Scenario projects in Japanese government: Strategic approaches for overcoming psychological and institutional barriers

Scenario planning in the public sector has significant differences from scenario planning in the corporate world. Scenario planning in the government not only tends to be focused on issues of higher complexity and significance to public policy, but also in comparison to people in the private business, public officials have fundamental psychological and institutional constraints in their scenario thinking. These constraints make it difficult for them to contemplate multiple ‘untidy’ futures and imagine the possibility of policy failure: skills which are essential for successful scenario projects. Based on specific characteristics of scenario planning in the Japanese government, this paper contributes on better understanding the challenges and strategic solutions in providing more successful scenario planning in the public sector. Specifically, this paper argues that possible solutions in overcoming these constraints may be to shake public bureaucrats out of their thinking by providing free and open venues of conversation and more importantly through ‘derailment’ exercises.     

Goal-based socio-technical scenarios: Greening the mobility practices in the Stockholm City District of Bromma,Sweden

This paper presents a new five-part method for developing goal-based socio-technical scenarios. In the first part, Scenario ‘Seeds’ are identified or created. The Scenario Content part focuses on the question of what could be changed and by whom, a fundamental element being iterative identification of objects and actors of change. Scenario Outcome focuses on the question of how to assess the potential contribution of these changes, estimated through modelling the scenario in terms of energy usage systems. Scenario Process explores the question of how to develop and represent a scenario in terms of a process of governance. Scenario Content, Outcome and Process are then combined into a Final Scenario which is further assessed and evaluated using qualitative methods. The development of Scenario Content is tested and exemplified in this paper through a scenario study of green mobility in the district of Bromma in Stockholm, Sweden. Preliminary findings indicate that by supporting explicit inclusion of actors and ‘the social’ aspect, the what-who iteration in Scenario Content also helps identify opportunities and obstacles of a social character, thus contributing to creation of socio-technically more consistent and comprehensive scenarios.     

Multi-scale interaction in local scenario-building: A methodological framework

Despite the recent popularity of multi-scale scenario exercises, a review of the literature reveals missing elements regarding local-scale scenario-building. Scenarios built at the local level are often downscaled from higher-scale scenarios or developed within the boundary conditions of global and national scales without taking local circumstances thoroughly into account. On this background, this paper discusses the issue of scale in local scenario development and develops a formal methodological approach for local-scale scenario-building in general. The paper underlines in particular the role of local agency in coupling the larger scale and the local scale. To better illustrate how the proposed approach helps in designing local scenarios, lessons drawn from two local scenario development practices are also employed. Hence, the paper contributes to the formalisation of local scenario-building, which is believed to enhance the validity and credibility of local scenario outputs in the policy sphere.     

Towards Analytic‐deliberative Forms of Risk Governance in the UK? Reflecting on Learning in Radioactive Waste

While participatory forms of risk assessment and management have been the focus of much conceptualisation, experimentation, and evaluation, relatively less effort has gone into understanding how so called ‘analytic‐deliberative’ processes are developing across policy‐for‐real decision contexts. This paper develops a novel typology of citizen‐science interaction as a basis for analysing the nature and extent of recent participatory risk assessment practice in the UK. It draws on the reflections of professional actors operating across the UK environmental risk domain, focusing down on practice in the area of radioactive waste between 1998 and 2003. Compared with past science‐centred approaches, analysis shows an ‘opening up’ of risk decision processes to extended actors, knowledges, and values, with particular importance placed on public involvement in front‐end framing. This is being constrained by a failure to integrate engagement throughout decision processes, the exclusion of publics from assessing/evaluating environmental risks, and the upholding of a strict separation between citizens/science. These patterns of analytic‐deliberative practice — determined by contextual influences, barriers and challenges operating across UK environmental risk issue‐areas — highlight the need for further methodological development and systematic evaluation of relations between processes and outcomes.     

Is your vision consistent?: A method for checking, based on scenario concepts

Common sense tells us that the future is an essential element in any strategy. In addition, there is a good deal of literature on scenario planning, which is an important tool in considering the future in terms of strategy. However, in many organizations there is serious resistance to the development of scenarios, and they are not broadly implemented by companies. But even organizations that do not rely heavily on the development of scenarios do, in fact, construct visions to guide their strategies. But it might be asked, what happens when this vision is not consistent with the future? To address this problem, the present article proposes a method for checking the content and consistency of an organization's vision of the future, no matter how it was conceived. The proposed method is grounded on theoretical concepts from the field of future studies, which are described in this article. This study was motivated by the search for developing new ways of improving and using scenario techniques as a method for making strategic decisions. The method was then tested on a company in the field of information technology in order to check its operational feasibility. The test showed that the proposed method is, in fact, operationally feasible and was capable of analyzing the vision of the company being studied, indicating both its shortcomings and points of inconsistency.     

The social amplification of risk on Twitter: the case of ash dieback disease in the United Kingdom

It has long been recognised that the traditional media play a key role in representing risk and are a significant source of information which can shape how people perceive and respond to hazard events. Early work utilising the social amplification of risk framework (SARF) sought to understand the discrepancy between expert and lay perceptions of risk and patterns of risk intensification and attenuation with reference to the media. However, the advent of Web 2.0 challenges traditional models of communication. To date there has been limited consideration of social media within the SARF and its role in mediating processes of risk perception and communication. Against this backdrop, we focus on the social media platform Twitter to consider the social amplification of risk in relation to ash dieback disease (Hymenoscyphus fraxineus); a tree health issue that attracted intense media attention when it was first identified in the UK in 2012. We present an empirical analysis of 25,600 tweets in order to explore what people were saying about ash dieback on Twitter, who was talking about it and how they talked about it. Our discussion outlines the themes around which talk about ash dieback was orientated, the significance of users’ environmental ‘affiliations’ and the role of including links (URLs) to traditional media coverage. We utilise the notion of ‘piggybacking’ to demonstrate how information is customised in line with group/individual identities and interests and introduce the concept of the ‘frame fragment’ to illustrate how information is selected and moved around Twitter emphasising certain features of the messages. The paper affords a detailed consideration of the way in which people and organisations simultaneously appropriate, construct and pass on risk-relevant information. A conclusion is that social media has the potential to transform the media landscape within which the SARF was originally conceived, presenting renewed challenges for risk communication.     

Scenarios and the art of worldmaking

In this exploratory paper we propose ‘worldmaking’ as a framework for pluralistic, imaginative scenario development. Our points of departure are the need in scenario practice to embrace uncertainty, discomfort and knowledge gaps, and the connected need to capture and make productive fundamental plurality among understandings of the future. To help respond to these needs, we introduce what Nelson Goodman calls worldmaking. It holds that there is no singular, objective world (or “real reality”), and instead that worlds are multiple, constructed through creative processes instead of given, and always in the process of becoming. We then explore how worldmaking can operationalise discordant pluralism in scenario practice by allowing participants to approach not only the future but also the present in a constructivist and pluralistic fashion; and by extending pluralism to ontological domains. Building on this, we investigate how scenario worldmaking could lead to more imaginative scenarios: worldmaking is framed as a fully creative process which gives participants ontological agency, and it helps make contrasts, tensions and complementarities between worlds productive. We go on to propose questions that can be used to operationalize scenario worldmaking, and conclude with the expected potential and limitations the approach, as well as suggestions for practical experimentation.     

Focus group methods: Using interactive and nominal groups to explore emerging technology-driven phenomena in accounting and information systems

This paper puts forth arguments for why focus group methods should be used more frequently in accounting and information technology research in order to address emerging technology-driven phenomena in accounting. In this overview of focus group methods and their application to studying accounting and information technology phenomena, we focus on what alternative types of focus group methods may be applied, when such methods are applicable, and what methodological challenges the researcher must address. In examining the methodological challenges that face researchers when using these methods, we demonstrate how these challenges have been addressed in our own research as a way of exemplifying the challenges researchers may face and what compensating strategies researchers might use. Our objective is to highlight when focus groups may be the best method for accounting information systems researchers and demonstrate how they can be used when they are applicable.     

Perceived Environmental Uncertainty in scenario planning

Scenario planning is a strategy tool with growing popularity in both academia and practical situations. Current practices of scenario planning are largely based on existing literature which utilises scenario planning to develop strategies for the future, primarily considering the assessment of perceived macro-external environmental uncertainties. However there is a body of literature hitherto ignored by scenario planning researchers, which suggests that Perceived Environmental Uncertainty (PEU) influences the micro-external as well as the internal environment of the organisation. This paper reviews the most dominant theories on scenario planning process and PEU, developing three propositions for the practice of scenario planning process. Furthermore, it shows how these propositions can be integrated in the scenario planning process in order to improve the development of strategy.     

Enhancing the role of participatory scenario planning processes: Lessons from Reality Check exercises

This paper critically assesses a series of scenario planning exercises in the Washington Metropolitan region and the State of Maryland within a broad and evolving framework of participatory planning. Reality Check, as the exercises were called, were a daylong set of activities using tools that encouraged stakeholder participation to develop scenarios focused on long-term regional sustainability. The paper draws upon planning theory, participant reactions, media reports, post-exercise outcomes and author's experiences of shaping the process. It illustrates how the model was adapted to multiple scales and contexts, and variations in desired technical complexity. The paper concludes that such processes have an inherent value in capturing the issues of the future and in creating awareness and knowledge. It argues that certain considerations such as early strategic engagement of stakeholders, flexibility of technical tools and diversity among organizers, all played a role in enhancing the dialogue. Furthermore, it suggests that when timed with favorable external conditions and designed within suitable institutional frameworks, they have the potential to provide a foundation from which tangible regional benefits can be realized.     

Are wildcard events on infrastructure systems opportunities for transformational change?

Infrastructure systems face a number of pressing challenges relating to demographics, environment, finance and governance pressures. Furthermore, infrastructure mediates the way in which everyday lives are conducted; their form and function creating a persistence of unsustainable practice and behaviour that cannot be changed even if change is desired. There is a need to find means by which this obduracy can be broken so that new, more sustainable futures can be planned. This paper develops a methodology, taking concepts from both engineering and social science. Wild cards, or physical disruptions, are used to ‘destructively test’ complex infrastructure systems and the multi-level perspective is used as a framework for analysing the resulting data. This methodology was used to examine a number of case studies, and with focus groups consisting of a range of different infrastructure providers and managers, to gain a better understanding of systems’ socio-technical characteristics and behaviours. A number of impactful ‘intervention points’ emerged that offered the opportunity to promote radical changes towards configurations of infrastructure systems that provide for ‘less’ physical infrastructure. This paper also examines the utility of wild cards as enablers of transition to these ‘less’ configurations and demonstrates how a ‘wild card scenario’ can be used to co-design infrastructure adaptation from with both infrastructure providers and users.     

How do banks create money,and why can other firms not do the same? An explanation for the coexistence of lending and deposit-taking

Thanks to the recent banking crises interest has grown in banks and how they operate. In the past, the empirical and institutional market micro-structure of the operation of banks had not been a primary focus for investigations by researchers, which is why they are not well covered in the literature. One neglected detail is the banks' function as the creators and allocators of about 97% of the money supply (Werner, 1997, Werner, 2005), which has recently attracted attention (Bank of England, 2014a, Bank of England, 2014b, Werner, 2014b, Werner, 2014c). It is the purpose of this paper to investigate precisely how banks create money, and why or whether companies cannot do the same. Since the implementation of banking operations takes place within a corporate accounting framework, this paper is based upon a comparative accounting analysis perspective. By breaking the accounting treatment of lending into two steps, the difference in the accounting operation by bank and non-bank corporations can be isolated. As a result, it can be established precisely why banks are different and what it is that makes them different: They are exempted from the Client Money Rules and thus, unlike other firms, do not have to segregate client money. This enables banks to classify their accounts payable liabilities arising from bank loan contracts as a different type of liability called ‘customer deposits’. The finding is important for many reasons, including for modelling the banking sector accurately in economic models, bank regulation and also for monetary reform proposals that aim at taking away the privilege of money creation from banks. The paper thus adds to the growing literature on the institutional details and market micro-structure of our financial and monetary system, and in particular offers a new contribution to the literature on ‘what makes banks different’, from an accounting and regulatory perspective, solving the puzzle of why banks combine lending and deposit-taking operations under one roof.     

Communicating risk for issues that involve ‘uncertainty bias’: what can the Israeli case of water fluoridation teach us?

Water fluoridation is a controversial issue in public health. Despite the uncertainty regarding its efficacy and safety, health officials continue to communicate it as ‘unequivocally’ safe and effective. Our focus is on how health officials and policy-makers in Israel frame the issue of water fluoridation in terms of certainty while promoting a mandatory fluoridation policy. According to van Asselt and Vos, the uncertainty paradox describes situations in which uncertainty is acknowledged, but the role of science is framed as providing certainty. Our study is an analysis of documents and media articles emphasizing the paradoxical language used by official representatives on the controversial topic of fluoridation. A central contribution of this study is that we coin the term ‘uncertainty bias,’ in which policy-makers do exactly what they accuse laypeople of doing, framing uncertainty in biased terms. We found that in order to establish mandatory regulation, health ministry officials expressed information in an unbalanced format, promoting the topic of fluoridation by framing it in exclusively positive terms. This study does not focus on the practice of water fluoridation per se, and is not intended to decide for or against it, but rather, to explore how the debate regarding it is communicated. Understanding this particular case can shed light on how other controversial topics are transformed into health policy that is characterized in equivocal terms.     

Scenario planning at business unit level

The scenario planning literature is focused on corporate level interventions. There is a general consensus on the method, but there is little debate about the stages involved in building and using the scenarios. This article presents a case study of a scenario planning intervention, which was conducted at a business unit of the British division of one of the largest beauty and cosmetic products multinationals. The method adopted in this case study has some fundamental differences to the existing models used at corporate level. This research is based on the principles of autoethnography, since its purpose is to present self-critical reflections, enhanced by reflective and reflexive conversations on a scenario planning method used at business unit level. The critical reflections concern a series of critical incidents which distinguish this method from existing intuitive logic scenario planning models which are used at corporate level planning. Ultimately this article contributes to the scenario planning method literature by providing insights into its practice at business unit level.     

Scenario types and techniques: Towards a user's guide

Various scenario typologies have been suggested in attempts to make the field of futures studies easier to overview. Our typology is based on the scenario user's need to know what will happen, what can happen, and/or how a predefined target can be achieved. We discuss the applicability of various generating, integrating and consistency techniques for developing scenarios that provide the required knowledge. The paper is intended as a step towards a guide as to how scenarios can be developed and used.     

An examination of future scenarios using historical analogy

The quality of scenario planning activities can be difficult to assess, as one cannot know how likely any projected future scenario is. Here, we introduce one approach for gaining greater confidence. Historical analogy provides the means for achieving this, whereby the model upon which scenarios are constructed is analysed in terms of how well it predicts and establishes links with recent historical environments. We apply this approach to a previously developed scenario tree, constructed using the field anomaly relaxation method, as a case study to indicate how historical analogy can be used to assess and enhance the model from which the scenarios are constructed.     

Toward a different debate in environmental accounting: The cases of carbon and cost–benefit

Many champions of environmental accounting suggest that calculating and internalizing ‘externalities’ is the solution to environmental problems. Many critics of neoliberalism counter that the spread of market-like calculations into ‘non-market’ spheres, is, on the contrary, itself at the root of such problems. This article proposes setting aside this debate and instead closely examining the concrete conflicts, contradictions and resistances engendered by environmental accounting techniques and the perpetually incomplete efforts of accountants and their allies to overcome them. In particular, it explores how cost–benefit analysis and the carbon accounting techniques required by the Kyoto Protocol, the European Union Emissions Trading Scheme and other carbon trading mechanisms ‘frame’ new agents, spaces, relations and objects, and what the consequences have been and are likely to be.     

Using scenarios to explore UK upland futures

Uplands around the world are facing significant social, economic and environmental changes, and decision-makers need to better understand what the future may hold if they are to adapt and maintain upland goods and services. This paper draws together all major research comprising eight studies that have used scenarios to describe possible futures for UK uplands. The paper evaluates which scenarios are perceived by stakeholders to be most likely and desirable, and assesses the benefits and drawbacks of the scenario methods used in UK uplands to date. Stakeholders agreed that the most desirable and likely scenario would be a continuation of hill farming (albeit at reduced levels) based on cross-compliance with environmental measures. The least desirable scenario is a withdrawal of government financial support for hill farming. Although this was deemed by stakeholders to be the least likely scenario, the loss of government support warrants close attention due to its potential implications for the local economy. Stakeholders noted that the environmental implications of this scenario are much less clear-cut. As such, there is an urgent need to understand the full implications of this scenario, so that upland stakeholders can adequately prepare, and policy-makers can better evaluate the likely implications of different policy options. The paper concludes that in future, upland scenario research needs to: (1) better integrate in-depth and representative participation from stakeholders during both scenario development and evaluation; and (2) make more effective use of visualisation techniques and simulation models.     

Food scenarios 2025: Drivers of change between global and regional

This article presents the results of a future study of the food sector. Two scenarios have been developed using a combination of: 1) a summary of the relevant scientific knowledge, 2) systematic scenario writing, 3) an expert-based Delphi technique, and 4) an expert seminar assessment. The two scenarios present possible futures at global, national (Denmark) and regional (Zealand, Denmark) levels. The main scenario is called ‘Food for ordinary days and celebrations’ (a combination of ‘High-technological food production − The functional society’ and ‘High-gastronomic food − The experience society’). A less likely scenario is called ‘The reappearence of the sea − The aquarial society’. The purpose of the scenario writing has been to provide strategic tools for societal actors who to create economic growth and jobs, particularly regional governments and firms. Suggestions concerning regional industrial policy and firm actions are included in the article.     

Scenarios and design: Scoping the dialogue space

This paper examines the intersections between two futures-oriented domains of practice and research: scenario planning and design. Both are practice-led, with uneasy but productive relationships with theorizing. Exploring their relations offers ways to address challenges faced by interdisciplinary management research, which struggles to connect research and practice. The authors describe how they brought the two fields together. We outline how we convened, designed and facilitated the fourth Oxford Futures Forum held in May 2014. This event brought together leading practitioners and researchers in a collective inquiry based on self-organizing, generative and reflexive making and dialogue. How participants engaged, from responding to the invitation to take part, as well as their practical and discursive encounters with one another during the event, threw up similarities and differences between the two fields. We present nine themes that capture the links and spaces between design and scenarios, yet suggest that they are not a straightforward overlap or a simple relationship, but rather a range of interactions between the fields, including feeding in, bridging, tension and repulsion. The paper's contribution is to suggest how scenario planning can engage with design, resulting in new opportunities for research and projects. These modes of engagement provide a framing to explore dialogues between other management disciplines.