Improvisation in service performances: lessons from jazz
Managing Service Quality: An International Journal
ISSN: 0960-4529
Article publication date: 1 May 2006
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this article is to establish the efficacy of jazz improvisation as a useful metaphor to understand and implement features that contribute to excellent service performances.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper begins by presenting services as performances that often require flexibility and adaptability in their enactment. It then offers the metaphor of jazz improvisation as a means to comprehend and communicate the dynamics of such flexibility and adaptability. Jazz elements are used to illustrate their application to service delivery issues.
Practical implications
Similar to jazz, services deal with complex and real time delivery circumstances; this makes services prone to uncertainty at the service encounter. Lessons from jazz offer service managers guidelines for improvisation by each player in their ensemble that can enable them to adapt to customers and produce a coherent and cohesive performance.
Originality/value
The jazz improvisation metaphor offers a template and guidelines to comprehend and enact principles pertaining to adaptability in services contexts that may be useful for managers in designing service delivery and training frontline service employees.
Keywords
Citation
John, J., Grove, S.J. and Fisk, R.P. (2006), "Improvisation in service performances: lessons from jazz", Managing Service Quality: An International Journal, Vol. 16 No. 3, pp. 247-268. https://doi.org/10.1108/09604520610663480
Publisher
:Emerald Group Publishing Limited
Copyright © 2006, Emerald Group Publishing Limited