sociocognitive resources—shared task knowl-

edge and common work flow expectations—and

subsequently explored how these were developed.

By pursuing the commonalities and differences in

the two settings, we developed the emic categories

from each setting into an etic, more generalizable

model of these processes.

FINDINGS

Both the SWAT team and film production crews

were settings in which surprises were pervasive.

Surprises appeared daily in observational field

notes and were described in almost every inter-

view. In each case, a surprise was marked by a

break in participants’ expectations, which often re-

lated to how tasks unfolded in the work of the

group. For example, during a SWAT entry into a

location, the first officer in the “stack” (the forma-

tion from which team members initially move)

found his way blocked by a couch. This surprise

required a rapid adjustment. On one film set, a

break in expectations occurred when a specialized

camera operator did not show up to film a scene,

and crew members were reassigned to complete the

shots for the scene. Other surprises caused more

dramatic reactions. After working for several hours

to prepare a car to be towed through a location for

filming, the grips (who set up the production

equipment) were dismayed when the tow mecha-

nism broke, and the crew had to scramble to reor-

ganize and shoot other scenes. A SWAT officer

described how during a mission a marksman shot

at a suspect and missed, alerting him and raising

the danger for everyone, forcing officers to quickly

break into the house to arrest him. Table 2 presents

additional examples of surprises from our data.

The Emergence of Organizational Bricolage in

Response to Surprises

The responses of the team and crews to surprises

showed several characteristics of bricolage. One

characteristic was emergent action combining re-

sources already gathered in the course of regular

activity (Baker & Nelson, 2005; Levi-Strauss, 1966).

TABLE 2

Brief Examples of Surprises in the Two Settings

Film Productions SWAT Team

a. Multiple crew members could not locate the bathroom

after arriving in a new filming location.

b. A specialized aerial camera operator did not show up for

work on the day his aerial shots were scheduled to occur.

c. After they arrived at an isolated location, the crew was

missing several members needed to make scenic and

property changes the director wanted.

d. After the production started, the office crew learned that

the second assistant director, responsible for creating the

daily schedules including the scene schedule, did not

know how to do scene scheduling.

e. A fire broke out in a trash can at the edge of the set.

f. The grips spent half the day setting up a tow rig for a

picture car. But as they were pulling it up to the set, the

tow mechanism broke.

g. At midday, a principal actor came down with the flu and

had to leave the set to go to the doctor.

h. A high wind developed after the crew had spent several

days setting up an elaborate aerial camera rig at the top of

a skyscraper.

i. During a slaughter scene on one set, a hot tub overflowed

when the actor fell into it during shooting, and the water

shorted out the lights in the entire building.

j. While executing a “dynamic entry,” they found the path for

the first officer in the “stack” was obstructed by an

unexpected couch.

k. Officers found more suspects at a location than had been

originally anticipated.

l. After arriving at the location of a hostage situation, the

sharpshooters could not cover all observation angles.

m. On arriving at a location, the team needed a large number of

officers on perimeter, which meant that the break-in team was

short of officers.

n. A SWAT marksman shot at a suspect but hit the frame of the

screen door as it was closing and missed the suspect.

o. After setting up explosives to blow up a door, the lead officer

checked the doorknob and found it unlocked.

p. A TV station broadcasting a standoff gave away the placement

of officers to the suspects, who were watching TV inside the

location.

q. As the officers were approaching an apartment, loose

floorboards made a lot of noise, alerting suspects to the

officers’ approach.

The letters labeling the surprises correspond to the response examples in Table 3.

2011 245Bechky and Okhuysen

Another important aspect of responding was the

need to “make do” (Baker & Nelson, 2005; Levi-

Strauss, 1966) to allow for continued action on the

task at hand, since neither group could reasonably

abandon its work because of a surprise. In other

words, the task demands did not relent as a sur-

prise unfolded. In addition, the time pressure of

cost burdens and danger from suspects meant that

individuals had to respond in the moment, and this

demand limited the actions they could take in re-

sponse to surprises. By responding to surprises

through the use of resources that were already

available, these groups could act quickly. Next, we

describe the specific practices of organizational bri-

colage that SWAT teams and film crews used to

respond to surprise.

Practices of Organizational Bricolage

Organizational bricolage in response to surprises

took three main forms in our data. In some cases,

both film crew and SWAT team members used

their shared task knowledge and common work

flow expectations to shift roles in response to sur-

prises. At other times, group members reorganized

by drawing on already learned group routines, par-

ticularly in the SWAT team. On film sets, in con-

trast, some surprises caused a reordering of the

work, in which the crew reoriented its efforts

around new specific tasks. In Table 3, we provide

examples of these activities, each linked to the

surprises summarized in Table 2.

Role shifting. Some surprises left critical roles

temporarily empty and the tasks within them un-

done. When such surprises occurred, our infor-

mants drew on their task knowledge to engage in

role shifting—that is, adjusting their own activities

by substituting for someone else or performing

some of the tasks in someone else’s role. For in-

stance, Glenn

described how finding a couch in

the team’s path during an entry surprised the

SWAT team. Ordinarily, the lead officer in an entry

team rushed ahead to achieve maximum coverage.

In this case, though, the couch was a dangerous

obstacle because, as Glenn put it, “Someone could

be on the other side, just waiting for us.” He then

described how the team responded to the surprise

by using role shifting. Instead of running to the

right as originally planned, Glenn ran left and

stopped at a vantage point where he could “cover”

the couch. Peter, who was second in the stack and

whose role was to run left, immediately ran to the

right around the couch while being covered by

Glenn, executing the task originally assigned to

Glenn. The ability to adjust to each others’ actions

without explicit communication was made possi-

ble by redundancy in task knowledge; as Glenn

said, “We know what everyone is supposed to do.”

Role shifting also occurred in response to signif-

icant surprises on film production sets, such as

absences of essential crew members. Here, the role

shifts were more formal. On one production, a cam-

era operator for the second unit was called in to

operate an aerial camera requiring specialized

skills. Surprised when the camera operator did not

arrive for work, the executive producer and camera

crew got together to discuss their options. The cin-

ematographer asked four or five members of the

crew, “Are you capable of operating this camera?

How about moving up to [a different position], can

you do that?” After determining everyone’s quali-

fications, the first camera operator of the B camera

for the first unit moved to the second unit, as he

knew how to operate the aerial camera, and the

second operator of the B camera moved up to the

first position. The camera crew’s overlapping task

knowledge enabled members to shift roles and con-

tinue shooting on the same schedule that day.

Reorganizing routines. In other instances, sur-

prises disrupted the expected flow of the work for

members. In these cases, responses to surprises en-

tailed changing members’ approach to work. On the

SWAT team, officers responded by reorganizing

routines—that is, by reorienting themselves to a

new set of goals and restructuring their activity by

switching the routines they were using.

Michael, a paramedic, relayed a story of one mis-

sion when a SWAT marksman took a shot at a

dangerous suspect and, unexpectedly, the bullet hit

the doorframe as the door swung shut. Instantly the

situation became much more threatening, because

the suspect was alerted that the team was trying to

kill him, putting his hostages in immediate danger.

The break-in team, which had been waiting outside

the house for an opportunity to arrest the suspect,

had to quickly reorganize, and officers executed a

“dynamic entry” without taking time for a conver-

sation. Here, the SWAT team updated their under-

standing of the situation in the moment and chose

a well-rehearsed routine for entry from their reper-

toire, changing their goal and their actions in re-

sponse to this surprise. As Dave, another SWAT

officer, explained, “If shots get fired or if you start

hearing negotiations going bad, it’s time to enter.

You’re going. Time can be on your side, but when

the split second is up, you’ve got to be moving.”

Similarly, on another mission Dave described,

the team was planning to use explosives to blast

open a fortified door at a drug house. As Pat, the

All informant names are pseudonyms.

246 AprilAcademy of Management Journal

TABLE 3

Examples of Organizational Bricolage Responses to Surprises

Response Film Productions SWAT Team

Role shifting a. When one production moved to a new location, many of the crew

could not find the bathrooms, because the location manager did

not put the proper signs up. After several crew members asked

about the bathrooms, the production office coordinator used her

knowledge of the location manager’s tasks to create and post the

bathroom signs herself.

b. On one production, a camera operator for the second unit was on

call to operate an aerial camera requiring specialized skills.

Surprised when he did not arrive for work after he was called in,

the executive producer and camera crew got together to discuss

their options. After determining everyone’s qualifications, the

first camera operator of the B camera for the first unit moved

over to the second unit, as he knew how to operate the aerial

camera, and the second operator of the B camera moved up to

the first position.

c. A couple of crew members complained to Beth about a

commercial production at a reservoir the prior weekend, where

one of them was hired as a set production assistant but ended up

also performing the craft service job, and the other was hired as

the assistant production office coordinator but also worked as the

chauffeur (a task normally assigned to a teamster). A third crew

member performed the tasks of the entire art department, as well

as filling in for the scenic department. As one of them described,

“They just looked at him one afternoon and said, ‘We need you

to manufacture pond scum right now.’” Another crew member,

hired as the boom operator, also performed the property

assistant’s role.

d. On one set, the second assistant director was new to her role and

did not have experience scheduling scenes, which was one of her

tasks. The location manager took over the task for the first part of

the production.

e. On one location, an extra ran down the hill in the park toward

the set, yelling, “We need water, someone lit a trash can on fire!”

Rather than wait for members of the safety crew to respond, one

of the assistants in the locations department ran over with a

cooler, which earlier had been icing down cold beverages on the

set, and used the water to douse the fire.

j. During an entry into a drug house, the lead officer found a

couch in his path. This raised some danger because “someone

could be on the other side, just waiting for us.” The officers

instantly changed their approach and, instead of running to the

right as planned, the lead officer ran left to “cover” the couch.

The second officer, whose role was to run left, immediately ran

to the right to cover the room.

k. Breaking into a location, the team found more suspects than

expected. In response, the lead officers changed their primary

role from trying to reach the furthest corner of the location to

covering areas and suspects as they advanced. This allowed

officers further back in the “stack” to change their mission as

well, and they took the lead in covering every part of the

location.

l. In establishing a perimeter during a mission, the team

discovered that the layout of the buildings unexpectedly

blocked some views so that the sharpshooters could not cover

all angles. The team decided to use members of the “alley

team,” who are usually in charge of controlling a perimeter and

arresting “runners,” to help gather intelligence. Two members of

the alley team were assigned to this task, and in their new role

climbed onto roofs and complemented the observations and

intelligence gathered by the sharpshooters.

m. The team found itself short officers on the break-in team,

because the location required guarding and maintaining “a very

large and very flat outer perimeter,” drawing officers away from

the break-in team. As a consequence, two of the marksmen

filled in to complement the break-in team.

Reorganizing

routines

n. A marksman’s bullet, intended to kill a suspect, hit the

doorframe where he was standing. The suspect was instantly

alerted that the team was trying to kill him. Recognizing the

changed situation, the waiting break-in team executed a

“dynamic entry,” a well-rehearsed routine, without taking time

for a conversation.

o. The team was about to use explosives to blow out a door. The

lead officer checked the door handle, found it open, and the

team switched to a “stealth entry” right away.

p. During a hostage mission, a local TV station broadcasted live

from a helicopter and the suspects, watching TV, could see

exactly where the SWAT team was positioned. In response, the

officers abandoned a rear entry strategy in favor of a frontal

approach, to regain the initiative.

q. The plan called for a stealth entry in “one of these smaller,

older apartment complexes that have wooden floors [with]

wooden decking. As you walk in down there, “‘Trump, trump,’

[you] start making noise . . . and you are going to wake people

up.” The loud approach could alert suspects to the presence of

police, and it would be difficult to recover the advantage. “So as

soon as you hear that, you know, you probably need to speed

up a little bit. Go ahead and hit it.”

2011 247Bechky and Okhuysen

expert in charge, was finishing rigging the explo-

sives, he checked the door handle and found it

unlocked. He quickly motioned to the rest of the

team and, instead of storming in on the heels of an

explosion, the officers switched to a “stealth en-

try,” changing the nature of their work. In recalling

the mission, Dave said “It’s always safer to go in

quietly, because the noise can add to the confusion

and make [the suspects] act out....This way, they

don’t even hear us coming in.” This switch in tac-

tics allowed the officers to increase their margin of

safety by avoiding the use of explosives and by

catching the suspects unaware. The change in rou-

tines occasioned by the surprisingly unlocked door

was enabled by the common understandings that

the team shared about when to use a stealth entry

and how to execute it.

Reordering the work. Film production crews did

not reorganize by relying on learned routines.

Rather, when surprised they sometimes responded

by reordering the work of shooting the film, taking

advantage of their knowledge of the work progres-

sion and how tasks fit together. Reordering the

work involved changing the sequence in which

pieces of the overall project were completed. In

other words, when an unexpected event made it

TABLE 3

Continued

Response Film Productions SWAT Team

Reordering

the work

f. The grips spent half the day setting up a tow rig to pull a picture

car to simulate a drive through the location. But as they were

pulling it up to the set, the tow rig unexpectedly broke. After a

flurry of activity, the heads of the departments discussed the

situation and decided they could not shoot the planned scenes

involving the picture car and would need to change shots. Informing

the grip crew of the change, the key grip said into his walkie-talkie,

“Okay, new deal, now the Technocrane is coming to me, and we

are shooting scene 17” (a different scene than planned).

g. One morning, a lead actor with scheduled scenes for the

afternoon came down with the flu and needed to be taken to the

doctor. The producer then suggested picking up the big

Steadicam shot of the area, which did not require the principal

actors, so they would not have to go back to that location with

the Steadicam later in the shooting schedule.

h. When a high wind developed, the aerial effects crew could not

do their planned shots requiring the camera to ascend and

descend on the side of a skyscraper. The unit production

manager (UPM) and the aerial effects coordinator talked about

how to respond to this surprise. The UPM asked, “Are you

concerned about the building?” “No,” responded the aerial effects

coordinator, “I’m worried about sideloading my truss.” The UPM

suggested, “I just got another weather forecast from the associate

producer, his forecast says less wind tomorrow. But the problem

is today.” The aerial effects coordinator pointed out, “I think that

we have to think about alternatives, and the last scenario is that

we could put it off....I’mnotgoing to do something unsafe. If it

is howling tomorrow and we can’t work, we’ll go help the grips

at the other location, and keep hoping we can come back.” The

UPM reminded him, “What’s sad is that we don’t know what the

weather’ll be like then either....These are all money shots. I

think we will make the decision in the morning tomorrow.” After

talking with the cinematographer, the crew took several shots and

rescheduled the rest for later that week.

i. During a scene in which an actor was “slaughtered” and fell into

a hot tub on the top floor of a mansion, the crew forgot to account

for displacement and the tub overflowed. As a production assistant

announced over the walkie-talkie, “I’m on the first floor and there is

water dripping on my head,” the power distributor box, also on the

first floor, shorted out from the water. All the scenes set to be filmed

that evening with the hot tub were rescheduled for the following

day. The electricians shifted the power to the generators and they

shot a different scene in the dry living room.

The letters labeling the examples of bricolage correspond to those labeling surprises in Table 2.

248 AprilAcademy of Management Journal

impossible to continue with the current trajectory

of the work, film crews responded by reorienting

the path of the work to shoot different scenes.

On one film production, for instance, the grips

spent half the day setting up a tow rig to pull a

“picture car” to simulate a drive through the loca-

tion. But as they were towing the car up to the set,

the rig unexpectedly broke. After a flurry of activ-

ity, the heads of the departments discussed the

situation and decided they could not shoot the

planned scenes involving the picture car and

would need to change scenes. Informing the grip

crew of the change, the key grip said into his walkie-

talkie, “Okay, new deal, now the Technocrane is

coming to me, and we are shooting scene 17” (a

different scene than planned). The Technocrane, a

specialized piece of camera equipment, was already

set up for several shots planned for later in the week

and could be repurposed to continue production. The

discussion between the key crew members enabled

them to update their understanding of what to do

next, and they communicated this to the crew, who

moved quickly to change equipment and reorder

their work to respond to the surprise.

Similarly, when a lead actor with scenes scheduled

for one afternoon came down with the flu, the pro-

duction crew reorganized the schedule in response to

this surprise. The key crew members got together, and

the producer suggested, “I think we should pick up

the big Steadicam shot of the area.” The cinematog-

rapher agreed: “For that one we don’t need the ac-

tors.” Also, this meant that they would not need to

return to the location with the Steadicam (an expen-

sive piece of equipment with a highly paid operator)

later in the shooting schedule. This reassembly of

scenes enabled the production to carry on shooting

that day without the sick actor’s presence.

Role shifting, reorganizing routines, and reorder-

ing the work were forms of bricolage that we doc-

umented in many of the responses to surprises we

saw among the film crews and the SWAT team.

Organizational bricolage allowed team members to

continue their work without interruption. They

were able to engage in bricolage by using the re-

sources immediately available to construct re-

sponses to the unexpected situations they

encountered.

Resources for Organizational Bricolage

The process of responding to surprises in these

settings suggests a complex conception of bricolage

in which the resources needed are not just material,

but also social and cognitive. In both the film crews

and the police team, responding to surprise relied

heavily on interpersonal collaboration to adjust the

work, and a group’s shared understanding of that

work was critical. The physical resources that the

groups accumulated (materials and people) could

only be used when the individuals in each group

had shared understandings of the situation.

Our analysis of the data uncovered two sociocog-

nitive resources that these groups relied on in their

responses to surprises: shared task knowledge and

common work flow expectations. Shared task

knowledge is process knowledge, held by multiple

group members, about how to complete activities

or accomplish particular aspects of tasks. This

knowledge was indispensable if people were to

substitute for one another or otherwise complete

one another’s activities. For instance, the camera

operators in the earlier example could shift roles to

respond to the surprise of the missing operator

because another member of the crew had the same

task knowledge, allowing the crew to reorganize

the work around the skills of the individuals pres-

ent. Without shared task knowledge, responding to

surprises would likely require far more time and

effort to achieve and would be considerably more

difficult.

By common work flow expectations,wemeana

shared understanding of how events in a collective

task follow one another. To successfully respond to

a surprise, members of these organizations relied

on these shared expectations of how the set of

activities would lead to completion of the work.

For example, reducing the danger from suspects

was always an important objective for SWAT offi-

cers. As Paul remarked, “Because [suspects] can be

unpredictable, you always try to be one step ahead

of them, that is a big part of our job.” For instance,

during a stealth approach to an apartment, an un-

expectedly noisy wood plank floor loudly an-

nounced the officers’ arrival to the suspects. Team

members quickly reacted, speeding up and execut-

ing a dynamic entry instead. Such a change was

possible because officers shared expectations that it

was important to arrest the suspects before they

could react to the officers’ approach.

On a film set, crew members shared the expecta-

tion that they would try to complete as many shots

as possible, given the contingencies faced on a

given day. As the day drew to a close, crew mem-

bers would check their daily schedules to see how

many scenes remained unfinished, and cinematog-

raphers would start complaining “Let’s pick up the

pace, we’re losing the light!” Therefore, when the

tow rig broke, crew members were prepared to

modify the sequence of shots to be completed that

day, using their shared understanding of what

scenes and equipment were immediately available

to substitute. In both settings, responses to sur-

2011 249Bechky and Okhuysen

prises relied on members’ common expectations of

the direction that the task needed to take for prog-

ress to be made, whether it meant rushing a suspect

or switching the next scene to be filmed.

Both shared task knowledge and common work

flow expectations are forms of common under-

standing (Okhuysen & Bechky, 2009) or shared cog-

nition (Cannon-Bowers & Salas, 2001; Klimoski &

Mohammed, 1994), and both reflect task-specific

knowledge. As Cannon-Bowers and Salas (2001:

23) noted, “This type of shared knowledge allows

team members to take action in a coordinated man-

ner” (2001: 23). However, in our conception task

knowledge and work flow expectations represent

two different shared understandings of a task. Task

knowledge is the very detailed and specific infor-

mation required to effectively perform the work of

a single individual. To the extent that more than

one person holds this type of technical knowledge,

it becomes easier for individuals in a group to sub-

stitute for one another and shift roles. Importantly,

shared task knowledge also allows them to under-

stand how the work of another is executed, and

knowing how the work of others advances also

helps when reorganizing routines and reordering

the work. In contrast, common work flow expecta-

tions are members’ knowledge of the course of sub-

sequent action in their group. This knowledge is

also detailed and specific, involving the particulars

of the task that the group is currently engaged in,

but is related to how that task advances, and thus is

event-based and prospective in nature. Common

work flow expectations are not as reliant on over-

lapping technical knowledge as task knowledge is.

To the degree that members understand the in-

tended trajectory of the task similarly, common

work flow expectations enable a group to shift

roles, reorganize routines, and reorder the work;

they can arrange, eliminate, or incorporate activi-

ties into the work as needed.

Processes Enabling Organizational Bricolage

These two sociocognitive resources, shared task

knowledge and common work flow expectations,

enabled members to engage in organizational bri-

colage when surprises happened. Understanding

how organizations develop these resources sheds

light on the activities that directly and indirectly

helped group members be prepared in the event of

a surprise. We therefore move next to an examina-

tion of how shared task knowledge and common

work flow expectations were formed and sustained

by patterns of interaction on the film sets and in the

SWAT team. In both settings, we discovered simi-

lar processes: these organizations drafted agree-

ment on the work, reinforced and elaborated task

activities, and built cross-member expertise. Al-

though we have conceptually separated shared task

knowledge and common work flow expectations to

describe how they enable bricolage, in both the

SWAT team and film crews these sociocognitive

resources were developed simultaneously through

these three processes. Table 4 presents additional

examples of the development of sociocognitive

resources.

Drafting Agreement on the Work

Film crews and the SWAT team developed

shared task knowledge and common work flow ex-

pectations by drafting agreement on the work be-

forehand. Drafting agreement refers to collectively

preparing a tentative or provisional approach to

execution, through interaction among organization

members. By provisionally agreeing to an ap-

proach, organization members created shared

knowledge as they discussed the unfolding of tasks.

In the SWAT team, this regularly took place during

premission briefing meetings. At one meeting, Ted,

the officer in charge, held up two fingers and indi-

cated the goals for the mission on a suspected drug

laboratory: secure the location by neutralizing the

suspects and secure the evidence. As officers asked

questions and made suggestions for an approach to

the location, Ted led the conversation that also

clarified that once the location was secured, the

SWAT team would exit, leaving the investigation to

the Vice Squad.

For the SWAT team, a primary organizing focus

when drafting agreement was the physical location

of the mission they were to undertake. Typical

briefing meetings included sketches of homes or

apartments on whiteboards, photographs and, in

some cases, video from drive-by surveillance or a

helicopter fly-over. The information on the location

was used to establish goals for the team and to

develop a rough outline of how execution was ex-

pected to proceed during the mission. In another

meeting, Andrew stood by a crude location map

and, as the “alley boss,” assigned pairs of officers to

cover particular exits, including a back door to the

apartment and the front and back exits to the com-

plex. His group was in charge of preventing the

escape of suspects and establishing a tight inner

perimeter, but officers from the entire team engaged

in conversation on the best way to secure the loca-

tion. The second team leader, Tim, then stood up

and assigned individual officers on the break-in

team of six officers to their position in the stack (the

formation they would use to approach the door of

the apartment). Once again, the team evaluated the

250 AprilAcademy of Management Journal

TABLE 4

Examples of Processes That Developed Shared Task Knowledge and Common Work Flow Expectations

Film Productions SWAT Team

Drafting agreement

on the work

At a meeting on the first day of shooting on one production, many

questions and comments were raised by the production

designer, the art director, and the location manager, who had

already scouted many of the locations and knew what they

would need to prepare and dress the set at each place.

As one production moved into its second week, the unit

production manager (UPM) reported to the vice president of

production at the studio, “We had a better day yesterday,

they’re having nightly meetings, little skull sessions to decide

what the first shot will be. So that way when we come in the

morning, we don’t have the disaster like Monday with the

director coming in and looking around for one and a half hours

thinking about where to put the camera.”

The heads of different departments met on a soccer field to block

out the action for a soccer game scene in one film. The first

assistant director jogged across the field showing how the action

would progress, and the cinematographer, producer and camera

operator pitched in ideas on the locations for cameras and other

issues.

A complicated scene in Central Park was the subject of many

impromptu discussions on one set. One discussion was about

whether to use 120- or 80-foot “condors.” The UPM told the

aerial effects coordinator “We went through it with the

[supplier] last week and the 120s have too heavy a load and are

too big,” indicating some concern that the weight of the

equipment would break the asphalt walkways in the park. “We

can spread the load,” replied the aerial effects coordinator, “and

I’m sure we have clearance on the pathway. I went over it

already with [the park representative], who says he’s okay with

it, as long as I’m sure.” The location manager came by and

agreed with the aerial effects coordinator that the park

representative was okay with the plan. The UPM said, “Okay,

but I want to be sure it’ll fit on the path.” They got a tape

measure and headed over to the exact location, where they

measured the clearance on the path. This was followed by a

long technical discussion about measuring, spreading the load,

and how the equipment was going to be set up.

On one set, the crew rehearsed a scene where a severed head fell

to the ground out of a duct in a wall. “Rehearsal,” the first

assistant director called, and the crew members moved into the

living room. The production designer went behind the wall, and

they demonstrated using a flashlight how the head would fall

out of the duct, followed by the actors running from the room.

In a meeting to prepare to serve a search warrant in a suspected

drug laboratory, the briefing officer explicitly noted that the

SWAT team had two goals, to secure the location by

neutralizing the suspects and to secure the evidence. As

questions and concerns were raised and suggestions were

made, the plan for the approach was developed, and he

clarified that once the location was secured, the SWAT team

would exit, leaving the investigation to officers in the Vice

Squad.

One meeting began with two senior officers briefing the team

on the details of the plan. One of the team leaders, the “alley

boss,” was in charge of eight officers who would secure the

inner perimeter for the mission, preventing suspects from

escaping. He assigned pairs of officers to cover particular

exits on a diagram of the location, and all officers then

participated in a conversation about the best way to secure

the complex. The second team leader was in charge of the

break-in team. He briefed all the officers on the entry

activities, including coverage inside the location (using the

diagram on the board) and expected opposition by suspects.

He also assigned positions in the “stack” (the order in which

they would be entering the apartment). The officers discussed

the proposal from the team leader and recommended

different changes until all concerns were satisfied.

A SWAT team in a documentary (A&E Home Video, 2006)

prepared for an undercover drug buy from a dangerous

suspect by going out to their precinct’s parking lot and, using

a similar car to the suspect’s, sketching out a variety of

tactics. After trying several approaches, they selected one in

which the team blocked in the suspect’s car with a blacked-

out van and another vehicle, and simultaneously

immobilized the suspect in his seat to prevent him from

using a firearm. All of this was to take place quickly, as soon

as the drugs changed hands.

During an interview, an officer described planning a drug raid,

saying “We have a raid and everybody is sitting in here and

we draw it up on the board, and we pick line-ups as to who

is going where.”

During a training day at the fire department, the team rehearsed

rappelling down the outside wall of a four-story building. As

the trainer in charge explained, “You want to make sure the

ropes don’t cross over each other, and that everyone ends up

in the right place before you start going in the window. You

don’t want to end up with a bunch of guys on top of each

other, tangled in the ropes.”

Reinforcing and

elaborating task

activities

While Beth was working as a production assistant in the electric

department of one set, the gaffer instructed her on how to create

flickering firelight for one scene by rapidly adjusting the

controls of several lights on the set. He stood behind her off

screen, and in between takes, he provided directions such as

“make sure you use the full range [of the control]” and “try to

vary the speed you’re moving it more.”

Rehearsal for dynamic entries took place in a warehouse, where

a simulated house was built by officers. This house had

movable walls on hinges and different types of furniture

inside. During training some officers acted as suspects and

“threw in a twist” by changing the arrangements of the

house, the number of suspects, or the amount of resistance

they put up, with each modification presenting a new

challenge to the team. As an officer noted, “[they] make small

changes, to see the team adjust.”

A junior officer described a particular mission during which,

“in the heat of the moment I was supposed to go left but

started heading right, following the guy right in front of me.”

As he began to move in the wrong direction, a more senior

officer immediately behind him in the entry stack grabbed

him “by the collar” and “shoved” him in the correct

direction.

2011 251Bechky and Okhuysen

TABLE 4

Continued

Film Productions SWAT Team

Reinforcing and

elaborating task

activities

(continued)

The key grip on one set wanted a muslin set up near the camera.

Two grips asked, “Where’s it going to go? We’ll bring the stands

over there.” When the key grip said to put it to the left of the

camera, the grips set up two big stands on the left side of the

crane, and two other grips brought the frame over. The four

grips tied the muslin to one side of the frame, after they put it

on the stands. Watching them, the key grip suggested, “It is a

two-man job now, the other two guys should be getting

sandbags.” Two grips ran off to get the sandbags, while the

other two wrapped the muslin over the other side of the frame,

bringing it back around. The key grip, pointing to the original

edge, said, “You’ve gotta tie this edge first, otherwise it can get

dicey.” The two grips brought the sandbags in a rolling basket,

and used them to weigh down the frame. When they were

finished, the key grip looked at the frame, which was kind of

lopsided, and asked, “Who made a mess of this frame? You pull

down on that end, let’s even it out. Now, tighten the knuckles

[knobs at corners of frame].”

One sunny morning on the set, the craft services [food and

beverages] person was asked to go buy sunscreen, and she left

the set and went to a store to get it. While she was out, the

weather warmed up, and the cast and crew started drinking all

the water and ran out of cold drinks. The production office

coordinator loaded up a cooler from what they had in the office,

and Beth carried it to the set. When the craft services person

returned to the location, the production office coordinator

explained to her that she wasn’t supposed to leave the set. “You

need to pass it off on someone else to leave, and stay with the

craft services stuff....Itisstandard on all shoots for craft

service to always be available, it is part of the job. Don’t worry

about it, but try to have one of you around. Even if it means just

coming back to check, as long as you do it every five minutes.”

The unit production manager asked over the walkie-talkie:

“Anyone have eyes on the cinematographer?” When no one

responded, she explained to the production assistants,

somewhat annoyed, “The proper response is to say, ‘Looking,’

and actually go look.”

One officer described the team’s postmission meetings: “If it

doesn’t work out, then we sit down and ‘Monday morning

quarterback’ it, and you know ‘you could have done this,

what you did worked out fine,’ or maybe it didn’t....Asa

group [we] come up with something comfortable that we all

kind of agree on and go from there [. . .] we sit down, and we

actually talk about and communicate about it, until we get

comfortable with it if we weren’t comfortable with the way it

went down.”

A senior officer described how during one mission, he checked

a rookie’s bullet-proof vest and made him take it off and put

it on again, explaining that he had it on backwards and

showing him how to identify the front and back by looking at

markings on the inside.

A senior officer described sitting down with a junior officer to

listen to a tape recording of their prior mission (made for

evidentiary and liability reasons). When he played the tape,

the junior officer responded with “Hey, who was that? Who

was that screaming?” After they played it again, the junior

officer said “Well, I guess that’s me.” Reflecting on this with

Gerardo, the senior officer said: “And I can work with [him]

and I can say, ‘You know, you would give better commands

if you would not scream. People could hear what you are

saying better, and your suspects will react to what you are

doing and do what you were saying a lot quicker.’ You know

. . . he didn’t like it. But he realized what he’s doing. So next

time, he is more cognizant of it.”

Officers doing a “Monday morning quarterback” on a mission

during a training session discussed the unexpected presence

of children during the execution of an arrest warrant. In the

course of the mission, the children had become an important

distraction from the need to subdue the suspects and bring

them into custody. As the discussion progressed, SWAT team

members came to a joint agreement on how they should

approach these situations, concluding that they should call in

the paramedics as quickly as possible to take the children

away from the scene.

Building cross-

member

expertise

The sound mixer explained to Beth how he knew one of the grips

on the production. They had worked together on a prior

production, where the director had recommended the grip to

work in the sound department as the boom operator. As they

had traveled together to the set, the sound mixer asked the

boom operator about his experience. The boom operator had

never operated a boom before. His previous job working with

this director was in craft services. Therefore, in a span of about

six months he had worked in the craft service, sound, and grip

departments on different projects.

A production assistant interested in becoming an electrician

talked with Beth about how she gained experience in this area:

“I got hired as a PA [production assistant]. Then, on the third

day, I started bugging the “right people.” I bugged the genny

operator, “Is there anything I can do for you?” And I wrapped a

cable, he thought it would take me 45 minutes but I came right

back. Then he asked if I could gel lights, I said yes, so I did

that. That’s how I got assigned to the electrics this week.”

During a training session, the officer in charge noted that all

officers on the team “are supposed to know everybody else’s

job.” In this session, the officers on the team practiced on the

shooting range. For Brett, a junior officer, it was the first time

using a sharpshooter rifle and scope. As Dan showed him

how to hold the rifle and use the scope, Brett remarked how

clear targets became. In a later interview, Brett described the

importance of training sessions for him. Referencing his

experience with the rifle and scope, he said “I had no idea

that the scope was that good. I guess I sort of knew that it

must be pretty good, but you can see the face on the penny

[on the target].” He then continued, “It totally makes sense

how the snipers are on the roof even when they aren’t going

to shoot. They can see more than we can.”

After officers attended specialized schools, they presented what

they had learned to the other officers during training. An

officer insisted that “we exchange everything we learn” and

“anything that we can go to a school and learn, a better idea

or whatever, we try to bring it back and we kind of adopt the

idea.” After attending a nonlethal tools school, one officer

explained to the group that “you don’t use flash bangs when

children are present, because they are dangerous.” As he

continued his explanation, he also highlighted the difference

between smoke canisters and tear gas canisters, which he

described as “a pretty big way to escalate things.”

252 AprilAcademy of Management Journal

proposed order and recommended changes, re-

drafting the plan until everyone’s concerns were

satisfied, with the understanding that circum-

stances might cause changes in their work during

the mission.

In the case of film crews, drafting agreement on

the work depended on the joint use of schedules,

because they captured the temporal unfolding of

the production process, such as the sequencing and

expected time needed to shoot particular scenes.

Common expectations for how filming would un-

fold began developing through the shooting sched-

ule, created by the production manager from the

script and storyboards, with input from other de-

partment heads. Right before shooting would begin,

the heads of all the production departments met to

go over this schedule. These meetings set out how

filming would progress and provided information

that different departments needed to prepare for

filming. For instance, at a meeting on the first day

of shooting on one production, the production de-

signer, the art director, and the location manager,

who had already scouted many of the locations,

raised some issues. After repeated references arose

to scenes in the park or the Milton Building, the art

director noted the work that would be required for

those scenes: “Basically, every time we shoot in the

park location or the Milton Building, we are going

to have to dress it . . . you can see it in almost every

shot.”

In both settings, organization members drafted

agreement on the work publicly, with wide partic-

ipation from members and opportunities to ask

questions, propose alternatives, and critique ap-

proaches as they were being outlined. The active

and engaged conversation that took place around

plans and schedules, in view of everyone, estab-

lished common work flow expectations and under-

standings of the task while providing provisional

guidance on what would happen in execution. Al-

though there were similarities in the ways film

crews and the SWAT team drafted agreement, the

work flow created some differences in the process.

For the film crews, the temporal pattern of the

work, characterized by long periods of preparation

interspersed with short bursts of intense activity

while shooting, allowed for drafting agreement to

happen almost continuously. Key members of de-

partments met first thing in the morning and at the

end of each day, and groups of crew members also

got together briefly throughout the shooting day. In

these ad hoc meetings, members worked continu-

ally to improve the execution of the filming by

drafting agreement on the work. For instance, after

a series of delays on one set, several key individu-

als started having “little skull sessions” every night

to troubleshoot potential problem areas for the next

morning. Ad hoc meetings could also involve run-

ning through scenes, as when the heads of different

departments blocked out the action for a soccer

game scene. In this meeting, an assistant director

jogged across the field showing how the action

would progress, and the cinematographer, pro-

ducer, director, and camera operator offered ideas

such as locations for cameras and the need for

additional actors. “Do we need fans?” asked the

assistant director, and the director replied, “Maybe

just the coach.”

Through ad hoc meetings, crew members devel-

oped an immediate, fine-grained, and emergent un-

derstanding of the task’s demands. These forms of

drafting agreement thus not only helped set com-

mon work flow expectations for the participants,

but also contributed to shared task knowledge. In

TABLE 4

Continued

Film Productions SWAT Team

Building cross-

member

expertise

(continued)

An office production coordinator, discussing her career choices,

noted that in her current position, “If I want to produce, I am

on that track. If instead, I want to be an AD [assistant director], I

am also on that track. You get a lot of exposure as a production

coordinator, so you can do a bunch of things. Look at the head

of the wardrobe department, she used to do it, for example.”

One officer in an interview noted that it was important to

become familiar with all the jobs that were done on the

SWAT team. “[Officers] are supposed to know everybody

else’s job.” A paramedic mentioned that even though he does

not carry a gun and would probably never shoot anyone, it’s

good to know “how to put the safety on a gun, at least.”

A new office production assistant, describing how she got her

position, said, “I started at a commercial production house.

Then I went to this party and met the UPM of this set, she

interviewed me and hired me for the office. I’m not sure I like

the office stuff, this is my first time doing it, I prefer to be on

the set.”

During an interview, a rookie officer preparing to go to basic

SWAT school described what he expected to learn: “How to

do a dynamic entry, which I’ve already done here with the

guys....Butyoudoa hundred of them....Andweapons,

some of the weapons that I can’t use yet, and how to work

with specialists, like hostage negotiators.” He also

commented that “going to the same school and learning

things the same way they did is what it’s about. We’re all

supposed to learn the same.”

2011 253Bechky and Okhuysen

contrast, officers on the SWAT team did not have

such a continuous flow in drafting agreement about

the work. Because of time pressure and potential

danger, the team was often unable to interrupt their

work while they were in the midst of executing a

mission. Instead, the vast majority of these prac-

tices occurred during briefing meetings for planned

activities such as carrying out arrest warrants, or in

the first few moments of an emergent situation such

as a hostage mission.

Reinforcing and Elaborating Task Activities

By reinforcing and elaborating task activities,

members of the SWAT team and the film crews also

created common work flow expectations and

shared task knowledge. Reinforcing and elaborat-

ing task activities means strengthening task knowl-

edge and giving individuals additional detail about

the work. In these settings, people provided guid-

ance to each other on how to best perform tasks,

pointing out how performance of a particular task

could be improved or how it might relate to their

own tasks. Reinforcing and elaborating task activi-

ties happened in both settings, but there were im-

portant differences in how they happened that

were based on the different temporal patterns of the

work and on the varying degrees of continuity of

membership. Because of the pattern of the work,

film crews had more time to elaborate while exe-

cuting their task, but SWAT team members were

more likely to elaborate before and after the mis-

sions, during training and in debriefing meetings.

Also, reinforcing and elaborating task activities was

mostly an individual learning mechanism for film

crews, whereas for the SWAT team, reflecting on

tasks often resulted in group learning.

Film crew and SWAT team members often pro-

vided guidance to one another, reinforcing and

elaborating task activities during their execution.

On the film sets, crew members could use the time

while they were accomplishing the work to elabo-

rate feedback to one another, as when the key grip

on one set guided his crew through setting up a

muslin near a camera, saying “You’ve gotta tie this

edge first, otherwise it can get dicey.... Now,

tighten the knuckles [knobs at the corners of the

frame].” While Beth was working as a production

assistant in the electric department of one set, the

gaffer, Stan, instructed her on how to create flick-

ering firelight for one scene by rapidly adjusting the

controls of several lights. Stan stood behind her,

and in between takes, he provided directions such

as “Make sure you use the full range [of the con-

trol]” and “Try to vary the speed you’re moving it

more,” to make the flickering appear more random.

Film locations were relatively close quarters in

which much of the crew could see what others

were doing at all times, and as a consequence this

process of instruction and correction was public.

Beth often observed crew members in different de-

partments joking about performing a task properly

or telling others how to perform their roles, as on

one set where the sound mixer told an electrician

“Can you route your cable around the edge of the

room? Otherwise it interferes with my equipment.”

Public reinforcing and elaborating served to broad-

cast task knowledge, helping develop shared

knowledge and expectations among everyone who

was within earshot.

In the case of the SWAT team, quick corrections

and reinforcing of appropriate behavior sometimes

took place during missions. For example, Joe, a

veteran officer, described a moment at the start of a

mission: “I pulled on [a rookie’s] kevlar vest and it

came up around his face. He had to take it off, he

had it on backwards. . . . I showed him the mark-

ings inside, it’s the only way to tell front from

back.” However, SWAT teams were less likely to

elaborate while on a mission, owing to the time

pressure and danger. Instead, after a mission,

SWAT members gave each other feedback on ap-

propriate task performance. For instance, a senior

officer described how, during debriefing, he played

a sound recording of the mission for a junior offi-

cer, who could be heard yelling commands. He said

that he explained, “You would give better com-

mands if you would not scream. People could hear

what you are saying better, and your suspects will

react to what you are doing and do what you are

saying a lot quicker.”

Moreover, the SWAT teams’ elaboration and re-

inforcing of task activities had an additional benefit

for developing shared task knowledge and work

flow expectations. Because officers trained as a

group and expected to work together on future mis-

sions, they had the opportunity to build common

work flow expectations for future activities to-

gether. During a training session attended by Ge-

rardo, officers discussed a previous mission, where

the unexpected presence of children had become a

large distraction from the main goal (arresting sus-

pects and bringing them into custody). As the dis-

cussion progressed, SWAT team members agreed

that, in the future, they would call in paramedics as

quickly as possible to remove children from the

scene. Consensus on appropriate task activities in

response to particular features of a situation en-

abled officers to share understandings of their roles

as a group and then bring a group understanding to

subsequent missions. We did not see evidence of

such explicit group learning among film crew

254 AprilAcademy of Management Journal

members, who had much less continuity of mem-

bership across productions and therefore had few

opportunities to either develop or use understand-

ings specific to a particular film production.

Building Cross-Member Expertise

Both the SWAT team and the film crews also had

processes for building cross-member expertise—

that is, for learning the task knowledge others used

in their own work. By building familiarity with

others’ work, individuals could understand how

the broader work process would proceed and how

the group would achieve its objectives. In both

settings, members built cross-member expertise

through the daily work, but differences in the con-

tinuity of membership influenced how this was

achieved. The SWAT team had devoted extensive

time to training as a group; in the film crew, it was

the responsibility of individual crew members to

learn for themselves how to perform the work on

the set.

To create cross-member expertise among officers,

the SWAT team explicitly used cross-training. For

example, during a training session Dan, the officer

in charge, noted that all officers on the team “are

supposed to know everybody else’s job.” In this

session, the officers on the team practiced on the

shooting range. For Brett, a junior officer, it was the

first time using a marksman’s rifle and scope. As

Dan showed him how to hold the rifle and use the

scope, Brett remarked how clear targets became. In

a later interview, Brett described the importance of

training sessions for him. Referencing his experi-

ence with the rifle and scope, he said “I had no clue

that the scope was that good. I guess I sort of knew

that it must be pretty good, but you can see the face

on the penny [on the target].” He continued, “It

totally makes sense how the snipers are on the roof

even when they aren’t going to shoot. They can see

more than we can.” Although Brett was not ex-

pected to become proficient at the marksmen’s du-

ties, the training session gave him a deeper under-

standing of the work of the marksmen and their role

on the team.

In the SWAT team, the development of cross-

member expertise took place in the context of the

group. When individual officers attended special-

ized schools (such as those for less lethal weap-

onry, explosives, or chemicals and gases), the team

took time at the next scheduled training session to

describe what those officers had learned. For exam-

ple, during one training session, an officer who had

just returned from a school on nonlethal weaponry

took over and described the multiple uses of “flash-

bang devices” to the team. Because the training

sessions were the setting for cross-training, the

team placed a high value on having all members

present and occasionally rescheduled to ensure

that every officer would attend. Officers commonly

scheduled their holidays and vacations around the

training schedule, which reflected the emphasis

they placed on developing their expertise in the

context of their ongoing group.

In the case of film crews, cross-member expertise

was built through the career progression process

whereby individuals typically advanced through

working in multiple film projects. Beginners in the

film industry invariably started their careers as pro-

duction assistants who were not confined to a spe-

cialized area such as costumes, lighting, or sound.

Rather, they worked on tasks that gave them access

to different departments, and they became familiar

with the specialized work of each as well as the

interdependencies between departments. It was

also common, especially early in their careers, for

people to change roles and departments to explore

the departments in which they had the most

interest.

An example of this individual-based form of de-

veloping cross-functional expertise emerged when

Jeff, the sound mixer on one production, described

his experience with Sam. Jeff had hired Sam for an

earlier project because he had been highly recom-

mended by the director to be the boom (micro-

phone) operator. However, on the drive to that lo-

cation, Jeff found out that Sam had never operated

a boom before. As Jeff exclaimed, “Can you believe

it, his earlier job with this [director] had been in

craft services!” (providing food and beverages). But

the tale did not end there. In the current produc-

tion, Sam was hired on as a grip. This meant that in

a span of about six months Sam had worked in the

craft service, sound, and grip departments on dif-

ferent projects.

Moreover, Sam’s experience was typical of pro-

duction assistants who, by asking to take on new

and more complex tasks, learned about the roles

and responsibilities of other crew members. On

another film set, Debbie, a production assistant in-

terested in becoming an electrician, made herself

useful to the electric crew. In her words, “I bugged

the genny operator: ‘Is there anything I can do for

you?’ And I wrapped a cable, he thought it would

take 45 minutes but I came right back. Then he

asked if I could gel lights, I said yes, so I did that.

That’s how I got assigned to the electrics this

week.” Thus, although some film crew members

had attended training programs such as film

school, they most often acquired cross-member ex-

pertise by finding work on different film sets and

2011 255Bechky and Okhuysen

displaying individual initiative to work in different

departments.

Collectively, the exposure of production assis-

tants to the specialized roles of others while work-

ing and fulfilling different roles meant that they

built an understanding of the task knowledge for

those different roles, which they carried with them

as they advanced in their careers. Building cross-

member expertise in the SWAT team and the film

crews was useful because it enhanced the shared

task knowledge of the members. The way in which

cross-member expertise was developed also helped

create common work flow expectations, as SWAT

and film crew members were able to see typical

situations in which tasks and roles interacted.

Processes for drafting agreement on the work,

reinforcing and elaborating task activities, and

building cross-member expertise in both the SWAT

team and the film crews enabled the development

of shared task knowledge and common work flow

expectations. Drafting agreement on the work, in

the form of premission briefings for SWAT teams

and scheduling and ad hoc meetings on film sets,

helped create common work flow expectations

about task progression and exposed members to the

work of others. SWAT team members created

shared task knowledge through rehearsals, correc-

tions, and retrospective analysis, and on film sets

continual correcting was the norm. The SWAT

team’s cross-training and the film crews’ cross-

project career progression facilitated common un-

derstanding of tasks and roles. Together, these

processes created the sociocognitive resources

needed for organizational bricolage as a response

to surprises.

DISCUSSION

The SWAT team and the film crews faced fre-

quent surprises, and organization members ex-

pected the unexpected. Although they anticipated

challenges in the execution of their work, they

could not know the characteristics of specific sur-

prises ahead of time: the tasks of these groups were

complex and interdependent, and time pressure

constrained action. By showing how these organi-

zations responded to surprises, we highlight prac-

tices of organizational bricolage: role shifting, reor-

ganizing routines, and reordering the work. Daily

activities in which organization members drafted

agreement on their work, reinforced and elaborated

task activities, and built cross-member expertise

enabled bricolage. These processes continually re-

created the sociocognitive resources—shared task

knowledge and common work flow expectations—

that members drew upon when facing unexpected

events. We outline the relationship between these

practices in Figure 1.

Responding to Surprise through

Organizational Bricolage

Our investigation suggests that bricolage is a

powerful response to the demands of unexpected

situations. Although recognizing that the settings

we studied are somewhat unusual, we believe our

findings are generalizable to other organizations.

The regularity of surprises in film crews and the

SWAT team emphasized the constant need to make

do to continue the work. Our suspicion is that

making do in the face of unexpected events is com-

FIGURE 1

Developing and Using Sociocognitive Resources to Engage in Organizational Bricolage in

Response to Surprises

256 AprilAcademy of Management Journal

mon in many organizations. Given time constraints

and the need to keep working, drawing on shared

sociocognitive resources to reorganize was a re-

sponsive approach for these groups, as it likely

would be in other settings.

Our findings both further knowledge about what

enables organizations to engage in bricolage in re-

sponse to surprises and distinguish it from other

processes. Although research on innovation often

references collective bricolage as an endeavor in

which different people participate, this research

presents multiple definitions and interpretations

(Baker, 2007). For instance, Garud and Karnoe

(2003) described the bricolage of a broad techno-

logical community who together shaped improve-

ments to wind turbines. This community com-

prised “multiple actors with different levels of

involvement” (Garud & Karnoe, 2003: 280) who did

not necessarily work for the same organization, on

the same product, at the same time, or with the

same goals. Similarly, in their examination of en-

trepreneurial activity, Baker and Nelson (2005) em-

phasized the social space in which bricolage takes

place, arguing that a network of individuals and

institutions that identify resources and constrain or

enable particular activities facilitate it. For in-

stance, customers facilitate this process through

their willingness to accept the nonstandard, po-

tentially unappealing products or services that

result from bricolage. In both instances, bricolage

occurred through the participation of many dif-

ferent people who could be working with differ-

ent goals.

Although our examination of bricolage as a re-

sponse to surprise also highlights its collective na-

ture, we are able to pinpoint some processes and

characteristics that are specific to bricolage within

the boundaries of organizations. Organizational bri-

colage is rooted in the tight performance of a shared

task guided by common goals. In the film crews and

the SWAT team, individuals belonged to a group in

which goals and intentions were cooperative, task

interdependence was high, members had a com-

mon perspective on the situation at hand, and joint

response to surprises was simultaneous. In organi-

zations with such characteristics, sociocognitive re-

sources are crucial for engaging in bricolage in re-

sponse to surprise. However, these characteristics

mark important differences from broader collective

arrangements, such as the network forms of brico-

lage described by Garud and Karnoe (2003) and

Baker and Nelson (2005). In an entrepreneurial net-

work, for example, where people may not share

goals, shared knowledge of tasks and common

work flow expectations may be less central in craft-

ing responses to surprise.

Another boundary condition of our findings is

that by studying organizations that expected sur-

prises, we discovered circumstances in which sur-

prises were treated as less surprising. This discov-

ery has implications for scholars’ knowledge of

how alertness to breaks in expectations shapes or-

ganizational action. The literature suggests that no-

ticing breaks from expectations can lead to impro-

visation (Baker & Nelson, 2005; Miner et al., 2001)

and that more severe breaks lead to learning and

change (Tyre & Orlikowski, 1994; Zellmer-Bruhn,

2003). However, although the organizations in our

study were alert to deviations in the sense that their

members expected surprises to happen, we did not

find that differences in the severity of surprises or

in their other characteristics affected the way mem-

bers perceived or responded to them.

In our initial analytic efforts, we assumed we

would find that such features as the novelty, sever-

ity, and source of surprises would provoke differ-

ent responses. However, we found upon pursuing

these differences that we did not gain theoretical

leverage, because distinctive variations in the ways

that our informants responded to surprises were

absent. For instance, the film crew reacted in the

same way when the catered bagels at the craft ser-

vice table were reported to be “crappy” and when a

handgun was found in the “honeywagon” (the

bathroom trailer), although to an outsider these

might seem like surprises with quite different char-

acteristics. In our data, responses to surprises al-

ways exhibited the same pattern of organizational

bricolage, in which our informants made do with

the resources at hand to continue on the task.

The result of expecting and preparing for sur-

prise seemed to be the routinization of responses to

surprises, in which features such as their severity,

importance, and novelty were obscured or made

irrelevant. This regularization has also been ob-

served in newsrooms, where it is difficult to sepa-

rate the ordinary from the exceptional (Tuchman,

1973). In other types of organizations, surprises or

unexpected events may signal opportunities for

broader reorganization and change. This may be

particularly true for entrepreneurial organizations,

which can abandon the original goals of their ven-

tures, unlike SWAT teams and film crews. This

contrast suggests that exploring the concept of sur-

prise itself may require investigating organizations

in which surprises are treated in a nonroutine man-

ner. Such exploration would be appropriate to un-

cover how organization members classify, priori-

tize, and understand unexpected events before

responding to them.

2011 257Bechky and Okhuysen

The Development of Shared Sociocognitive

Resources for Organizational Bricolage

Identifying common work flow expectations and

shared task knowledge as sociocognitive resources

on which organizational bricolage relies is a central

contribution of this work. Previous work on collec-

tive bricolage has focused substantial attention on

resources such as people and materials (Baker &

Nelson, 2005; Garud & Karnoe, 2003) but has not

fully explicated sociocognitive resources. We find

that the development and use of sociocognitive re-

sources explain how bricolage enables responsive-

ness to surprise. Even when a single individual

responds to an unexpected event, as when someone

switches roles in a work situation, the action is

embedded in a larger understanding of the task, one

that incorporates detailed knowledge of the work of

others as well as knowledge of how the collective

task advances. Identifying these shared cognitions

helps explain how organizations set the stage for

organizational bricolage by creating common

knowledge (Cannon-Bowers & Salas, 2001; Kli-

moski & Mohammed, 1994). We thus add to the

expanding set of constructs that identify common

knowledge of a situation as important for coordi-

nating under new circumstances, such as shared

role and cognitive systems (Klein et al., 2006; Ma-

jchrzak et al., 2007), mental models (Marks, Zac-

caro, & Mathieu, 2000), procedural and declarative

memory (Miner et al., 2001), and common under-

standing (Okhuysen & Bechky, 2009).

An important part of our contribution is focusing

on how organizations develop these sociocognitive

resources. By doing so, we address recent calls to

shift attention to how expertise and knowledge

evolve under changing conditions (Majchrzak et

al., 2007) and to elaborate the antecedents to the

development of team mental models (Mohammed,

Ferzandi, & Hamilton, 2010). Drafting agreement on

the work, reinforcing and elaborating task activi-

ties, and building cross-member expertise are all

processes that create and buttress shared task

knowledge and common work flow expectations.

By explicating the processes that underlie shared

forms of knowledge, we fill a need created by prior

research on common knowledge that has identified

what types of knowledge might be useful, but not

how to develop such knowledge.

We find that the development of shared knowl-

edge is rooted in the regular, day-to-day interac-

tions that happen in organizations as members

carry out the work. Specifying the three processes

for developing shared task knowledge and common

work flow expectations enables us to link this daily

work activity with the practices of bricolage used to

respond to surprises. For example, drafting agree-

ment on the work happens publicly and with con-

siderable input, which enables organization mem-

bers to account for unexpected events or

potential contingencies, even when the detailed

characteristics of those unexpected events cannot

be known a priori. All three of the processes we

describe are examples of day-to-day collective

activities within organizations that, in their nor-

mal execution, contribute to the sociocognitive

resources that enable responsiveness to surprise.

Our comparison of two settings in which workers

regularly face surprises also allows us to explore

how the preparation of responses to surprise is

embedded in the structural context of the every-

day work of these organizations.

The Structural Context Shaping Organizational

Bricolage and Sociocognitive Resources

By comparing our settings, we show how the

structural context of the work carried out in them

shapes organizational bricolage and the develop-

ment of sociocognitive resources. As Strauss sug-

gested, a focus on structural context ensures that

one’s understanding of action “will be carefully

located within the larger social structure” (1978:

101). Comparing the structural contexts of our set-

tings helps explain how the interplay of structures

and processes of organizations make them ready for

responding to surprise, albeit in distinct ways.

The differences between the settings in terms of

the temporal flow of the tasks, continuity of mem-

bership, and consequences of events framed the

ways in which organization members took action to

respond to surprise and built the resources neces-

sary to do so. For instance, when faced with sur-

prises in the work, both organizations exhibited

role shifting as a form of bricolage, but the SWAT

team also reorganized their routines, while the film

crews were more likely to reorder the work. Thus,

although members in both settings engaged in or-

ganizational bricolage using sociocognitive re-

sources they developed, their actions were shaped

by the structural context of the work.

Significant time pressure and severe danger

shaped the SWAT team’s work on missions, given

the potential for negative consequences if they did

not act quickly in response to surprise. The tempo-

ral flow of the work and the severe consequences

made it likely that they would choose forms of

bricolage that could be enacted in a moment, with-

out much discussion. They would not have been

prepared to take such action, however, if they had

not had shared group routines to draw on. Thus,

the development of sociocognitive resources in this

258 AprilAcademy of Management Journal

setting was more focused on group learning during

training and retrospective analysis of missions,

which was enabled by the structural context cre-

ated through the continuity of membership on

the team.

In contrast, on film sets the temporal flow of the

work allowed for breaks to reorganize, and the con-

sequences of surprises were less dire, centering

primarily on equipment and personnel costs. This

structural context also shaped organizational brico-

lage in response to surprises: organization members

discussed how to use the people and equipment at

hand, taking time to reorder the work given their

material constraints. The structural context of the

film industry also provided little continuity of

membership across projects. Thus, instead of de-

veloping shared task knowledge and work flow ex-

pectations through specific training sessions, film

crew members learned on the job, constantly rein-

forcing expectations so that they could accomplish

work quickly. This explicit feedback from the con-

stant reinforcement of expectations helped to cre-

ate the sociocognitive resources that enabled quick

discussion, role shifting, and reordering the work

in response to surprise.

What these comparisons demonstrate is that the

structural context of organizations influences both

the forms of organizational bricolage practiced and

the ways sociocognitive resources are developed.

For example, in an organization that has extreme

pressures on execution such as time and danger,

developing and practicing routines is both a good

way to create shared expectations and a quick way

to respond to surprises. By developing a shared

understanding of when and how to enact routines,

a SWAT team prepares for some expected disrup-

tions and is thereby prepared for the unexpected.

Developing routines is but one way to respond to

surprise that worked in this particular structural

context. Other organizations, such as aircraft carri-

ers (Weick & Roberts, 1993), provide contexts that

are similar to SWAT teams, where time pressure is

present and dangers abound. There is considerable

evidence that members of these organizations also

respond to surprises through emergent interaction

that relies on shared cognition (Weick & Roberts,

1993), but we do not know how shared cognitions

develop in these situations. Given the similar struc-

tural context, we would expect to see the develop-

ment of common knowledge aiding the deployment

of routines among these crew members. However,

additional aspects of the structural context might

result in different processes for developing re-

sponses to surprise on aircraft carriers. This sug-

gests a need for future comparative research to de-

termine which differences have the most impact on

responsiveness to surprise.

Conclusion

The SWAT team and the film crews prepared for

the unexpected through the actions and interac-

tions of organization members’ daily work lives.

Because the processes creating sociocognitive re-

sources are rooted in the interplay of organizational

and team structures and ongoing actions, our de-

scription of these processes offers a nuanced pic-

ture of organizations and organizing. Exploring the

relationship between the practices people use to pre-

pare and respond to surprise and the structural con-

text in which they experience them demonstrates the

dynamism of organizing in situations in which plans

meld with responses, expectations encounter reali-

ties, and structures overlap actions. Such dynamism

encourages researchers to move beyond dualism in

our conceptualizations of organizations. Developing

and adopting a conceptual vocabulary that merges

and complicates dichotomies more accurately re-

flects organizational life and can enliven future theo-

retical debates about organizations.

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We define organizational improvisation as the degree to which the composition and execution of an action converge in time, and we examine the theoretical potential of this definition. We then propose that both organizational procedural memory (skill knowledge) and declarative memory (fact knowledge) moderate improvisation's impact on organizational outcomes in distinct ways. We also suggest that improvisation influences organizational memory by (1) generating experiments and (2) permitting the development of higher-level competency in improvisation, Contemporary technological changes related to the nature of organizational memory intensify the salience of these issues.

Sensemaking in Organizations

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Oct 1996

Expecting the Unexpected? How SWAT Officers and Film Crews Handle Surprises

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