Back to the Future? A Caution

Alex Wright
Additional contact information
Alex Wright: Audencia Business School

Post-Print from HAL

Abstract: This Counterpoint cautions that future making research treats the future too simplistically and fails to acknowledge the fundamental uncertainty inherent in all futures work. First, future making scholarship overlooks existing academic research, in which similar concerns have been pursued, empirically and conceptually, for years. Second, utopian futures are considered achievable if only actors have a vision of what they wish to create. Finally, most future making statements around grand challenges rely on little more than hope, failing to account for the complex relationalities shaping them. I substantiate my argument by drawing on the scenario planning literature, Knightian uncertainty, and anthropology of future research. I also critique the Point's call for future making scholars to adopt practice-based approaches (Wenzel et al., forthcoming) in their empirical inquiries, arguing that the 'as Practice' move in management studies is yet to achieve its aspirations. Additionally, I caution against the other Counterpoint in this debate that future making requires the realization of desired and emancipatory futures (Comi et al., forthcoming), as this view is too restrictive for broad and deep future making theorizing to emerge.

Keywords: Future making; futures; grand challenges; practice; scenario planning; uncertainty (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
Note: View the original document on HAL open archive server: https://audencia.hal.science/hal-05008435v1
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Published in Journal of Management Studies, In press, ⟨10.1111/joms.13226⟩

Downloads: (external link)
https://audencia.hal.science/hal-05008435v1/document (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hal:journl:hal-05008435

DOI: 10.1111/joms.13226

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Post-Print from HAL
Bibliographic data for series maintained by CCSD ().