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Please join us for our symposium on organizational foresight!

  • 1.  Please join us for our symposium on organizational foresight!

    Posted 07-17-2023 05:31

    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 FergnaniRabat Business School


    Playing with temporal, social, and contextual boundaries
    Britt SmuldersEindhoven U. of Technology


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


    Organizational foresight: The changing role of the board
    Adam Vigdor GordonAU


    Antecedents to longer-term industry foresight
    Daniel WildeThe Wharton School, U. of Pennsylvania



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    Alex Fergnani
    Associate Professor of Strategy, Rabat Business School
    Fetzer MSR Scholar, Academy of Management

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