Towards a methodological approach: theorising scenario thinking as a social practice

Abstract

Purpose

The aim of this paper is to draw on the social theory of practice to show scenario thinking as an everyday practice and how the practice could be theorised at the meso‐level.

Design/methodology/approach

Counterfactual analysis, scenario analysis and peripheral vision are presented as the constituting methodological triad through which scenario thinking comes into representation.

Findings

Scenario thinking is a temporally emerging everyday organizational practice. By placing emphasis on the mundane and taken for granted activities that come together to form the nexus of the practice, often deep underlying structures of organizational behaviour contributing to scenario thinking can be theorised.

Research limitations/implications

The practice conceptualisation of scenario thinking inverts and challenges existing management and practitioners' conventional understanding of the practice as an episodic phenomenon in waiting to be facilitated by an expert with specific end points and conformity.

Practical implications

Foresight practitioners and researchers can use this as an analytical starting point for the study and theorising of scenario thinking in self organized groups.

Originality/value

The paper provides a new angle of vision to extend understanding of the development and theorising of scenario thinking in autonomous working groups.

Citation

Sarpong, D. (2011), "Towards a methodological approach: theorising scenario thinking as a social practice", Foresight, Vol. 13 No. 2, pp. 4-17. https://doi.org/10.1108/14636681111126210

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