Futures studies as social science: An analytic scheme and a case study

Several authors in the futures studies field have in their efforts to improve quality argued that better methods must be developed, which makes sense. But the theoretical awareness in the substantive questions upon which the studies are based is probably more important.

In that light, the primary objective of this article is to formulate a method of how fundamental social issues (views on society and humanity) are addressed in a future study, apply it to one empirical case (telecommunications company Ericsson) and thereafter analyze the method's strengths and weaknesses.

The study shows that the method gained a satisfactory foothold in the material and it has an appropriate depth in relation to desired efficiency. This work has shown that the analytical method is relevant and adequate to understand and describe the orientation and contents of futures studies. Therewith, the study has generated greater awareness of fundamental assumptions in future studies that can contribute to enhancing their quality.     

The future of futures decision making

At the dawn of a new millennium, with the past one thousand years ready for reflection and the up-coming one thousand years primed for exciting new adventures, humankind seems to be trapped in the box of myopic, short-term decision making. Voices pleading to expand the horizons of our decision making to ensure sustainability of our species and countless other species on this earth are currently drowned out by a cacophony of voices trumpeting economic globalization, rapid technology development, and real-time financial markets. While futures decision making is not much in evidence today, the question addressed by this paper is whether futures decision making is even possible. Are there inherent constraints in our ability to make decisions that encompass time frames covering centuries if not millennia? An enormous amount of research has been conducted in the general area of decision making over the past several decades. Much has been learned about the psychology of human decision making and decision making within organizations. Countless methods have been developed to guide decision making. Recent work in areas such as imprecise probability and complex adaptive systems is beginning to provide boundaries as to what can be known about the future. This paper reviews much of this diverse literature and synthesizes important research findings across several disciplines to identify numerous significant barriers to futures decision making. The paper presents several recommendations on how to improve futures decision making in the future.     

Individual approaches to futures thinking and decision making

This paper presents results of a second international web-based survey designed to gather data about how individuals approach thinking about their futures and making decisions regarding their futures. Five hundred and five respondents from 38 countries participated in the survey. Similar to the first survey, the sample has gender, age and religious diversity but is not representative with respect to education, income and race/ethnicity. The results suggest that the external environment provides a great deal of stimuli for people to think about the future (e.g., special occasions like New Years day, birthdays, and funerals). Individuals tend to think about the future more in the morning, and just before bed. Overall, most respondents experience happiness, confidence, and lightness when thinking about the future. Respondents employ many different approaches to thinking about the future, such as relying on personal past experiences, imagining future situations, and relying on their personal intuitions. Most respondents do not pattern their futures decision making on decisions made by others or on tradition. Most respondents believe that their thinking about the future is very worthwhile; most develop plans and take decisive action as a result of their efforts. About three quarters of the respondents report that they are able to predict their personal futures at least one-half of the time. Most respondents face few barriers to thinking about the future, although many reported it would be nice to have more energy, be able to concentrate better, and be able to better organize their thoughts. Females report that thinking about the future is a more emotional experience than it is for males. Males, on the other hand, have more confidence in their futures-oriented decision making abilities. Age plays a big part in how individuals relate to and think about the future. Younger respondents think more about the future more times during the day and find thinking about the future more fearful and anxious. They also pattern their decisions more on those made by others and older individuals. Older respondents tend to rely a great deal upon their lifetime of experiences and worry less about the future. Middle-aged respondents report worrying more about financial and career issues and report that thinking about the future can be emotionally draining.     

Alternative domestic political futures: Research needs and research design

The mission of this paper is to stimulate work on alternative futures of domestic politics. Such work should provide an essential and critical component of the kind of studies that presume to provide some prevision of the future, and should thereby serve as an aid for future-shaping policy-making. It includes two main parts. The first part discusses the present neglect of alternative domestic political futures (ADPF) and explains why ADPF should become a main concern of futures studies. The second part presents an initial design for the study of ADPF.     

Mass advertising as social forecast: A proposed method for futures research

This study is an attempt to develop a procedure for anticipating broad sociocultural change by a decade. Data on the fundamental psychological needs of the American people were culled with a content analysis of mass advertising. On the theory that those unsatisfied needs would compel sociocultural change in such a manner as to accommodate them, forecasts were drawn up. A trial forecast of American life in 1970 was substantiated through a content analysis of national news and by means of relevant social statistics. The proposed method was then used to forecast the future of American culture to 1980.     

Alternative futures for a multi-civilizational Europe

This article discusses the alternative futures for a multi-civilizational European Union; in other words, its capacity to embrace non-Western civilizations such as the Indian, Islamic, Chinese and others. It brings out three scenarios: (1) a Eurocentric future; (2) a pragmatically multi-civilizational European Union; and (3) a multi-civilizational European Union. Normatively, the third scenario, a genuinely multi-civilizational future appears the most preferred alternative for the rise of European Union as a respected and credible global actor, which plays a significant role in the stabilization and development of its neighbourhood regions and in the resolution of global level issues. Along with incentives, barriers, as discussed in relevant sections, are also explicit which might lead to two other scenarios if not eliminated. Practically, the article concludes that the co-existence of European and other civilizations within the European Union is more likely to lead to a multi-civilizational future than any attempt to integrate those civilizations within the dominant European tradition.     

Integral Futures: An approach to futures inquiry

This paper sketches the broad outlines of the philosophical and methodological foundations of an emerging approach to inquiry—‘integral inquiry’—and how this form of inquiry may be applied to futures studies, leading to an approach which has come to be called ‘Integral Futures’.     

Cognitive science and decision making research in accounting

The purpose of this paper is to discuss the relevance of cognitive science to decision-making research in accounting. First, the context into which it interfaces the field of accounting is reviewed. Next, the cognitive science applications to accounting are presented and evaluated as they relate to four levels of investigation. The paper concludes with implications for future research as well as a discussion of methodological issues which must be addressed.     

DIYbio: Making things and making futures

http://DIYbio.org (Do It Yourself Biology) is an online site and a digital brand subscribed to local groups of amateur biologists worldwide. Despite of making up a rather heterogeneous public, DIYbio groups are organized around a concern to make biology accessible, easy and enjoyable. DIYbio combines an open source ethos, with a DIY will to do things and the joy to mess with biological matter. As biohacking is about de-composing and re-composing things, DIYbio takes on a particular approach to the making of the new and to the making of futures that this paper explores. Inspired by Heidegger's notion of the thing, I suggest that differing from institutionalized forms of biology, DIYbio produces things rather than techno-objects. I go into this point by first situating DIYbio in relation to synthetic biology and other instutionalised forms of biology. To explore how DIYbio takes on a particular approach to the making of the new, I look at a number of things that DIYbio groups have projected, designed and realized. I suggest that DIYbio combines a sort of individual craftiness and self-determination to do things with a praxis in which things are always in the making, waiting for the next realization. DIYbio take on an approach to the making of things and futures that is immediate and mundane. Yet, as an emerging public, DIYbio relies on an ambiguous relation to institutionalized science, and might be turned into a transfer of materialities and temporalities from public domains to science.     

Transparency of environmental decision making: a case study of soil cleanup inside the Hanford 100 area

Environmental decisions in a democracy should be transparent. Transparency allows all those who are interested in a decision to understand what is being decided and why. Transparency is especially critical for decisions that are intended to protect public health and safety, and that have long‐term consequences. Decisions are recorded through publicly available documents (such as Records of Decision), collectively known as the public record. In this paper the transparency of the public record is examined for a specific decision at the US Department of Energy (DOE) Hanford site. To do this, the concept of transparency is unpacked into seven objectives: clarity, accessibility, integration, logic/rationale, truth/accuracy, openness, and accountability; and a framework for measuring decision transparency is developed. Then a Record of Decision is evaluated based on four of the seven objectives. Throughout, the importance of understanding decision processes and expected outcomes, and the broad values underpinning activities and choices are emphasized. It is found that, while many aspects of the process are transparent, it is difficult to discern and connect the values, objectives, subobjectives and criteria used as the basis of the decision. Several information structuring improvements (value trees, decision paths, and simple graphics and tables) that could make the public record more transparent are suggested. Such improvements are necessary for long‐term stewardship because future decision makers are likely to rely on the public record as the primary source of decision information. If information is not transparent, future decisions may be compromised.     

Futures report : City futures: preparing for tomorrow

This report looks at long-range planning and in particular, the Placentia Tomorrow Project. It explains how the project was set up and developed and draws together the key issues of the outcome of such a project.     

No one left behind: how social distance affects life-saving decision making

Extant research on social distance and decision-making under risk has mostly focused on how people reach different decisions for themselves than others under the same circumstances. This research adds to this literature by studying how the social distance between the decision-maker and people in danger influences risk preference in life-saving domain. We found that decision-makers tend to be more risk-seeking when the lives of close others are at stake than distant others regardless of whether the situation is framed in terms of loss or gain. However, the effect of social distance on risk preference was eliminated when it was the responsibility of the decision-makers rather than the chance to pick the potential victims to save. By analyzing the shape of value function, we provided preliminary evidence for the hypothesis that decision-makers engage in feeling-based evaluation when close others’ lives are at stake but calculation-based evaluation when distant others’ lives are at stake, which could account for the effect of social distance on risk preference documented in this research. A final experiment yielded direct evidence that evaluation mode mediates the relationship between social distance and risk preference.     

Alternative space futures: The next quarter-century

Space developments do not exist in a vacuum! The shape of future space activities will depend on a combination of social, economic and political forces, creating the determinants for different patterns of space utilization. Forecasts of alternative space futures can therefore be explored by integrating different scenarios of world development and space trends. Here, alternative world trends are related to the underlying dynamics of space development, in terms of the economic, military and scientific utilization of space. The importance of space as a political issue is thus emphasized, in that the outcomes of policy choices to be made both now and in the future will help shape the social and economic contexts in which space technology will be used in the decades ahead.     

Emerging pathways for critical futures research: Changing contexts and impacts of social theory

There has always been a critical, emancipatory tradition within futures studies. Although those voices can still be heard, there has been a growing tendency for futures studies to be driven by more utilitarian needs in business and government. Whilst it is positive that futures thinking and research is increasingly valued within corporate and policy-making settings, much of that work appears to lack genuine plurality of worldviews and interests.The paper traces the changing contexts for futures research over the past 25 years. It argues that futures research needs to be viewed as part of the re-politicisation – in the Habermasian sense – of technocratic decision-making. It suggests that there are three particular reasons for revisiting the need for criticality in futures research: the increasing acknowledgement of systemic interrelatedness (ecological, social, economic), a growth in the forward-looking socio-economic paradigm that permeates both business and policy, and the challenge of theory development. Drawing on social theory and futures research, we suggest three pathways for revived critical futures research: socio-technical practices, future-oriented dialectics, and socio-economic imaginaries. As a result, the paper calls for development in futures studies that would dialectically integrate and overcome the dichotomy between instrumentalisation and (critical) theorising that can be currently understood as somewhat antagonistic. In order to find a balance between these antagonistic dimensions, futures research should be more engaged in enabling critique and revealing assumptions and interests.     

Futures and futures options with basis risk: theoretical and empirical perspectives

Under a no-arbitrage assumption, the futures price converges to the spot price at the maturity of the futures contract, where the basis equals zero. Assuming that the basis process follows a modified Brownian bridge process with a zero basis at maturity, we derive the closed-form solutions of futures and futures options with the basis risk under the stochastic interest rate. We make a comparison of the Black model under a stochastic interest rate and our model in an empirical test using the daily data of S&P 500 futures call options. The overall mean errors in terms of index points and percentage are ?4.771 and ?27.83%, respectively, for the Black model and 0.757 and 1.30%, respectively, for our model. This evidence supports the occurrence of basis risk in S&P 500 futures call options.     

Organizational controls and discretionary program decision making: A field study

This paper reports the results of a field study aimed at exploring how one important class of decisions— discretionary program decisions—are controlled in decentralized films. Data were collected from profit centre managers using unstructured interviews and a questionnaire survey. The data show that decisions are affected by many devices that can be called controls, including net income targets, expense targets, headcount constraints, requirements for approvals, and directives given by higher management. They also show that the effects of the controls can vary with certain characteristics of the profit centers' situation (e.g. strategy, recent performance), the management style of the company chairman, and the accounting treatment for the expenditure (i.e. whether capitalized or expensed).     

Alternative futures: AmI scenarios and Minority Report

In the last few decades, scenarios have provided a way of analysing the implications of alternative futures, especially as they might be impacted by new technologies. This has been no less true of ambient intelligence (AmI), which may be embedded everywhere in the not so distant future. Most of the scenarios developed by AmI enthusiasts have been rather ‘sunny’, showing how the new technologies promise to make our lives more efficient, enjoyable, productive, enriching. A European project, called Safeguards in a World of Ambient Intelligence (SWAMI), deliberately developed ‘dark scenarios’ to highlight the threats to privacy, identity, trust, security and inclusiveness posed by the new technologies. The SWAMI consortium also developed a methodological structure for deconstructing and analysing the dark scenarios. This paper takes that approach a step further by applying it to a cultural artefact, partly to test the validity, utility, applicability of the SWAMI methodology to a scenario not constructed by the consortium and partly to show how some cultural artefacts can be regarded as scenarios in their own right as well as warnings about future technologies. The cultural artefact chosen here was the Steven Spielberg film Minority Report, because it features so many AmI technologies and draws attention to the issues that have been the focus of the SWAMI project.     

Epistemology, social technology, and expert judgement: Olaf Helmer's contribution to futures research

The article discusses Olaf Helmer's contribution to the development of futures studies by focusing on four basic theses defining his approach. (1) Quasi-laws in social sciences and futures studies can in fact be treated in the same way that the natural laws of the physical sciences. (2) In order to make predictions, one need not appeal to a strict logical derivation, as the “covering laws” doctrine of logical-empiricism suggests. (3) Prediction and explanation are not logically symmetrical as positivists believe, thus the conditions needed for explanation are not those required for prediction. (4) Local, tacit, personal and expert knowledge are crucial in developing a foresight methodology. In conjunction, these four theses open the way to a unique theory of social prediction and to variety of “unorthodox items of methodological equipment for the purposes of prediction in the inexact sciences.”