Improvisation in service performances: lessons from jazz
- Resource Type
- Academic Journal
- Authors
- John, Joby; Grove, Stephen J.; Fisk, Raymond P.
- Source
- Managing Service Quality: An International Journal, 2006, Vol. 16, Issue 3, pp. 247-268.
- Subject
- e-conceptual-paper
Conceptual paper
cat-MSOP
Management science & operations
cat-SVMT
Service management
cat-SQT
Service quality/excellence
Services
Music
Metaphors
Customer services quality
- Language
- English
- ISSN
- 0960-4529
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.
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.
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.
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.