Hackathons as Jam Sessions for the Jazzer Organization: Insights on the Interplay between Leadership and Followership

This study investigates how managers and entrepreneurs can learn about the interplay between leadership and followership from jazz musicians. The jazz metaphor is no stranger to management, with application in several fields such as organization theory, innovation, and leadership. The finest expression of jazz occurs during the "jam sessions", described as relatively informal musical events where jazz musicians play improvised solos using different tunes and chord progressions. To "jam" means improvising music without extensive preparation or predefined arrangements and often without knowing the other participants in advance. One of the most distinctive yet overlooked features in jazz improvisation occurring in jam sessions is the practice of taking turns soloing and supporting, switching between leading and following. In jazz, leadership is an activity that is shared among the group, with individuals taking turns according to their skills or the demands of the environment and the moment. Several scholars have argued about the need for novel approaches to tackling the "grand challenges" of our volatile, uncertain, complex, ambiguous (VUCA) times, which need new leadership and coordination mechanisms. Like jazz musicians, future managers and entrepreneurs will need to develop confidence in interpreting vague cues, processing incomplete knowledge, facing unstructured tasks and unprecedented problems, and yet taking action. The literature has not yet investigated the strategies and routines for the operationalization of creative and shared leadership, and we believe that the metaphor of jazz could offer interesting insights. The purpose of this study is to identify the codes and conventions that might allow members of an organization or team to promote creativity by switching between moments of leadership and others of followership. Furthermore, we wish to investigate how this skill might be trained and stimulated. The study is organized as follows. First, we start with observing the jazz world through participant observation in jam sessions and interviews with jazz musicians. Second, we model practices and patterns of jazz, and we report our insights and findings to the world of management, providing contributions to both research and practice. Third, we discuss the role of challenge-based initiatives such as hackathons, which share several similarities with jam sessions, as promising platforms for managers and entrepreneurs to improvise, experiment and nurture creative and shared leadership, just like jazz musicians do through their unique jams.