Introduction

managing the future—foundations and perspectives

Matthias Wenzel

Hannes Kramer

pp. 1-21

in: Hannes Kramer, Matthias Wenzel (eds), How organizations manage the future, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2018

Abstract

The aim of this short chapter is to foster a research agenda to examine how organizations manage the future. To this end, we elaborate on the relevance of such an agenda and synthesize existing perspectives on managing the future, which mostly trivialize this phenomenon either by reducing it to a planning problem or by considering it as a universal aspect of organizing. Building on an overview of the chapters that are included in this edited collection, we propose a research agenda that directly addresses the manifold activities and practices through which organizational actors manage the future.