PROSPECTION :Review and Reflections on Forward-looking Behavior of Firms

Abstract

Although the notion of prospection or forward-looking behavior is implicit in the concept of strategy and, over the years, the strategic significance of such behavior for firms has been well articulated by practitioners and scholars alike, an explicit and definitive understanding of this phenomenon is yet to emerge. The absence of a comprehensive view of how firms engage with the future becomes even important when we consider recent suggestions that strategy and organization theories, in general, have increasingly acquired a “backward looking, incremental sensibility”. With the larger agenda of stimulating and shaping discourse around “forward-looking” behavior in strategy literature, I provide a comprehensive review of extant literature on the forward-looking behavior of firms. I review over five decades of macro research—spanning strategic management and organization theories—that evoke (explicitly and/or implicitly), advocate and engage (theoretically and/or empirically) with the forward- looking behavior of firms. I also anticipate and propose future directions for theory and research in this area.