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Jazz as a Metaphor for Organizing in the 21st Century
Author(s): Mary Jo Hatch
Source:
Organization Science,
Vol. 9, No. 5, Special Issue: Jazz Improvisation and Organizing
(Sep. - Oct., 1998), pp. 556-557
Published by: INFORMS
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2640293
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The
Vancouver
Academy
of
Management
Jazz
Symposium
Jazz
as
a
Metaphor
for
Organizing
in
the
21st
Century
Mary Jo Hatch
Cranfield University, Cranfield, Bedford, MK43 OAL
England
MARY JO HATCH Good evening and welcome.
We're here tonight to listen to some jazz. I'd like to in-
troduce our band to you and let you know that that quiet
little tune you just heard was Sonny Side by Sonny Stitt
and our marvelous band this evening is comprised of a
number of very interesting folks, one of which some of
you may already know. His name is Frank Barrett and he
is my co-organizer.
Frank is on the keyboard. Renee Worst here with us
from Vancouver is on the bass. Doug Conner for-
merly from Sacramento, California and now from Co-
penhagen on the drums. And featuring, of course, on
the saxophone the man you've all been waiting to hear,
Ken Peplowski. Ken will be playing claiinet later as well.
I'd like to tell you a little bit about Ken so you can ap-
preciate how fortunate we are to have him with us tonight.
Ken has played with a number of very famous musicians
starting with the Tommy Dorsey band, where Frank and
Ken met. He's also played with Benny Goodman's band,
while Benny was still alive; Leon Redbone; Rosemary
Clooney; the American Jazz Orchestra;
and he's presently
working with Mel Torme. He's under contract with Con-
cord records. He has 10 albums out, the most notable of
which is called "The Natural Touch." Those of you look-
ing for Christmas gifts should write this down. "The Nat-
ural Touch" is very special in that it helped to promote
Ken in Europe which resulted in his winning the German
equivalent of the Grammy Award (I'm not going to try
to say that in German.), but two years ago he won that
award for the best jazz record of the year. So this is not
a lightweight player we've got with us tonight. I hope
you all appreciate how wonderful it is to have him with
us and we thank you Ken.
Now to do the most important
part; I'm going to have
to read this because there is a very long list of names.
There are many, many people whom we want to thank.
Not the least of which are the Academy Divisions who
have supported this project; this was an expensive prop-
osition. As you already know, this symposium is jointly
sponsored by OMT, MOC, OB and ODC. And we are
very, very appreciative for the support that they have
given us. In particular, I would like to recognize Alan
Meyer, Janet Dukerich, Sue Ashford, and David
Cooperrider, who were the leaders of those groups this
year. So thank you all very much.
b I
I z w_ - .~ I . Ed
-. . _
l+liuq 'p- r --r -A
Reprinted with permission. Copyright ? 1998 Doug Conner
1
047-7039/98/0905/0556/$05.00
Copyright
C)
1998, Institute for Operations
Research
556 ORGANIZATION SCIENCE/VOl. 9, No. 5, September-October 1998 and the Management
Sciences
MARY JO HATCH Jazz as a Metaphor for Organizing
The Copenhagen Business School has most graciously
agreed to pick up what the other folks couldn't pay for,
so we want to recognize them as well. That's my home
institution. And then finally, I would like to single out
three people whose efforts have really made this come
about and I mean in the nitty-gritty sense of being here
all day today and for weeks previously making all the
details work out. Alan Meyer has been after this all year
long, and I think that without Alan we couldn't have even
conceived of doing this project. Steve Havlovic has been
on-site arranging this for several days, if not months, and
Steve handled so many headaches we lost count. Brad
Reid from Clark Audio Visual has been extraordinarily
generous. Brad is responsible for the sound system. We
didn't have enough money for a sound system, and Brad
had lots of lucrative alternative possibilities, so I think
we should thank Brad for his tremendous generosity and
support of our project.
Now, on to us. Our program this evening is a little
improvisational itself. We're going to try to share some
ideas that the group of us, including Karl Weick, Bill
Pasmore, Frank Barrett, and myself have been thinking
about for several years now. What we want to do is talk
about the 21st century organization in the context of the
jazz metaphor for organizing. And let me begin by ex-
plaining why we make this association. If you look at the
list of characteristics
that are associated with the 21 st cen-
tury organization, you find concepts like flexible, adapt-
able, responsive to the environment, loose boundaries,
minimal hierarchy.
When you look at the list for a second,
if you're interested in jazz, you recognize that all of those
ideas could as easily be associated with a jazz band as a
21st century organization. And so the idea of comparing
these two worlds seems like a sensible one; one which
we would like to pursue with you tonight.
We believe that the use of metaphor is a very powerful
way to enhance understanding. And when we use a meta-
phor, we feel that it's most responsible, necessary even,
to push that metaphor to its fullest. A good metaphor
analysis assumes that if two things, like jazz and orga-
nizing, are related
in one way, they will be related in other
ways as well. Much use of metaphor in organizaiton stud-
ies never gets beyond acknowledging a single aspect of
a metaphoric association. For instance, many people have
remarked on the similarities between organizing and jazz
improvisation, but have not carried the comparison much
beyond that single association. What we'd like to do to-
night is push on that metaphor a great deal, and then ex-
tend it even more beyond academic discussion into mu-
sical experience, which we will do with the help of our
jazz musicians. We hope that we can entertain you, help
you learn something new about jazz, and inspire you to
think about organizations and organizing processes in a
different way. So we're going to work this metaphor in
two directions. We're going to work on learning about
jazz, and we're going to work on inspiring organization
theory and organizational practice.
So that's what we're about this evening. First, Frank
will provide some brief comments to give you a feel for
what jazz music is all about in a structural
sense; we'll
have about a five minute primer on that. Then Karl will
be playing the head, shall we say, followed by Bill. Bill's
going to talk about research and development firms and
innovation. Ken's going to talk to us about what it feels
like to do improvisation and what he thinks about while
he's improvising. And then, if there's any time left, I'll
follow up with a few ideas linking postmodernism and
jazz and try to make an ending. So that's our program
for
this evening, and now I'll turn it over to Frank. Thanks
very much for joining us tonight.
I r J l t ' w , !' ;2 I i !
rAl
AT
Reprinted with permission. Copyright ? 1998 Doug Conner
ORGANIZATION
SCIENCE/VO1.
9, No. 5, September-October 1998 557
