Projects and Possibilities: Researching Futures in Action

Mische, Ann

doi:10.1111/j.1573-7861.2009.01127.x

Cited by 381 publications

(418 citation statements)

References 28 publications

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“…Recently, scholars have advocated for a "post-Weickian" approach that would focus on this projective, prospective aspect of sensemaking (Gephart et al 2010;Wiebe 2010), where the future is shaped in practice -in the "now" -as it is interpreted and enacted. Such a view of sensemaking echoes observations such as Mead's (1932, p. 76) that we "construct our pasts in anticipation of [an imagined] future" (see also, Mische 2009). The past does not determine the future but rather (visions of) the future can be seen to shape (views of) the past (Flaherty and Fine 2001).…”

Section: Foundations For Understanding Temporal Work In Strategy Makingmentioning

confidence: 74%

“…Second, it is unclear how differences and conflicts across multiple interpretations of the past, present and future are negotiated and resolved. Mische (2009) has noted that these gaps exist in part due to the difficulty in studying projective action. Our study of strategy making addresses this challenge by focusing on a setting in which future projections are coin of the realm.…”

Section: Foundations For Understanding Temporal Work In Strategy Makingmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Our use of theories of temporal embeddedness (Emirbayer and Mische 1998;Flaherty and Fine 2001;Mische 2009;Sewell 1992) to focus on temporal interpretations also draws together various strands of research in the field of managerial cognition that have emphasized the importance of interpretations in influencing strategic outcomes (e.g., Gilbert 2006;Jackson and Dutton 1988;Milliken 1990). Emerging scholarship in managerial cognition has begun to recognize the potential for examining connections among interpretations of the past, present and future.…”

Section: Implications For Thinking About Time and Temporal Interpretamentioning

confidence: 99%

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Temporal Work in Strategy Making

Kaplan

Orlikowski

2013

Organization Science

437

458

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This paper reports on a field study of strategy making in one organization facing an industry crisis. In a comparison of five strategy projects, we observed that organizational participants struggled with competing interpretations of what might emerge in the future, what was currently at stake, and even what had happened in the past. We develop a model of temporal work in strategy making that articulates how actors resolved differences and linked their interpretations of the past, present, and future so as to construct a strategic account that enabled concrete strategic choice and action. We found that settling on a particular account required it to be coherent, plausible and acceptable, otherwise breakdowns resulted. Such breakdowns could impede progress, but could also be generative in provoking a search for new interpretations and possibilities for action. The more intensely actors engaged in temporal work, the more likely the strategies departed from the status quo. Our model suggests that strategy cannot be understood as the product of more or less accurate forecasting without considering the multiple interpretations of present concerns and historical trajectories that help to constitute those forecasts. Projections of the future are always entangled with views of the past and present, and temporal work is the means by which actors construct and reconstruct the connections among them. These insights into the mechanisms of strategy making help explain the practices and conditions that produce organizational inertia and change. Temporal Work in Strategy Making-1 -A fundamental challenge for managers making strategy is coping with an uncertain future. In studying strategic change, scholars have emphasized the importance of sensemaking as a collective and often conflictual interpretive process for dealing with uncertainties about the business, the market, and the environment that lead to breakdowns in understandings and require cognitive reorientations to move forward (Balogun and Johnson 2004;Gioia and Chittipeddi 1991;Gioia et al. 1994;Kaplan 2008b;Maitlis and Sonenshein 2010;Rouleau 2005). These studies suggest that linking across interpretations of the past, present and future make action possible, but have left unexplained how and why some linkages work and some fail in practice, and, for those that do work, why some lead to the status quo and others produce change.Our study of strategy making in practice offers some answers to these questions. We found that managers -through a set of practices that we call "temporal work" -come to settle on particular strategic accounts that link interpretations of the past, present and future in ways that appear coherent, plausible and Settling on a strategic account, even if provisional, allows actors to shift from disagreeing or deliberating about meanings to implementing strategic choices, thus enabling the organization to move forward in the face of uncertainty. If a settlement breaks down, further temporal work is required in order to reconstruct a new str...

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Section: Foundations For Understanding Temporal Work In Strategy Makingmentioning

confidence: 74%

Section: Foundations For Understanding Temporal Work In Strategy Makingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Implications For Thinking About Time and Temporal Interpretamentioning

confidence: 99%

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Temporal Work in Strategy Making

Kaplan

Orlikowski

2013

Organization Science

437

458

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“…To the study of decision-making (March 1994), and also deliberation (Gutmann and Thompson 1996), it adds the mechanics of conversation as applied to the specific activity of scenariobuilding (van der Heijden 2005), mechanics that follow a logic that is not easily subordinated to the formal requirements of rational choice. To the study of cognitive and cultural representations of the future (Cerulo 2006;Mische 2009) it contributes something similar, anchoring such representations in concrete conversational exchanges, as the sites where they are assembled. Finally, to scholarship on the Cuban missile crisis it adds a sociological (and more precisely, ethnomethodological) perspective on discussions that have not previously been subject to serious sociolinguistic scrutiny, showing how contributions were affected not only by personal temperament and biography-the standard explanations-but also by the endogenous requirement of telling stories about an uncertain future while in the company of others.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Foretalk arguably shapes decisions through two mechanisms. First, inasmuch as foretalk brings to light possibilities that we might not otherwise have imagined (Carroll 1978), or at least imagined clearly, it is phenomenologically constitutive, depositing mental models of possible futures, more or less elaborated (Mische 2009), on the basis of which decisions can be made. Second, decision-makers may anticipate the need to justify their decisions after the fact (Garfinkel 1967) through appeal to what was said aloud-that is, in terms of what others advised them to do or cautioned them against doing-which will give them another, more calculating reason to act in a way commensurate with that talk.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Speaking of the Future: Contentious Narration During the Cuban Missile Crisis

Gibson

2011

Qual Sociol

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People tell stories about not only the past, but also the future, particularly when contemplating difficult decisions. When such stories are constructed aloud, in conversation, the potential for disagreement is pervasive because no one can claim to have witnessed the future and thus no one can claim the sole right to narrate it. Consequently, storytelling procedures need to be broadened to accommodate a diversity of opinions about causes and consequences. This article argues that those procedures are based on an expanded notion of narrative relevance, and illustrates their operation in the deliberations of the Executive Committee of the National Security Council during the Cuban missile crisis. These storytelling procedures provided scaffolding for the deliberations about possible U.S. responses after the discovery of Soviet missiles; they delimited the "moving front" for skirmishes around possible scenarios and outcomes; and they were partly constitutive of the discursive grounds for Kennedy's decisions.

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Obscenity and fabrication in equity and widening participation methodologies

Lumb

Burke

Bennett

2020

British Educational Res J

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Equity and widening participation (EWP) initiatives in Australia are increasingly reimagined in policy as sites where participants are constructed as competitor‐individuals, with education considered only in terms of employability, social mobility and nation‐state market competition. In the context of EWP outreach, and with school students in particular, this can transpire into demands for narrow forms of ‘legitimate’ aspirations. Goffman defines obscenity as when (1) the very intimate is forced into the public sphere, while (2) the humanising dimensions or contexts are stripped away, with an example being pornography—where intimate encounters are reproduced as de‐contextualised acts while being made public. This article argues that dominant approaches to practicing and evaluating EWP risk obscene consequences if they force community members to present static future‐oriented valuations of intimate, fluid aspirations and experiences of education against a backdrop of increasingly individuated, competitive and standardised educational institutions. In this article, firstly we detail the context to establish a foundation for theorising consequences of particular socio‐educational discursive practices. Secondly, we engage with notions of frame, keying and fabrication as a toolbox to reveal some of the unintended (obscene) dynamics risked via certain approaches to programmatic practice and evaluation. Thirdly, we review the diversity of approaches to evaluation (and their attendant debates), highlighting the importance of these debates and diversities, making a case against methodological imperialism.

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Projects and Possibilities: Researching Futures in Action

Cited by 381 publications

References 28 publications

Temporal Work in Strategy Making

Temporal Work in Strategy Making

Speaking of the Future: Contentious Narration During the Cuban Missile Crisis

Obscenity and fabrication in equity and widening participation methodologies

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