How past becomes prologue: a sensemaking interpretation of the hindsight-foresight relationship given the circumstances of crisis

Foresight is rooted in deep understanding [A.N. Whitehead. Lecture notes from address to the Harvard Business School, 1931]. Such understanding requires that we shall have first looked back to the past before venturing forward into the future. This paper uses Weick’s and colleagues’ sense making perspective in order to explore this critical relationship between the past and the future [[2], [3], [4], [5], [6] and [7]]. In particular, key sense making properties will be applied to a crisis, an occurrence of school-place violence that occurred in the United States in 1999. We shall then ask how this organization and its diverse external stakeholders used their understanding of this event to learn how to prevent such crises from occurring in the future. In other words, how capably was hindsight constructed and then how was it used to strengthen foresight into the future? This paper will conduct a theory-based empirical examination of a crisis event and its aftermath to understand how hindsight can be sharpened and then used to improve organizational foresight.     

Problematizing international business futures through a ‘critical scenario method’

This paper proposes the need for change in how managers in international business (IB) determine organisational objectives and what criteria they use in addressing complex problems. We propose a move from a largely firm-centric focus; on profit maximization and shareholder value; to a broader societal and environmental view. We see the educational context as the locus for initiating such a shift. However, we see obstacles within the canon of mainstream IB textbooks, with their focus on exposition of normative models of managerial action, illustrated by case studies of successful multinational enterprises (MNEs). Whilst we acknowledge their incorporation of critical issues, we view the lack of substantive critical reflection on the wider implications of IB activity as underpinned by an implicit assumption of the ‘good’ of IB. We posit that the normative structure of mainstream texts militates against students understanding the full range of possible futures for IB practice, and against developing the capability to cope with situations of uncertainty and ambiguity. Seeking to promote a critical pedagogy that accommodates consideration of both mainstream approaches and critical responses to these, we propose one approach to teaching and learning about IB futures that is based upon development of what we term ‘critical scenario method’. This offers a basis for active investigation of complex problems in the ‘real’ world from a range of perspectives, beyond that of profit maximization. We provide a worked, case example of our new method and demonstrate how it will enhance perceptions/understandings of involved and affected actors’ interests and their likely (re)actions as a particular scenario unfolds. The theoretical grounding for this approach is based upon contemporary social science interpretation of the Aristotelian concept of phronēsis, or ‘practical wisdom’.     

Corporate foresight and innovation management: A portfolio-approach in evaluating organizational development

The transition from a traditional industry-driven economy to a knowledge-based economy requires new concepts and methods for companies to sustain competitive advantage. Here, academia has identified corporate foresight and innovation as key success factors. While, content-wise, the contribution of futures research methods to the innovation process has already been researched, this study strives to explore the status quo of organizational development stages of both concepts. To do so, we developed a portfolio-approach, the so-called ‘Future-Fitness-Portfolio’, which enables companies to qualitatively compare amongst others and identify organizational improvement potential. In addition, we conducted expert interviews to explore future organizational development trends in corporate foresight and innovation management. As our research revealed, five strategic clusters can be identified within the portfolio. Consequently, we propose specific strategies for each individual cluster. We conclude that there will be two main organizational development trends for corporate foresight and innovation management in the future: in traditional industries with conventional business models and long product-life-cycles, companies will follow a different development path than companies in dynamic industries with innovative business models and short product-life-cycles.     

A foresight strategy for future generations

This paper briefly considers three key areas where forward thinking is particularly vital: education, business and government. Drawing mainly upon examples from the Australian context, it suggests a broad rationale for establishing a ‘national foresight strategy’. The latter is supported by a more general model for developing social foresight. A further stimulus to forward thinking and future vision is to consider what advice future generations might offer us if they had the chance.     

If you wanted to know the future of small business what questions would you ask?

Small business is a relatively new economic category, which became politically necessary as economic activity flowed from owner-managed enterprises to managerial corporations. Historically, all business operated at a small scale and were centred on the individual artisan. Even now there are strong cultural affinities to individual enterprise. Over the centuries, business has emerged, legitimised by reflexive social notions of entrepreneurship and fuelled by regulated international free trade, competition, property rights and usury. In the process, society’s view of how this market structure serves the individual is increasingly depersonalised, demanding self-reliance and responsibility of the individual separate from the economic institutions that they work for. In this landscape, small businesses are increasingly important but relatively powerless. Questions concerning their future ultimately focus on the role they play in personal and social relationships.     

Entrepreneurship as foresight: A complex social network perspective on organisational foresight

This paper addresses the relationship between foresight and entrepreneurship. It characterises the foresight inherent in entrepreneurial activity as situated within particular discourses, or communities of practice (CoPs) in a range of structures. The argument is based on the use of complexity theory (CT) to provide insight into the dynamics of entrepreneurial activity. Complexity theories of entrepreneurship are grounded in empirical studies of entrepreneurial action. A multilevel model (MM) characterising emergent structures within the entrepreneurial domain is presented as an extension of existing CT, with entrepreneurship characterised as the practice of foresight relating to that structure. The model is grounded in two case studies of entrepreneurial ventures in high velocity business environments, airline services, and sound system accessories. An empirical model—EROS—Experiments, Reflexivity, Organising Domains, and Sensitivity—is developed to reflect entrepreneurial processes at the level of the individual, the firm, and inter-firm connections—and the interactions between them. The notion of the CoP is used to deepen the analyses, examining how the layers of the MM are constituted through the foresight inherent in entrepreneurial activity over time. As well as presenting a coherent theoretical understanding of the entrepreneurial landscape, there are practical implications for policy-makers and educators wishing to improve entrepreneurial foresight.     

Towards better participatory processes in technology foresight: How to link participatory foresight research to the methodological machinery of qualitative research and phenomenology?

Technological progress does not happen in a social vacuum. Shaping of tomorrow is not possible without qualitative analyses. Therefore, the social and psychological dimensions of reality form an important part of technology foresight. Qualitative research will be needed to understand superficial and deep structures of social realities. So called push and pull factors are always linked to social behaviour. People's relationship to the use of technologies and the utilization of technologies is a complex and not a one-dimensional or monological issue. Monological methodological approaches can be harmful and confusing in the field of participatory foresight. We can conclude that the cycles of deductive and inductive logic are needed in science and in participatory foresight studies. Experts of the FTA community must have a higher level of methodological know-how in this research field and they should use qualitative methods in multi-faceted (external and internal) ways in foresight studies. Still the qualitative parts of many studies are quite monological and these studies can be quite problematic, even confusing. More critical methodological approaches should be taken into serious consideration. As a methodological approach, the principle of triangulation should be used more in the fields of participatory foresight studies and technology foresight.The key focus of this article in the use of qualitative and phenomenological approaches in the fields of FTA and foresight. The aim of this theoretically oriented discussion is to promote the professional use of qualitative methods in foresight and FTA studies. The strength of qualitative analyses is linked to deeper understanding of social change and social patterns and structures. Actually people create and constitute the markets, networks, and crowds where technologies are applied and used.Internal systemic understanding of social realities is an important part of foresight activities, especially in participatory foresight studies. Internal and external analyses can be seen as complementary approaches, like qualitative and quantitative approaches. The use of qualitative methods is a conventional part of the research process in participatory foresight projects. A typical problem may be that the use of methods is not planned carefully enough and people are unaware of the underlying key assumptions of applied methods. Experimenting with phenomenology is not a simple task in foresight research. Therefore, the views and informative platforms expressed and presented in this article may be useful for foresight practitioners.     

Corporate failures: Declines,collapses, and scandals

Numerous collapses and corporate scandals of large corporations have underscored the impact of corporate conduct on capital markets and society as a whole. These failures have highlighted the need for regulators to rethink regulatory frameworks and enforcement, and for corporations to rework their organizational structures and focus on business ethics. Establishing a clear understanding of the drivers of corporate failure is therefore key. In this paper, we review recent research that extends the debate on the causes and consequence of corporate failures.     

The end of corporate imperialism

As they search for growth, multinational corporations will have no choice but to compete in the big emerging markets of China, India, Indonesia, and Brazil. But while it is still common to question how such corporations will change life in those markets, Western executives would be smart to turn the question around and ask how multinationals themselves will be transformed by these markets. To be successful, MNCs will have to rethink every element of their business models, the authors assert in this seminal HBR article from 1998. During the first wave of market entry in the 1980s, multinationals operated with what might be termed an imperialist mind-set, assuming that the emerging markets would merely be new markets for their old products. But this mind-set limited their success: What is truly big and emerging in countries like China and India is a new consumer base comprising hundreds of millions of people. To tap into this huge opportunity, MNCs need to ask themselves five basic questions: Who is in the emerging middle class in these countries? How do the distribution networks operate? What mix of local and global leadership do you need to foster business opportunities? Should you adopt a consistent strategy for all of your business units within one country? Should you take on local partners? The transformation that multinational corporations must undergo is not cosmetic--simply developing greater sensitivity to local cultures will not do the trick, the authors say. To compete in the big emerging markets, multinationals must reconfigure their resources, rethink their cost structures, redesign their product development processes, and challenge their assumptions about who their top-level managers should be.     

Accommodating or compromising change? A story about ambitions and historic deterministic scenarios

Despite the basic idea of scenarios as providing a heuristic for identifying, understanding and responding to changed conditions, many scenario studies are criticized for treating the future as an incremental continuation of the past. To understand this discrepancy between theoretical ambitions and actual practice with regard to accommodating change we followed professional futurists around. We observed that futurist curtail and slice time and we identified two temporal repertoires that inhibit different views on how (academic) knowledge about past and present is used in assessing the future: historic determinism and futuristic difference. Our empirically informed analysis is a story about ambitions in line with the futuristic difference, the re-introduction and rise of historic determinism and finally the fall of futuristic difference. Our analysis of foresight in action and foresight output yields that the retreat to historic determinism is a major pitfall for futurists in general. Our story suggest that the futures studies community needs to develop and encourage more adequate responses to the ‘siren’ of historic determinism. Practitioners who aim to employ futuristic difference throughout the foresight endeavour would then be better equipped to succeed in their ambitions.     

Road testing a new model at the Australian Foresight Institute

This paper reports on the development of a new program of post-graduate studies in strategic foresight. It briefly describes how the program began and some of the ways it attempted to learn from other initiatives in order to develop what might be called a ‘second generation’ approach. A number of distinguishing features are briefly outlined, along with some of the early results. These include publications, research and work in the area of ‘methodological renewal’. Finally, an attempt is made to summarize ‘lessons learned’ that can be applied more widely.     

Failures to enact the future—A social practice perspective

To be successful, organisational foresight requires a multitude of perspectives and faculties. We have adopted a social practice perspective, which we base within an interpretative world view, to better understand how organisational foresight is enacted. This offers a reading of the phenomena, of which the essential contribution is that organisational foresight is more than an organisational property; it is something that reflective people do as they engage with various inputs from the outside and as a result of the continuous interaction between activity systems and their constituting elements. A longitudinal case study illustrates the importance of understanding the construction of collective and individual meaning in working with organisational foresight. The study shows how the inherent rigidity of the existing activity system and the weak ties between these diverse subsets of the organisation may block the interaction between emerging social practices and organisational intentions resulting in ongoing failures of understanding and enactment. A model is developed to include these parameters in an augmented activity systems model. Based on this we have identified the linking of organisational levels as one of the key dimensions to be considered for which the social practice perspective holds significant explanatory strength.     

Prediction markets for foresight

To navigate turbulent business environments, organizations have to develop foresight capacities that enable them to anticipate probable futures, respond rapidly to emerging changes, and support future oriented action. However, there are remaining barriers that impede a wider implementation of foresight. In particular, the necessities to deal with the future, anticipate change, enhance participation and reduce costs and complexity call for new methods to improve current foresight activities. In this paper, we introduce prediction markets to the field of foresight. Prediction markets are a structured approach to collect and aggregate information from groups and have recently gained attention in forecasting. Prediction markets go beyond simple forecasting and can contribute to foresight by providing advantages in terms of continuous and real-time information aggregation, motivation of participation and information revelation as well as cost-efficiency and scalability. We suggest four promising fields of application for prediction markets to enhance foresight: (1) continuous forecasting and environmental scanning, (2) combining with deliberative approaches, (3) continuous idea generation and (4) expert identification. We conclude by considering prediction markets as a nascent and promising method for foresight and advocate for further research.     

Operationalization of space/time perspectives of individuals—Theory and empirical results from Turkey

The overall aim of the research is to provide an evaluation of differences in time and space perspectives of individuals in Turkey in order to understand the different approaches, perspectives or priorities that they may bring to futures studies.An empirical study aimed to collect information about the varying differences in time and space perspectives among participant individuals (undergraduate and PhD students at Yeditepe University and managers at Siemens-Turkey) and any other possible factors affecting the participants’ choices. Two sets of statements are generated representing the time and space perspectives of participants using the modified constructs found in the literature such as “Time Strata”, “Space-Time Graph”, and “Different Time Frames and Activities”.Our sample population of 185 individuals indicated a time horizon of 4.8 years and space horizon of 530 km. Majority of the sample population is observed to be concerned with issues that affect only their close environment over a short time period of “next week”, along with their larger geographical area as the “city”. A few of the sample population indicated to have a global perspective on time and space that can further reach into the future.Literature suggesting different individuals having different perspectives on time and space, depending on culture, past experience and the nature of the problems are instrumentalized in our study by relating it to the foresight tools and methodologies. Such varying perspectives may explain individuals/managers’ time and space horizon in which they think and act/execute.Based on the analysis of space/time preference of participant individuals, policy makers will benefit from incorporating the diversity of time and space dimensions into their strategic thought and national policy roadmaps.This exploratory study is comprised of the assessment of differing definitions and approaches to the future via individuals’ space and time perspectives. It aims to contribute to foresight methodologies and approaches, as well as bringing a significant impact on the quality and success of the national foresight project results.     

New Corporate Forms: One Viable Solution to Advancing Environmental Sustainability

There is a clear trend in corporate governance toward increased attention to the environmental and social impacts of business operations. Major consulting firms are advising Fortune 500 companies on how to become more environmentally sustainable, private equity and “impact” investors are measuring environmental, social, and governance (ESG) factors, and voluntary reporting and shareholder resolutions on issues of environmental sustainability are on the rise. While traditional corporate forms allow companies to embrace social and environmental responsibility with some measure of success, various real and perceived risks encourage directors to focus on short‐term profitability. Even if a company has a strong social mission at inception, founders often have difficulty “anchoring their mission” over time. And the lack of required disclosure of social and environmental performance makes it more difficult for investors to evaluate and compare companies. Many believe that the institutionalized mispricing of natural resources and the continued failure to price externalities, combined with the progressive nature of climate change, require the transformation of both business and law. This article discusses social and environmental sustainability within the traditional corporate form and then explores three emerging alternatives that are now being used by businesses in California: limited liability corporations (LLCs); benefit corporations (B corps); and flexible purpose corporations (FPCs). Of these three alternatives, FPCs—a corporate form that requires shareholders to agree on one or more social missions with management and the board—may be best suited to meet the needs of the many small private firms (as well as some large public companies) that, whether for purely economic or altruistic reasons, plan to integrate ESG into their operations.     

Corporate ethical futures: responsibility for the shadow on the future of today's ethical corporations

Humankind needs protection from the actions of corporations, which have an effect in time and space beyond the boundaries that they attend to in their day-to-day business decisions or their regulatory duties. A combination of an ethical orientation with a futures orientation gives rise to ethical futures, which produces a more developed and robust moral code for corporate organisations. In a pilot study of the current corporate social responsibility reports of five corporate organisations, a tentative qualitative relationship was found between the futures orientation of these corporations and their (BITC) corporate social responsibility index rating. Enforcing corporate ethical futures should become an imperative for stakeholders.     

A theory of the corporate decision to resist FASB standards: An organization theory perspective

This paper develops a theoretical framework that specifies the conditions under which corporations are likely to resist financial reporting standards proposed by the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB). Determinants of corporate resistance to FASB standards are identified at three levels of analysis: the standard, the corporation, and the corporation’s industry. Propositions are formulated summarizing the effects of the determinants at these three levels, and guidelines are suggested for testing the propositions. Implications for the theory and the practice of accounting regulation are also discussed. The overall goal of the paper is to enhance our understanding of the drivers of corporate resistance to FASB standards, so that accounting regulators can manage the implementation of accounting standards more effectively.     

Firm dynamics, markup variations, and the business cycle

We present a model in which net business formation is endogenously procyclical. Variations in the number of operating firms lead to countercyclical variations in markups that give rise to endogenous procyclical movements in measured total factor productivity (TFP). Based on this result, the paper suggests a simple structural decomposition of variations in TFP into those originating from exogenous shocks and those originating endogenously from the interaction between firms’ entry and exit decisions and the degree of competition. The decomposition suggests that around 40% of the movements in measured TFP can be attributed to this interaction. Moreover, the paper analyzes the effects on (i) the measurement of the volatility of exogenous shocks in the U.S. economy and (ii) the magnification of shocks over the business cycle.     

金融结构如何影响了外资进入方式选择？

随着全球价值链进入深度重构的关键时期,金融结构对于一国外资进入方式选择的重要性日益凸显,本文采用65个国家2003—2017年跨国面板数据,从理论和实证两个层面系统探讨了金融结构与一国外资进入方式选择之间的关系。研究表明:(1)无论是发达国家还是发展中国家东道国,市场主导型金融结构均有助于外资以跨国并购方式进入东道国,但发达国家正向促进作用显著大于发展中国家,克服了内生性和经济波动的影响后,结论依旧稳健。(2)进一步机制检验结果发现,技术创新引致和国家风险管控是金融结构影响外资进入方式选择的重要渠道。其中,金融结构的国家风险渠道机制,主要通过降低经济金融风险来实现。(3)此外,引入国家营商环境指数发现,营商环境的改善不仅对外资以跨国并购方式进入具有直接促进作用,而且能间接调节金融市场对外资进入结构优化的提升作用。本文研究为我国深化金融供给侧结构性改革,改善营商环境,进而实现引资结构优化提供了政策启示。