Organizational Foresight Research Articles

Exploring individual foresight: Implications for organizational learning and innovation in firms

Corporate foresight (CF) is considered an organizational capability that contributes to the innovativeness and sustained competitive advantage of firms, particularly in the presence of organizational learning (OL). The business literature positions individuals as important to the CF process but it provides limited clarification about how individuals do foresight or, more specifically, how they experience foresight in organizations. Embracing the resource-based view of the firm, this study provides understanding of how individuals use tacit knowledge in individual foresight (IF) and engage in OL mechanisms to contribute to innovativeness. The micro-foundations of IF are examined to determine how employees experience IF in an organizational context. Adopting a phenomenological approach, 27 interviews were conducted with employees across the finance and insurance and utilities industries, resulting in a theoretical framework of IF. Examining the lifeworld of individuals as they experience foresight revealed a rich tapestry of both personal and intra-organizational social capital interactions useful in demonstrating the role of IF for innovation in firms. Storytelling, mentorship, and group reflection, supported by appropriate culture, leadership, and human resource strategies, confirm the value of fostering IF to encourage innovation. This study advances foresight research by broadening understanding of IF from an employee perspective—specifically, how IF is experienced and can foster OL and innovation outcomes for firms. Implications for firms and opportunities for a future research agenda are proposed.

Organizational foresight: Strategies for anticipation and preparation in a constantly changing business world

En un entorno empresarial caracterizado por su dinamismo y constante evolución, las organizaciones enfrentan el desafío perenne de anticiparse y adaptarse a los cambios que moldean su contexto operativo. La prospectiva organizacional emerge como un enfoque estratégico fundamental para abordar esta problemática, al permitir a las organizaciones anticipar y prepararse para futuros posibles, identificando tendencias, oportunidades y amenazas en su entorno. Este enfoque estratégico no solo implica la observación y análisis de los cambios actuales en el entorno empresarial, sino también la exploración de posibles escenarios futuros y la evaluación de su impacto en la organización. En este contexto, este artículo explora las estrategias clave de la prospectiva organizacional y su aplicación práctica en la gestión estratégica de las organizaciones, destacando su papel fundamental en la formulación de estrategias proactivas y en la toma de decisiones informadas y estratégicas. Se discuten además los beneficios de la prospectiva organizacional para la anticipación y mitigación de riesgos potenciales, así como su contribución al logro de los objetivos empresariales en un mundo empresarial caracterizado por la incertidumbre y el cambio constante.

Expanding foresight practitioner excellence: Assessment of practitioner evaluation capacity

AbstractForesight evaluation is an emerging area of evaluation practice. In 2021, the Association of Professional Futurists (APF) conducted a survey of foresight practitioners to assess their capacity to conduct quality evaluation. Results suggest a moderate level of evaluation capacity exists amongst the APF membership, though the use of evaluation is low overall. Respondents with evaluation experience report being able to do both process and impact evaluations. Additionally, foresight practitioners understand the importance of evaluation, particularly to improve their foresight practice, and use evaluation findings for multiple reasons. However, respondents indicate the barriers to the evaluation of foresight are numerous. One group of factors is related to a lack of knowledge about evaluation and how to collect and analyze data related to the evaluation of foresight. Other barriers were attributed to the perceived lack of appreciation of the value of evaluation of foresight by clients and funders. Lastly, study findings speak to the need for a multifaceted approach with diverse resources to strengthen individual and organizational foresight evaluation capacity.

Establishing a Strategic Foresight Learning and Action Network (SF-LAN) at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)

This article chronicles the experiences and lessons learned in establishing strategic foresight (SF) in a U.S. government organization. This has value to the field of foresight, which is seeking to establish foresight in organizations as an intentional capability to explore alternative futures and work towards preferred futures. This work also has particular value to other federal agencies establishing or considering establishing a SF practice.

Addressing the loss of exploratory innovation: the roles of organizational foresight and strategic orientation

PurposeThis study aims to explore how to overcome and address the loss of exploratory innovation, thereby achieving greater success in exploratory innovation. This phenomenon of loss occurs when enterprises decrease their investment in and engagement with exploratory innovation, ultimately leading to an insufficient amount of such innovation efforts. Drawing on dynamic capabilities, this study investigates the relationship between organizational foresight and exploratory innovation and examines the moderating role of breakthrough orientation/financial orientation.Design/methodology/approachThis study used survey data collected from 296 Chinese high-tech companies in multiple industries and sectors.FindingsThe evidence produced by this study reveals that three elements of organizational foresight (i.e. environmental scanning capabilities, strategic selection capabilities and integrating capabilities) positively influence exploratory innovation. Furthermore, this positive effect is strengthened in the context of a high-breakthrough orientation. Moreover, the relationships among environmental scanning capabilities, strategic selection capabilities and exploratory innovation become weaker as an enterprise’s financial orientation increases, whereas a strong financial orientation does not affect the relationship between integrating capabilities and exploratory innovation.Research limitations/implicationsAmbidexterity is key to successful enterprise innovation. Compared with exploitative innovation, it is by no means easy to engage in exploratory innovation, which is especially important in high-tech companies. While the loss of exploratory innovation has been observed, few empirical studies have explored ways to promote exploratory innovation more effectively. A key research implication of this study pertains to the role of organizational foresight in the improvement of exploratory innovation in the context of high-tech companies.Originality/valueThis paper contributes to the broader literature on exploratory innovation and organizational foresight and provides practical guidance for high-tech companies regarding ways of avoiding the loss of exploratory innovation and becoming more successful at exploratory innovation.

The Role of Strategic Awareness in Developing the Practice of Strategic Foresight in Business Organizations -Epistemological Perspective-

Current research aimed at investigating the role of strategic awareness in developing the practice of strategic foresight in business organizations; in an attempt to cope with an intellectual dilemma summarized in that the practice of strategic foresight is still very limited in business organizations in general and in Arab business organizations in particular, for three reasons, first: its novelty and lacking its awareness; second: anxiety towards the future; third: nature of consideration to the future. Furthermore, to achieve the foregoing, the qualitative approach was used employing the epistemological prospective, because this prospective fathoms on rooting the knowledge for exploring factors, variables, and dimensions affecting the stimulation to use the strategic foresight, and reduce the barriers to practicing this prospective in the lived reality thru stimulating out-of-the-box thinking on the one hand, and increase the cognitive movement sensibly, analytically, critically, synthetically, and evaluative on the other hand. Yet, as for the study sample, it was purposive consisting of many studies, literature, documents, and documented experiments that were predetermined and purposively. However, the research reached a number of conclusions most notably: that strategic awareness plays a (synergistic) role to strategic foresight from the realism simulation perspective. This research depends on the reliable knowledge already gathered from people of knowledge and books. Whereas, strategic awareness plays the (influential) role of strategic awareness from the rationalism simulation perspective which uses logical knowledge that inquires into the fact thru knowing the cause. The research has presented several recommendations first of which: the necessity to invest in the relation of strategic awareness with strategic foresight to activate the synergistic role thru stimulating critical thinking where this type of thinking would help in developing the area of strategic foresight. As well as to activate the influential role thru developing creative thinking, because this thinking encourages the detection of new relations, the adoption of authentic solutions, and the capability to sense problems.

Organizational Foresight: An Emerging and Diversified Topic in Search for Synthesis

Organizational Foresight: An Emerging and Diversified Topic in Search for Synthesis

Managing Variable Cyber Environments with Organizational Foresight and Resilience Thinking

Combining business continuity management (BCM) and systematic cyber threat intelligence (CTI) can improve cyber situational awareness to support decision-making through the phases of the resilience cycle (plan, absorb, recover, adapt) to ensure the continuity of organizational operations when encountered by cyber disruptions. End-user needs, human factors, high ethical standards, and social impacts can best be adapted when professionals from different fields work together with end-users to refine and co-develop selected tools into a platform. A resilience assessment that combines BCM and CTI enables 1) quick or detailed assessment of the investigated industry and its critical processes, 2) measurement of performance goals based on information received from end users, where artificial intelligence-based self-learning approaches can be used for functional descriptions, 3) information on the sensitivity of the investigated industry and vulnerability and 4) resilience and BCM throughout the entire resilience cycle. A new Horizon Europe project DYNAMO (Dynamic Resilience Assessment Method including a combined Business Continuity Management and Cyber Threat Intelligence solution for Critical Sectors) works towards combining BCM and CTI to generate a situational picture for decision support. Having this in mind, certain cybersecurity and BCM tools will be developed, refined, and integrated into the DYNAMO platform to provide decision support and awareness to chief information security officers, cybersecurity practitioners, and other stakeholders. This paper reports a case study that explores how combining CTI and BCM can help in the case of a cyber-attack. The research material consists of the news articles by the largest newspaper in Finland, Helsingin Sanomat (HS) of how the cyber attack against the therapy center Vastaamo progressed during the first week after the attack. The results show that cyber threat intelligence when flexibly integrated into the BCM approach could create better conditions for improved organizational foresight to react to unpredictable cyber threats to ensure business continuity.

The role of visioning in business network strategizing

Visioning the future is an essential aspect of strategizing. However, how managers make sense of their networked business environment, future changes in it, and how this visioning informs their interaction and networking has hardly been explored. Drawing on organizational foresight and business network research, we enhance the visioning concept by conducting an abductive qualitative case study on its role in business network strategizing. By comparing forward-looking and backward-looking perspectives of managers in companies within a particular business network, the study reveals what managers can foresee, what limits their visioning, and to what extent visioning informs network strategizing. Our findings suggest that visioning helps managers to openly contemplate the future, to envisage structural changes, detect probable trends, and form strategic intentions, but individual cognitive frameworks and network constraints limit their visioning. The study contributes to the current sensemaking view of network strategizing by proposing a conceptual model where visioning forms an important step in between reflection and networking, and by showing how managers consciously prepare for the future.

МОНІТОРИНГ ФІНАНСОВОГО СТАНУ СТРАХОВОЇ КОМПАНІЇ

Theoretical and methodological approaches to assessing the financial condition of well-known insurance organizations for the purpose of monitoring their condition are considered in the article for the stable operation of insurance companies. Monitoring in the anti-crisis management of an insurance company still remains an underdeveloped problem, therefore the issues of developing a methodology and analytical apparatus for building financial monitoring models, developing analytical and predictive procedures for the strategic development of an insurance organization are urgent. Taking into account methodical approaches to the assessment of the financial condition of the insurance organization, an analysis of the activities of insurers and timely identification of weaknesses in the activities of insurers was carried out. At the same time, a SWOT analysis of insurers' activities was carried out in order to choose strategic directions for their development. SWOT analysis is a necessary element of research, a mandatory preliminary stage in the preparation of any level of strategic plans. Thus, a well-conducted SWOT analysis makes it possible to identify both tactical and strategic problems, the further analysis of which will be the basis for developing a system for managing the effectiveness of the insurance company's financial activities. In accordance with the obtained results, insurers are offered to choose a renewal strategy. It involves a continuous process of searching for and implementing new management methods aimed at the consistent improvement of various areas of the insurer's activity. Strategy development will take into account adaptation to the external environment, internal coordination and organizational foresight. Therefore, strategic programs should be made flexible enough to be reoriented or modified if necessary. The need to use the main approaches of financial monitoring to develop the insurance company's development strategy is substantiated.

Perceived value of organizational foresight processes: effects of the illusion of control and individual foresight

This research proposes an investigation into the reasons for low adherence for foresight processes in organizations. Studies involving the relevance of foresight processes have become increasingly frequent, driven by an environment of increasing volatility, uncertainty, ambiguity, and complexity. Despite the importance of the topic, which seeks to enable organizations to anticipate threats and opportunities from the environment through methods, thereis still little adherence to these practices, which justifies the purpose of this investigation. To achieve the proposed objective, a questionnaire was structured. Then, it was applied via electronic survey, allowing the observation of the effects of the illusion of control and individual foresight activities on the perceived value of formal foresight processes in organizations. The data were analyzed based on structural equations modeling with estimation through Partial Least Square (PLS). The sample was composed of 185 executives from the financial and technological sectors, and a reduction to the perceived value of foresight processes was identified, as a result of the illusion of control and individual practices of these activities. These results contribute to the understanding of the low adherence of foresight processes, from the perspective of cognitive biases attributed to the decision-maker.

Identity Wind Tunneling: A method for discovering an organization’s strategic identity using scenarios

AbstractIn a turbulent environment characterized by unexpected events, such as the COVID‐19 pandemic, a sharp oil price decline, and dramatic economic crises, many organizations face not only challenges but also an “identity crisis” as they are unable to respond to the question "who are we as an organization?" Some organizations may concurrently hold multiple identities without being clear on whether these are shared and agreed upon, and on their role in potentially disruptive futures. In response to this challenge and addressing a methodological gap in the broader futures and foresight field, we draw on both futures and foresight as well as management and organization literature to propose a new organizational foresight method: Identity Wind Tunneling (IWT). Designed as an enhancement of wind tunneling approaches, IWT allows an organization to understand, test, and manage multiple organizational identities. Furthermore, IWT facilitates the alignment of organizational identities across a range of possible futures created during a scenario planning process with the ultimate goal of finding a strategic identity. This represents the central, enduring, and distinctive role that the organization embodies while pursuing a long‐term and holistic strategic direction that is robust across all scenarios. The strategic identity either clarifies or reimagines the identity of the organization. The paper provides a step‐by‐step explanation of how to implement IWT and ​presents a case study of its application. The method is also presented with a series of open‐source templates created on the whiteboard collaborative platform Miro (https://miro.com/app/board/o9J_kqakYjs=/).

Strategic Technology Foresight in Organizations through Quality Management and Business Excellence Concepts: A Case Study

We are living in an era of accelerated change and uncertainties where disruption in all aspects of our modern lives is the norm. In such context, foresight supported by quality management systems and organizational excellence frameworks comes into prominence as strategic toolset to face these social and economic challenges in organizations and societies and ensure sustainability. Foresight has been widely used by organizations as a strategy to support leadership and decision makers in situations that involve big uncertainties towards the future. The present paper is a conceptual study in the sense it discusses the relationship between organization`s foresight capability and quality management and organization excellence approaches. Essentially, we will attempt to answer the fundamental research question: “To what extent quality management and organizational excellence approaches and models lead to enabling and building future foresight capability of modern organizations?” For that purpose, a survey questionnaire was developed based on literature review, and administered online to leadership of Saudi organizations national wide. Statistical analysis performed. The analysis showed that quality management and organization excellence frameworks implementation in Saudi organizations would be an enabler for successful foresight implementation. This led to pronounce that in order to achieve their strategic objectives in line with the national vision 2030, Saudi organizations should implement quality management systems such as ISO 9001:2015 and the national quality award (KAQA). It is believed that the paper opens a discussion between quality professionals and foresight experts on the potential link between quality management principals and foresight capability in modern organizations operating in an accelerated change environment and disruption.

The Effect of Organizational Resilience and Strategic Foresight on Firm Performance: Competitive Advantage as Mediating Variable.

The pharmaceutical industry’s performance in the global economy has been affected by the growing competition associated with globalization, economic liberalization, and the trade-related aspect of the intellectual property rights (TRIPS) agreement. To maintain performance, organizations need to consider strategic foresight (SF) and organizational resilience (OR) to anticipate future trends and survive crises. By proposing a conceptual framework, this study examines the relationship between organizational resilience, strategic foresight, competitive advantage (CA), and firm performance (FP). A conceptual framework was developed to assess the hypotheses in the pharmaceutical industry. Then, partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) was applied to investigate the relationships quantitatively. The results of structural equation modeling (SEM) based on the data generated from 202 completed questionnaires by the pharmaceutical companies in Iran demonstrate that OR, SF, and CA have significant positive impacts on FP. Moreover, CA partially mediates the relationship between OR and FP and also between SF and FP. The findings of this study enrich the existing literature by demonstrating that early detection of environmental change and resilient manner assist Iranian pharmaceutical firms to survive if joining the WTO. This is the first study that examines the direct and indirect effect of OR and SF on the FP, considering the mediating impact of CA. This investigation attempts to address the mechanisms through which OR and SF affect organizational performance, especially in the pharmaceutical industry.

50 Years of corporate and organizational foresight: Looking back and going forward

On the occasion of the 50th anniversary of Technology Forecasting & Social Change, we review the evolution of corporate and organizational foresight within the journal and look ahead to the coming decade. We apply a systematic literature review process to identify the major contributions in this area of foresight theory and practice spanning five decades and present a thematic summary of these articles. We reveal the concerns of authors as they have sought to apply foresight in corporations, organizations, and institutions; how they have attempted to resolve the concerns; and the progress the authors have made. We discuss how these authors have cumulatively defined and evolved this portion of the strategic foresight field, from integrating technology with market forecasting, to expanding forecast approaches to include multiple futures and integrating foresight to create agile and adaptive organizations. We use this as a base for discussing current priorities and future challenges in corporate and organizational foresight and suggest three trajectories for further research: (a) further advancing organizational foresight practices; (b) connecting organizational foresight to strategy practice and theory; (c) and connecting organizational foresight to innovation, engineering, and R&D management practices and theory.

Managing the survivor syndrome as scenario planning methodology … and it matters!

PurposeThe importance of foresight is discussed in relation to why traditional scenario planning methodology is problematic at achieving it. The “survivor syndrome” is borrowed from the human resources literature and presented as a metaphor for foresight to illustrate how better “scenarios” can be achieved by understanding the syndrome better. A practice perspective is given on the use of a seven-theme framework as a method of interviewing survivors. The paper aims to discuss this issue.Design/methodology/approachThe paper draws from an empirical research that took place during the 2008 global financial crisis to illustrate the richness of the insights that would otherwise not be obtainable through scenario planning methods that do not involve “survivors.” In that research, semi-structured interviews were employed with key personnel at multiple levels of one private and one public organization that had undergone a redundancy process at the time of the crisis to explore its effect on the remaining workforce.FindingsThe “survivor syndrome” itself would be minimized if managers consider the feelings of survivors with more open communication. Survivors in private firms were found generally to experience anxiety, but are more likely to remain more motivated, than their counterparts in the public sector. These detailed insights create more accurate “scenarios” in scenario planning exercises.Originality/valueOrganizational performance can be better enhanced if the survivor syndrome can be better managed. In turn, scenario planning, as a form of organizational foresight, is better practiced through managing the survivor syndrome. Scenario planning methodology has proliferated well in the human resource management literature.

Attention and foresight in organizations

AbstractThe challenges of dealing with the future include its vast scope, in time and breadth, as well as its deep uncertainty. In an age when organizational attention is increasingly limited, deciding how much to focus on the future is a central leadership challenge. At one extreme, a firm can devote massive efforts to rigorous analyses of trends and uncertainties to narrow the range of possible outcomes; at the other, it can do very little of this, wait to see what happens, and then improvise as needed. A wide range of postures exists between these two extremes, reflecting the complexity of issues involved, the firm's strategy plus the costs and benefits of a focus on the future versus the present.

Narrative foresight in technical organizations: epistemological and methodological contributions from a practice of scenario method in Argentina

The following paper explores the experience of narrative Foresight applied to the use of the scenario method in Argentina in the light of the contributions of critical Future Studies concerning the narrative dimension in the last years. This research is specifically focused on analyzing applications of the scenario method in an institute of technology development in Argentina (“Instituto Nacional de Tecnología Agropecuaria”) using the causal layered analysis as a method of examination and adopting the narrative Foresight approach. We analyze how the narrative approach permeates the scenario method in the process of development, thus increasing the potential usefulness and impact of the method. Moreover, we also reflect on the utility of this approach in order to increase the strategic vision of complex organizations which are shaped, to a great extent, by linear schemes of thought where the empiric dimension of reality operates with a value of truth.

Journeys and destinations: using longitudinal analysis to explore how third sector organisational governance helps to navigate sustainable futures

Since the economic downturn, the third sector in the UK has been put under pressure financially. Many snapshot studies of the sector as a whole and its component parts have concluded that the problems that third sector organisations have are due largely to financial pressures. This article challenges such assumptions by focusing on organisational governance. Drawing on longitudinal evidence from the Northern Rock Foundation’s Third Sector Trends Study in North East England and Cumbria, which ran from 2008 to 2015, it is shown that focusing too much on organisational income, as a proxy for success, skews understanding of how ‘well-governed’ third sector organisations operate. The article presents a new methodology and analytical approach to make informed judgements, drawing on longitudinal qualitative and quantitative data – about organisational foresight, enterprise, capability and impact – in order to get a better understanding of the relationship between governance, organisational sustainability and success.

An Operational Process for Organizational Foresight and Anticipation

A coherent theoretical framework is introduced that adopts Manoa School’s four alternative futures to help make sense and investigate the four building blocks of the future, which are trends, events, images, and actions in three layers of organization, region, and the globe in terms of social, technological, environmental, economic, and political areas. Qualitative system dynamics mapping also provides insight into the systematic interactions such as long chains of perceived causation, and identification of reinforcing and balancing loops in addition to the overall system behavior, and the underlying story, in each alternative future. Linking strategic foresight to concrete specific actions is accomplished by referring to a professionally developed horizon scanning and monitoring database. Each news item is analyzed through an operational process that (1) uncovers the dynamics of each scenario seen from alternative mental models of analysts; (2) assesses the eventual impacts on the value system, that is, strategic preferences, through searching for cause and effect chains that influence them; and (3) encourages creativity in suggestion of concrete necessary actions in each part of the organizational chart to sustain profitability, to achieve other values, and to prepare thoughtful practical responses to upcoming challenges and opportunities.