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The purpose of this article is to clarify the difference between futuring and visioning and to suggest how they may be better implemented as complementary approaches to strategic decision‐making.

A veteran of more than 80 scenario development projects, the author describes the tools required and the best practices for defining the mission, setting the goals, developing a vision, and making plans that move a business beyond the familiar of today to the uncertainties of tomorrow

Offers examples of companies that used futuring and visioning tools to prepare product scenarios that anticipated the future, unarticulated voice of the customer.

Guidance for leadership: Recognize the difference between futuring and visioning, and do both in a complementary way. Encourage, if not require, people to think about the future of both customers and products. Set up a futuring unit to prepare trend monitoring and scanning, trend analysis, build forecasting models, and prepare narrations on the future of the external business environment for the entire company. Set up a program whereby employees have opportunities to participate in visioning exercises, especially when the topic question involves visioning at their own operational levels. Use the products of futuring as a frame of reference for visioning exercises. Develop a vision for the company based upon wide participation and using both futuring and visioning. Consistently articulate the vision for both external and internal audiences.

The article provides guidance about the process of learning about the future so that organizations can routinely integrate futuring and visioning into a vision statement and strategic plans

The purpose of this paper is to develop queer futuring strategies that take into consideration adult learners’ needs in support of transformational and sustainable change for social justice and equity.

This paper develops the construct of queer futuring, which engages queer theory perspectives in a critical futures framework. Adult learning theory informs queer futuring strategies to support adults and inform education to sustain transformational changes for social justice and equity.

With social justice in mind, queer futuring opens spaces and supports opportunities for adults to engage in learning activities that address historical and layered forms of oppression. Building on learning needs of adults to create meaning and make a difference in the world around them, queer futuring strategies provide tools for activism, advocacy and building new relationships and ways of being-with.

The sustainability of our current system of growth and financial well-being has already been called into question, and the current pandemic provides tangible evidence of values for contribution, connection and concern for others, even in the midst of political strife and conspiracy theories. These shifting values and values conflict of society point to the questions of equity and narrative inclusivity, challenging and disrupting dominant paradigms and structures that have perpetuated power and authority “over” rather than social participation “with” and harmony. Queer futuring is just the beginning of a bigger conversation about transforming society.

Queering spaces from the perspective of queer futuring keeps the adult learner and queering processes in mind with an emphasis on affiliation and belonging, identity and resistance and politics and change.

The authors suggest queer futuring makes room for opening spaces of creativity and insight as traditional and reified rationality is problematized, further supporting development of emergentist relationships with the future as spaces of possibility and innovation.

Queer futuring connects ethical and pragmatic approaches to futuring for creating the kinds of futures needed to decolonize, delegitimize and disrupt hegemonic and categorical thinking and social structures. It builds on queer theory’s critical perspective, engaging critical futures strategies with adult learners at the forefront.

The implications of Africa’s growth and urbanisation are the subject of much interest and speculation, and are central to the vision of the African Union’s Agenda 2063. The purpose of this paper is to compare the dominant perspectives on urban futures in Africa to emerging directions in futures and urban thinking, suggesting alternative policy approaches for Africa’s urban agenda.

The paper scans and sorts through how Africa’s growth and urbanisation are being understood and framed by various futurists and other futures-commentators. It takes the form of a discussion of the issue of how, why and by whom a series of data points, trends and their implications are being computed and combined, and with what validity, so to inform policy and planning responses.

The paper argues from its findings that futuring about urban Africa has been intense, but not particularly objective, neutral or even empirically grounded. Emerging directions in anticipation theorisation and experimental approaches such as “urban tinkering” are proposed as possibly offering alternative approaches to how nations and policymakers might think and act on urban Africa’s futures.

This original interrogation of which and how actors anticipate Africa’s urban futures could be used to expand beyond the urban visions, assumptions and futuring conventions reflected in Africa’s Agenda 2063, as well as processes advancing the global sustainable development goals and UNHabitat’s new urban agenda.

The purpose of this paper is to argue that human resource development (HRD) needs to embrace and include futures and foresight learning (FFL) as a new addition to its field of theorising and practice. The question to consider is: How can FFL become a new feature of HRD? A key part of the authors’ argument is that the inclusion of FFL will enable HRD to add to the success of any organisation and make a vital contribution to the management of people at work.

This paper firstly considers some of the debates surrounding the meaning of HRD. The authors suggest that instability of the time serves to disturb any comforts that have been created in HRD and that there is a need to consider how there might be different futures for what we still call HRD in research, practice and praxis. This paper then considers how FFL might become one possibility for expanding the existing boundaries of HRD. The authors characterise futures and foresight as a learning process, which provides new but complementary features to what is already considered as HRD. This paper will show how FFL can lead to organisation's success and the way this can be achieved.

There is a wide variety of meanings of the term HRD; however, HRD is still cast as a “weakened profession” which has to play a subservient role to others in the workplace. Over the last 15 years, the expansion of the meaning of HRD has been seen as evidence of its evolving and emerging nature and development based on a co-creation with other disciplines. This creates a space for FFL, defined as an ongoing learning process to find predictable, probable, possible and/or a variety of long-term futures. FFL embraces three key processes of scanning, futuring and reconfiguring, all of which contain a high potential for participants and others to learn as they proceed, providing outcomes at each stage. FFL has been shown to enhance organisation performance and success and HRD interventions can play a key part in implementation. This represents a significant opportunity for the HRD profession to move from weakness towards strength.

For HRD researchers, while FFL is not yet on its radar, the authors would argue that the uncertainties of the future require that more attention be given to what might lie ahead. Indeed, HRD researchers need to ask the question: What is the future of HRD research? In addition, if the authors’ call for FFL to be included in the practice of HRD, such practice will itself provide new pathways for HRD research. Further research questions might include: To what extent is FFL practiced in organisations and what role do HRD practitioners play in delivery? How does FFL impact on organisation behaviour and outcomes? What new products and services emerge from FFL? What new skills are required to deliver FFL? Can FFL enhance the status of HRD practitioners in the work place and its role in decision-making? and How can the HRD profession develop as a hybrid profession with respect to machine learning (ML)/artificial intelligence (AI)?

FFL produces outcomes that have importance for strategy, HRD practitioner can learn to facilitate FFL by action learning and in leadership development programmes. FFL offers a significant opportunity to enhance the importance of HRD in organisations and beyond. FFL offers those involved in HRD a significant opportunity to transfer ideas into practice that have an impact on organisation sustainability. HRD can play a significant role in the design and delivery of ML and AI projects.

This paper concludes with a call for embracing FFL as a challenging but important addition to how we talk about learning at work. The authors argue that FFL offers a significant opportunity to enhance the importance of HRD in organisations and beyond. At its centre, FFL involves learning by people, groups, organisations and machines and this has to be of concern to HRD.

The aim of this paper is to highlight the relevance of the inner future of an organization for diagnosing and treating organizational disorders, as it relates to the concept of future‐oriented psychotherapy.

This paper combines the concept of future‐oriented psychotherapy, with the categorization of organizations using the means of psychiatric disorders.

The paper finds that the importance of an organization's future is underlined by evidence from psychiatry. Time distortions in psychiatric illness can cloud the personal future of an individual and distort the view of the future and thereby disrupt goal‐directed behavior. The claim of future‐oriented psychotherapy is that in order to treat mental disorders, the future needs to be brought under self‐control; this process is futuring. It is suggested that in an organizational context, the Scenario technique or Strategic Issue Management can be applied to treat organizational disorders.

Additional research will be needed to explore the implications of future‐oriented psychotherapy for other disorders, besides those discussed here (depression, schizophrenia, paranoia), and which methodologies beside the Scenario technique and Strategic Issue Management can be applied for future‐oriented psychotherapy for organizations.

The paper suggests that how the future is dealt with in an organization, has implications for diagnosing the mental health of an organization and for treating such disorders in an organization.

This paper fills a gap in the research on organizational disorders by highlighting the relevance of the inner future of an organization.

States that the foreseeable future scenario of Singapore suggests the need to include premisses about the future in school developmental planning. Outlines a futuring process taught in Singapore as a possible way of obtaining such premisses. This five‐step process includes a delphi survey. Gives results from three delphi surveys done in Singapore at the end of the article to illustrate the kinds of data that school leaders could use as premisses in developmental planning.

L'analyse coûts—bénéfices, conduite en terme d'appréciation et de planification des investissements, consiste à prendre en considération non seulement l'aspect financier d'un projet mais aussi sa dimension sociale ainsi que des impératifs politiques en touchant, entre autres, à l'étude d'éléments intangibles ainsi qu'aux effets secondaires ou indirects dudit projet. L'accent est mis sur l'affectation et l'utilisation efficiente, dans le sens le plus large du terme, des ressources productives de la société, ce qui d'une manière générale se ramène à un problème de maximisation sous contrainte de la valeur actuelle de tous les bénéfices (les flux futurs de bénéfice par période) moins celle detous les coûts. L'intervention croissante des pouvoirs publics dans l'activité économique, la position de l'Etat en tant qu'agent producteur principal de biens et de services, les projets d'envergure et de dimensions de plus en plus grandes ainsi que leurs répercussions de plus en plus prononcées sur l'espace économique et dans le temps, la mise à profit de la programmation linéaire et non linéaire, de la théorie des jeux, le recours à l'analyse des systèmes ainsi qu'à d'autres approches et instruments donnèrent une impulsion décisive au développement de l'analyse coûts‐bénéfices depuis près d'un demi‐siècle.

The author, a veteran futurist, aims to trace the history of the scenario process, starting with those developed by the Shell team that anticipated an OPEC manipulation of oil supplies and prices that occurred in 1973. Largely on the basis of the Shell scenario's brilliant insight, the methodology initially seemed to offer organizations a chance to bet on the future before it happened.

The paper describes how the best practices in the scenario process identified in this historical review can be adopted by current leaders.

The paper reveals that, in cases where the scenarios have effectively influenced corporate decision making, it was because the scenario team stayed together to execute the foresights they reached in the scenario process.”

Scenarios encourage strategic thinking about long‐term futures and potential discontinuities in a world that obsesses about the short‐term.

The paper concludes that scenarios, to be most effective, demand a rigor that consumes time and resources. They require leaders to open conduits to information, promote group interactions, encourage disciplined imagination and demand persistent follow‐through.

Outlines, from a legal point of view, some general principles of French financing, some of its particular features and certain limitations. Considers finance in a legal context and the various methods of taking security. Outlines three particular financial and legal structures known as prêt participatif, crédit‐bail; and vente en l′état futur d′achièvement which are peculiar to the French legal system.