Culture and Organizational Improvisation in UK Financial Services

Stephen A. Leybourne

Boston University, Boston, USA.

DOI: 10.4236/jssm.2009.24029                

Abstract

This paper considers certain aspects of a four-year program of research, and addresses the changing cultural requirements to support the rise of improvisational working practices within the UK financial services sector. Specifically, it reports on some of the outcomes of a study encompassing over 100 hours of interviews, together with a variety of other primary and secondary data. The outcomes of the full study are documented elsewhere, and they identify a number of key factors that contribute to the successful use and control of improvisational working practices. One of these factors is a supportive organizational culture, and this specific area is dealt with in this paper. A particular focus is how the sample of organizations has attempted to identify and create supportive cultural conditions for improvisational work to take place. In order to bring clarity to the outcomes of this study, a matrix of the case study organizations is also offered, which segregates those organizations according to their cultural support for improvisation and apparent improvisation effectiveness. Some comment on the current difficulties in the Financial Services sector has also been included, as it could be argued that improvisation may have contributed to shortcomings in control processes by members of that sector.

Keywords

Improvisation, Culture, Financial Services

Conflicts of Interest

The authors declare no conflicts of interest.

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