Individual Improvisation in Information Systems Development

Improvisation is rapidly becoming an important issue for both scholars and practitioners. Organizations that operate in turbulent environments must learn to swiftly adapt and respond to such instability, especially in areas as innovation and new product development. In such contexts, traditional top-down, carefully-planned approaches to innovative projects may represent an obstacle to effectively dealing with environment uncertainty. Prior research on improvisation has focused considerable attention on the centrality of improvisation in individual and group outcomes, while less emphasis has been placed on how individual attitude toward improvisation is formed. In an attempt to fill this gap, we will theoretically analyze the antecedents of individual attitude toward improvisation, by looking at the information systems development (ISD) domain. In particular, the outcome of this chapter is the development of theoretical propositions which could be empirically tested in future research.