Future-oriented Planning Research Articles

Analysis of the concerted development plan to improve user satisfaction in a local government in Arequipa

The study examines the Joint Development Plan (PDC) of José Luis Bustamante y Rivero district (2011-2021), a strategic document designed to guide the community’s integral and sustainable growth. Based on a situational analysis, four strategic axes are identified: social development, economic productivity, urban-environmental management, and institutional governance. However, the PDC shows limitations in addressing global megatrends such as digital transformation, environmental sustainability, and climate resilience. This work suggests updating the PDC by incorporating digital technologies to optimize municipal management, climate adaptation strategies, and urban sustainability measures. It also recommends using SMART indicators and fostering multisectoral partnerships to enhance its impact. Aligning the PDC with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and trends like digitization and renewable energy would enable more effective and future-oriented planning. These changes would position the district as a model of inclusive, resilient, and sustainable development.

Business analytics in managerial decision-making: top management perceptions

Purpose Firms seek to improve their decision-making and enable more “fact-based” decisions by using business analytics. While the benefits of using business analytics to monitor, develop and improve daily operations have been reported by many scholars, using it in more complex top management decisions has received less attention. Building on the resource-based view of the firm, this study aims to investigate top management perceptions of using business analytics for making decisions on firm resources. Design/methodology/approach This study uses semi-structured interviews to collect perceptions of 12 top managers in large firms on when and why they use business analytics in their decision-making. Findings Top managers use business analytics output as their main source of information for monitoring ongoing business performance against set targets and taking corrective actions. Concerning future-oriented planning and strategic decision-making involving more complex changes on the firms’ resource base, top managers proactively complement knowledge derived via business analytics with other sources of knowledge, such as stakeholder and expert opinions. Moreover, top managers use of business analytics depends on their own expectations of its value potential and on the expectations of their organization. Originality/value This study adds to the extant literature on the business value of business analytics by outlining the purposes and reasons for top management business analytics use. By demonstrating when and why top managers apply business analytics when making decisions on the firm’s current and future resource base, this study contributes to the discussion on the resource-based view and decision-making practices of the firm.

Definition and characteristics of climate-adaptive cities: a systematic review

BackgroundCities, as frontline responders to climate change, necessitate a precise understanding of climate-adaptive features. This systematic review aims to define and outline the characteristics of climate-adaptive cities, contributing vital insights for resilient urban planning.MethodsThis systematic review, initiated on March 6, 2018, and concluded on August 26, 2021, involved reviewing multiple electronic databases based on the study's objectives. The Critical Appraisal Skills Program (CASP) tool was used for quality assessment and critical evaluation of articles retrieved through a comprehensive and systematic text search. Descriptive and thematic analyses were conducted to extract definitions, features, and characteristics of climate-adaptive cities.ResultsOut of 6104 identified articles, 38 articles met the inclusion criteria. In total, 20 definitions and 55 features for climate-adaptive cities were identified in this review. Codes were categorized into two categories and ten subcategories. The categories included definitions and features or characteristics of climate-adaptive cities.ConclusionA climate-adaptive city, as derived from the findings of this study, is a city that, through effective resource management, future-oriented planning, education, knowledge utilization, innovation in governance and industry, decentralized management, and low-carbon economy, leads to the adaptability, resilience, sustainability, and flexibility of the capacity of individuals, communities, institutions, businesses, and systems within a city against all climate change impacts and reduces their negative consequences.

Increasing Firm Performance through Industry 4.0—A Method to Define and Reach Meaningful Goals

Industry 4.0 is one of the most influential trends in manufacturing as of now. Coined as the fourth industrial revolution it promises to overthrow entrenched structures opening new pathways for innovation and value creation. Like all revolutions, it is accompanied by disruption and uncertainty. Consequently, many manufacturing companies struggle to adopt an Industry 4.0 perspective that benefits their performance. Hence, our goal was to develop a method for increasing firm performance through Industry 4.0. A key factor was to focus on the entire company as a socio-technical system to depict the numerous interactions between people, technology, and business/organization. To realize the method, we combined consortium research, design science, and method engineering. We gathered comprehensive data from workshops, interviews, and five case studies, which we used to develop the method. It consists of four phases: a maturity model to determine the status quo, a procedure to derive a target position, a pattern-based approach to design the socio-technical system, and a procedure to define a transformation setup. Our approach is the first to combine maturity models with foresight and extensive prescriptive knowledge. For practitioners, the method gives orientation for the future-oriented planning of their transformation processes.

Reading as if for Death

“Reading as if for Death” asks how people live in the face of imminent death by analyzing Nevil Shute’s 1957 novel On the Beach. The few critics who have commented on this novel have focused on its message about the dangers of nuclear weapons. This article argues that this middlebrow Australian bestseller, which has never gone out of print, is also an important contribution to the literature of death and dying. In its focus on characters who may well be dead within a year but continue to plant gardens and learn shorthand, the novel departs from common views of everyday life as passive, static, and immanent, instead portraying it as centered around acts of repair and future-oriented planning. In contrast to representations of mortality that emphasize transcendence and enlightenment, On the Beach sympathetically conveys the combination of certainty and uncertainty that most of its characters endure in living their final days and depicts characters for whom denial, refusing to see what is, and delusion, believing in what is not, become forms of palliative care.

Linking science and practice in participatory future-oriented assessment and planning of human heat stress vulnerability in Bonn, Germany

The juxtaposition of climate change and development changes is vital for understanding the future impacts of heat stress in urban areas. However, an approach that considers the relationship between climatic factors and socio-economic vulnerability in a forward-looking and stakeholder-involved manner is challenging. This article demonstrates the application of a future-oriented vulnerability scenarios approach to address human heat stress in Bonn, Germany, in 2035. The study highlights the interplays between climate trajectories and heat exposure associated with urban development scenario corridors. Moreover, this method allows for changing combinations of intersections and conditionalities of projected individual socio-economic vulnerability indicators in response to social and climate governance. However, this study found that a conventional structure within city departments might limit this integrative approach in practice. Thus, the theoretical background and the concept of alternative futures and uncertainties should be the focus of communication with practitioners to maximize the utilization of the results.

Assessment of beach erosion susceptibility based on geo-indicators and soft management policies: a Patagonian case study (Argentina)

Puerto Madryn city (Chubut province, Argentina) has strongly increased its population since 1970, but a lack of coastal management strategies has favored physical changes in the natural landscape. This situation has led to a deficit in sediment supply sources, which increases beach erosion susceptibility. This paper aims to evaluate beach erosion susceptibility through the use of geo-indicators. It also provides a susceptibility map based on geomorphological evidence and the weighting of physical geo-indicators. The final objective is to propose soft solutions that consider a comprehensive coastal management. The main anthropogenic disturbances identified were beach cleaning with bulldozer, coastal armoring, removal of dune fields (about 90% between 1942 and 2019), foredune segmentation, installation of resorts on backshore, and artificial rainfall drains towards the beach. The natural and most sensitive geo-indicators affected by human pressure—and thus the most useful for determining susceptibility—were foredune conservation and width, and backshore width. We estimate a high to moderate susceptibility to beach erosion along the coast of Puerto Madryn. As regards management policies, we propose mainly restoration, prevention, and adaptation strategies, such as the use of sand fences and new techniques for beach cleaning, all of which are aimed at promoting sedimentary balance within the dune-beach system. Besides these procedures, we recommend the consideration of preventive actions, such as a future-oriented urban planning and a program to raise popular awareness of coastal problems. The diagnostic approach based on a geo-indicator survey has provided a useful tool to help decision-making in coastal conservation initiatives.

Looking back while moving forward: How past responses to climate change can inform future adaptation and mitigation strategies in the Arctic

Modern Arctic Indigenous peoples face many interconnected pressures, not the least of which is anthropogenic climate change, which is emerging as one of the most dramatic drivers of social and economic change in recent memory. In this paper, we investigate whether or not insights into premodern strategies for coping with climate change—and especially the “deeper histories” of traditional ways-of-knowing—can play a useful role in future planning, management and mitigation efforts. We do this in two ways. First, we assess this special issue's 17 archaeological case studies, in order to determine whether they are conducted within a framework that is consistent with approaches to resilience in studies of modern Arctic communities. Second, we focus on three climate-driven challenges faced by Canadian Arctic Inuit: safe travel, food security and food safety. For each, we identify specific ways in which studies of past social-ecological systems intersect with modern climate adaptation. We conclude that since archaeological insights highlight the operation of decision-making processes within long-term culture-adaptive trajectories, they can offer unique insights into the much shorter-term processes currently underway. While we highlight many potential directions for productive collaboration, much more work is required in local and regional settings to demonstrate the full potential of archaeology for future-oriented planning and mitigation efforts.

DEATH ANXIETY AND FINANCIAL DECISION-MAKING IN AGING: A STUDY FROM THE HUMAN CONNECTOME PROJECT AGING (HCP-A)

While research addressing late-life death anxiety (the fear of death or the dying process) has focused on end-of-life care decision-making, few have studied the effect of late-life death anxiety on financial decision-making. This is particularly relevant to financial decision-making as older adults are more vulnerable to fraud and deception. The aim of this study was to determine how age and death anxiety affect financial decision-making in a sample of older adults of 60-93 years of age (N = 102), who participated in the HCP-A project at UCLA. To study this relationship, we used a delayed reward discounting task to model financial decision-making, where higher rates of discounting indicate a greater preference for immediate, smaller monetary rewards and lower rates of discounting indicate more future-oriented planning. To account for age-related cognitive decline, cognitive functioning was assessed using the NIH Toolbox. We hypothesized that the presence of death anxiety will increase discounting of future rewards in older adults. Results from a univariate ANOVA showed an interaction between age, death anxiety, and delayed reward discounting. Specifically, older adults with self-reported death anxiety showed greater preference for immediate, smaller monetary rewards. By controlling for cognition, these findings suggest that death anxiety moderates decision-making in late-life adults and may add to our understanding of why older adults are more susceptible to financial abuse. These results suggest a need to consider death anxiety as a moderating variable when developing and implementing policies and services that are geared towards older adults.

Towards a governance approach to determinants of reseller management success

PurposeIn mature global business-to-business (B2B) product markets, management of external sales channels, governed by contractual relationships, is a key determinant of business performance. However, existing sales channel management literature lacks focus on contractual governance and reseller management success. The purpose of the study is to systematically review different governance theories in relation to sales channel management and to show which factors are the most influential in making or keeping external sales channels effective.Design/methodology/approachA case study on a large B2B information and communication technology (ICT) company is used to reflect on the way the different theoretical governance perspectives explain sales channel management success. Interviews and mini-questionnaires were used to collect data.FindingsExpressions of interdependence and equality alongside persevered personal relationships are important in managing daily business activities and in avoiding bad will at the reseller’s grass-root level. Future-oriented planning, long-term-oriented support and jointly set incentive systems are important for reseller management. Degree of professional management sets resellers apart through shifts in power balance.Research limitations/implicationsA multi-theory governance perspective offers a holistic view over reseller management and provides a comprehensive view over different sales channel management issues and their relative importance.Practical implicationsThe findings highlight the importance of long-term orientation and cooperation in setting up a reseller management system to gain and nurture distributors’ trust and commitment towards the manufacturer.Originality/valueThe study is the first to comprehensively use governance perspective in studying reseller management.

GIS를 활용한 광주광역시 도시재생방향에 대한 기초연구

The purpose of this study is to present an appropriate approach to urban regeneration by analyzing Gwangju Metropolitan City. For the study, residential area of Asia Culture Complex was analyzed based on GIS. The areas concerned were categorized and looked into by their Situation based on the analysis of urban infrastructure state. However, as the architectural space within a city are limited, and accurate assessment of them is needed. The residential areas have the following characteristics. They become an aging and dilapidating residential and socially underprivileged-concentrated area. It is necessary to set up a direction for a future-oriented planning for the development of these areas. Along with a decreasing population, it is important to improve the urban architecture environment for the elderly in an aging society. The economic growth of a city if necessary for the future. Therefore, the criteria for the assessment is required. And the subsequent setting-up and planning of a future direction for a city is badly needed. After that, an accurate assessment of a city called for. City space allows for various interpretations. As the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer, a wealth is concentrated on one district or an area.

Facing the future: memory as an evolved system for planning future acts.

All organisms capable of long-term memory are necessarily oriented toward the future. We propose that one of the most important adaptive functions of long-term episodic memory is to store information about the past in the service of planning for the personal future. Because a system should have especially efficient performance when engaged in a task that makes maximal use of its evolved machinery, we predicted that future-oriented planning would result in especially good memory relative to other memory tasks. We tested recall performance of a word list, using encoding tasks with different temporal perspectives (e.g., past, future) but a similar context. Consistent with our hypothesis, future-oriented encoding produced superior recall. We discuss these findings in light of their implications for the thesis that memory evolved to enable its possessor to anticipate and respond to future contingencies that cannot be known with certainty.

How Siblings Resolve Their Conflicts: The Importance of First Offers, Planning, and Limited Opposition

Sixty-four sibling dyads (4-12 years old; 61% males; 83% European-American) were asked to resolve an ongoing conflict. Older siblings provided leadership by suggesting, modifying, justifying, and requesting assent to plans for conflict resolution. Younger siblings countered and disagreed, but also contributed to planning and agreed to their siblings' plans. Compromises were associated with first offers that met both children's goals, future-oriented planning, and limited opposition. Win-loss outcomes followed offers favoring only one child and arguments over older siblings' plans. Conflicts were unresolved when negotiations included frequent accusations and opposition, but little planning. Thus mutually beneficial conflict resolution required that children shift focus from debating past wrongs to developing plans to meet their unrealized goals in future interaction.

Positive coping and mastery in a rehabilitation setting

The objective of this study was to examine the predictive value of positive coping in relation to behavioral outcomes. Positive coping focuses on goal setting and preparative behavior in response to distress. The participants were 228 in-patients in a rehabilitation hospital following joint replacement. The average age of participants was 67.3 years old, 71% were women and two-thirds were married. Sixty percent had a hip replacement and 40% had a knee replacement. The study was designed so that at Time 1, two scales were used: the proactive coping subscale of the Proactive Coping Inventory and the Getting on with Life scale. Proactive coping measures future-oriented planning and goal-setting strategies that an individual develops when confronting stress. Getting on with Life assesses feelings about resuming activities and social relationships that give one day-to-day pleasure. At Time 2, behavioral outcomes were assessed using the 2-Minute Walk (2 MW) Test and a functional independence measure. In the 2 MW Test, participants were instructed to walk at a comfortable pace and the distance walked in 2 min was measured in meters. The functional independence measure was based on average ratings of participants' independence behavior by trained hospital personnel in different areas. Results indicated that proactive coping and Getting on with Life were significantly related to behavioral outcomes. In conclusion, the results illustrate the value of positive coping in a rehabilitation setting.

A cautionary note

I am concerned that the hope of preventing second and higher order pregnancies to teenage mothers Klerman and colleagues' recent report [1] raises will spark a flurry of costly, time and labor intensive investments in home visitation programs. While this intervention strategy may prove beneficial for other reasons. [2], two consideration should give us pause about its unique utility as a solution to this tenacious problem. First, although the three interventions the authors compare were randomized trials, the populations that were randomized were very different. Teens could only enter the postpartum phase of the nurse home visitation trials at delivery [2]. By contrast, many of those randomized in the other two trials were already 6- to-9 months postpartum when the Klerman life-table time-clock started [3]. By eliminating some of those at highest risk for conception and capturing others at a point in their reproductive careers where they may have already experienced contraceptive side-effects or boyfriend cajoling that make the consequences of conception less onerous than those of daily contraceptive use this “rolling admissions” policy creates a selection bias, the effects of which are impossible to estimate. Because this methodologic problem calls the validity of these trials into question, it will be critical to level the playing field before dismissing the intervention strategies they were designed to test. Secondly, while the gain in the “Memphis” trial was statistically significant, with at least 20% of those in the intervention group conceiving during the first and 42% during the second postpartum year, (incident rates comparable to those quoted nationally in the absence of any intervention [4]), it is far less impressive from a clinical standpoint. Indeed the findings have been sufficiently consistently so across the various trials of this intervention [2], that based on the results of the present analysis it seems safest to conclude that intensive pre- and post-natal home visitation is not the key to this Pandoran box. Nonetheless because the therapeutically optimal combination of incentives and disincentives remains elusive I agree with the authors that we need to continue to ask why. However the critical question is not the one they pose: “Why (do) teenage mothers choose to have closely spaced second births ?” (1), (most will say they don't and the conversation will likely stop there [5]). Rather what we need to ask ourselves and our teenage patients is why these young women whose carefully braided hair and beautifully acryliced nails testify to their cognitive capacity for deductive reasoning and future-oriented planning are unwilling to take the steps necessary to prevent conceptions they say they and their boyfriends, at a minimum wish to postpone.

Decreasing nurse staffing costs in a hospital setting: development and support of core staff stability.

The nursing shortage is a well-documented phenomenon that has impacted health care settings woldwide. A corresponding magnitudinal cost factor is linked directly to this dilemma, health care organizations struggle to meet professional nurse staffing, safety and quality requirements. The acute care hospital setting in South Florida is one of the hardest hit by the bedside nurse shortage. Nurse staffing presents as a cost accounting challenge that demands the application of management control systems by creative, energetic, and financially savvy nursing system administrators. Future-oriented planning is critical if repercussions of a foreseeable progressive worsening of this condition are to be avoided and control of future patient outcomes achieved.

Self-Study: Organizational Resource in Staff Development Preparation

Human service organizations today must achieve maximal use of existing resources, including staff. A cost-effective model of staff development shows how staff can undertake organization-wide self-study. Benefits include heightened morale and an emphasis on future-oriented planning.

The argument for more future-oriented planning

Abstract Planning, and practically all forms of decisionmaking, are concerned with the future. The future, unless we adopt deterministic philosophies, is uncertain and therefore difficult to plan for. Through the processes of change it is likely to be different from the past; existing and past knowledge and experience are only a partial guide to decisionmaking. The inclusion of a future dimension based on careful thought about possible future development offers a new tool to the decisionmaker that should not be overlooked.

Future opportunities for open space

Bradley, M.D., 1975. Future opportunities for open space. Landscape Plann., 2: 13–22. Open space planning and regulation has recently assumed an important role in environmental policy. Although defined geographically, open space is now appreciated for its functional uses and values. Traditional methods of acquisition and protection are being expanded by future-oriented planning, changing property law, and environmental impact assessment.