Business and management research on scenarios has been highly productive over the decades but led to a complex literature that is hard to oversee. To organize the field and identify distinguishable research clusters, we conducted a co‐citation analysis focusing on the long‐term history of research. We compare our findings with a previously published bibliographic coupling, focusing on the more recent research to trace its development over time. Our study revealed six research clusters: (1) Planning the Future with Scenarios, (2) Scenario Planning in Strategic Management, (3) Reinforcing the Scenario Technique, (4) Integration of Scenario Planning and MCDA, (5) Combination of Different Methods, and (6) Decision‐making through Stochastic Programming, whereas the bibliographic coupling generated 11 clusters. Some former research clusters were divided into separate new clusters, while others were united. Additionally, completely new clusters emerged. Future research on scenarios is expected (1) to further differentiate into strategy and operations, (2) to be based on “behavioral futures” or “behavioral foresight” as a new research stream, (3) to advance the scenario technique methodically and include new specific scenario generation methods, and (4) to put forth new application areas.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.
customersupport@researchsolutions.com
10624 S. Eastern Ave., Ste. A-614
Henderson, NV 89052, USA
This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.
Copyright © 2025 scite LLC. All rights reserved.
Made with 💙 for researchers
Part of the Research Solutions Family.