How Organizations Manage the Future: Theoretical Perspectives and Empirical Insights [Hardcover]

This pioneering edited collection explores the question of how organizations manage the future. Moving away from traditional research which focuses on the past, the editors problematize the future as an inherent but under-examined part of organizing. Arguing that the future acts as both a driver of and a performative result of organizing, the book asks how organizations conceptualize and deal with the future and what processes are in place to handle things to come. With empirical research examining the practices, discourses and concepts that play key roles, organizations and their approaches are scrutinized. A timely compendium of theoretical discussion and practical implications on the relevance of the future, this book is essential reading for those interested in organization, sociology and management studies.

1. Introduction: Managing the Future  Foundations and Perspectives; Matthias Wenzel and Hannes Kr?mer.- Part I. Philosophical Perspectives.- 2. From Defuturization to Futurization and Back Again? A System-Theoretical Perspective to Analyze Decision-Making;  Victoria von Groddeck.- 3. What's New? Temporality in Practice Theory and Pragmatism; Anders Buch and Iben S. Stjerne.- 4.  Creativity in/of Organizations for Managing Things to Come: Lessons to be Learnt from Philosophy;  G?nther Ortmann and J?rg Sydow.- 5. Organizational Futurity: Being and Knowing in the Engagement with What is Yet to Come; Seelan Naidoo.- Part II. Theoretical and Methodological Perspectives.- 6. Open(ing up) For the Future: Practising Open Strategy and Open Innovation to Cope with Uncertainty; Maximilian Heimst?dt and Georg Reischauer.- 7. Antenarratives in Ongoing Strategic Change: Using the Story Index to Capture Daunting and Optimistic Futures; Tommi P. Auvinen, Pasi Sajasalo, Teppo Sintonen, Tuomo Takala and Marko J?rvenp??.- 8.&ly