Surprises in Management and Organization: Concept, Sources and A Typology*
| Published date | 01 December 2006 |
| Author | Miguel Pina e Cunha,Stewart R. Clegg,Ken Kamoche |
| Date | 01 December 2006 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8551.2005.00470.x |
Surprises in Management and
Organization: Concept, Sources and
A Typology
*
Miguel Pina e Cunha, Stewart R. Clegg
w
and Ken Kamoche
z
Faculdade de Economia, Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Rua Marqueˆ s de Fronteira, 20, 1099-038 Lisboa,
Portugal;
w
School of Management, University of Technology, Sydney, Broadway NSW 2007, Australia; and
z
City University of Hong Kong, Department of Management, Tat Chee Avenue, Kowloon, Hong Kong.
Email: mpc@fe.unl.pt [Cunha]; sclegg@uts.edu.au [clegg]; mgnkk@cityu.edu.hk [Kamoche]
We discuss why surprises, defined as events that happen unexpectedly or expected
events that take unexpected shapes, are important to organizations and should be
considered in the organization and management literature as an umbrella concept,
encompassing a variety of related phenomena. The concept of organizational surprises
is unpacked and a typology is built around the (un)expectedness of the issue and the
(un)expectedness of the process. This typology uncovers the several types of surprising
events that organizations may face, and contributes to the literature by identifying how
different types of surprises require distinct managerial approaches.
Introduction
There is a long and honourable research tradition
in management and organization studies con-
cerned with that which is either unpredicted
or perceived to be unpredictable. The lineage
includes but is not limited to such influential
authors as James D. Thompson’s (1967) work on
buffers, Lawrence and Lorsch’s (1967) work on
‘environmental uncertainty’, and Pfeffer and
Salancik’s (1978) resource dependence theory,
as well as Meyer’s (1982) work on organizational
jolts. The aim of these researchers was the un-
derstanding of how organizations seek to control
the consequences of unpredictable events.
Unpredictable events, however, cannot be
exactly controlled as Tsoukas (2005, p.280), in-
dicated when he qualified uncertainty as organi-
zation studies’ disciplinary ‘demon, a never-
disappearing intruder threatening the orderly
system of thought that scientific activity seeks to
create.’ Compared with interest in the reduction
of uncertainty, we know far less about its reverse,
or what happens when uncertainty reduction
efforts fail, when organizations are taken una-
wares. The ‘fear of uncertainty’, as pointed out
by Tsoukas, should not obscure its relationship
with surprise: indeed, he recognizes that the ‘key
word here is ‘‘surprise’’. To acknowledge and
accept the open-endedness of the world means
that we must find a symbiotic relationship with
uncertainty’ (Tsoukas, 2005, p. 293).
In this paper we will explore the meaning of
surprise in organizational settings, and in do-
ing so will establish a significant difference be-
tween ‘uncertainty’ and ‘surprise’. Uncertainty is
a state or condition of being unsure about a
given phenomenon, having a lack of assurance or
conviction concerning its state or being. To be
surprised, by contrast, is not to lack surety about
the parameters of a phenomenon but to suddenly
or unexpectedly encounter a phenomenon not
*
Miguel Pina e Cunha gratefully acknowledges support
from Instituto Nova Forum. An earlier version of this
paper was presented at the Academy of Management
Annual Meeting, August 2003. We gratefully acknowl-
edge the comments from the anonymous reviewers.
British Journal of Management, Vol. 17, 317–329 (2006)
DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-8551.2005.00470.x
r2005 British Academy of Management
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