View Thread

Dear Friends & Colleagues,

[I apologize if this post is not properly formatted, a problem I've faced frequently in this listserv as lately]

If you are in Boston for our annual meeting this August, please join us for our organizational foresight symposium!

We have a selection of some of the best researchers in the world who will present their cutting edge work on strategic/corporate/organizational foresight. There are currently many different conceptualizations of "foresight" in management and strategy. For some, foresight means prediction of the results of strategic choices. For others, it means to anticipate multiple future scenarios of the business environment. The aim of this symposium is to bring together researchers and thought leaders with different views on this topic, and reach a common understanding and dialogue where before there has been none.

The event will be at 8:00 AM on August the 8th (the Chinese say it's very auspicious!) in the Marriott room of Boston University. If you have already registered for the AOM meeting, you can add the event to your personal itinerary here.

The details of the session are as follows:

Abstract: Few would disagree with the fact that the way organizations collectively anticipate, build, evaluate, and are affected by the future(s) should be at the front and center of management and strategy scholars' agenda. However, as a recently emerged topic in management and strategy scholarship despite its rich tradition in the field of futures studies, organizational foresight is currently conceptualized in various ways in our field, and if some of these conceptualizations are complementary to each other's, others may seem mutually antithetical. It is in view of this current state of organizational foresight scholarship in management that this symposium will feature papers from authors at the forefront of the various theoretical conceptualizations of organizational foresight to enable dialogue, encourage synthesis, and incentivize new theories on this important yet underinvestigated topic in management and strategy research.

The working papers that will be presented:

Decoding the black box of the art and science of organizational foresight
Alex Fergnani; Rabat Business School

Playing with temporal, social, and contextual boundaries
Britt Smulders; Eindhoven U. of Technology

The evolution of corporate foresight and its value for decision-making in view of COVID-19
Theresa Schropp; Bavarian Foresight-Institute
Jan Oliver Schwarz; Bavarian Foresight-Institute

Organizational foresight: The changing role of the board
Adam Vigdor Gordon; AU

Antecedents to longer-term industry foresight
Daniel Wilde; The Wharton School, U. of Pennsylvania