Fading memories of the future: the dissipation of strategic foresight among middle managers

ABSTRACT

Strategic foresight among middle managers is crucial, considering their responsibilities and authority vested in them in directing everyday organising. Emphasising practices as the locus of strategic foresight, we argue that imposed organising processes and bureaucratic routines may interact to dissipate the cultivation of strategic foresight among middle managers in their situated practice. Building on an explorative case analysis of a European sportswear retail company, our study highlights how top-down changes in organising processes may induce the dissipation of organisational ‘foresightfulness’. We identify four dimensions emphasised by the new organising processes and their associated routines (rhetoric of legitimation, instrumental rationality, suppression of creative freedom, and the formulations of solutions in search of problems) which typify the observed patterns of foresight dissipation among middle managers. The study and its findings extend our understanding of contextual antecedents that could lead to the dissipation of strategic foresight among middle managers in organizing.

KEYWORDS:

• Middle managers
• organising processes
• routines
• strategic foresight

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

David Sarpong is Reader in Strategic Management at the Brunel Business School, Brunel University London. His research interests revolve around strategic management, innovation management, organisational foresight, Heideggerian approach to ‘practice’, and microhistoria. His research has been published in journals such as Technovation, Technological Forecasting and Social Change, International Marketing Review, Journal of Business Research, Scandinavian Journal of Management, European Management Journal, Strategic Change, Futures and, Foresight. He Co- Chairs of the Strategy Special Interest Group (SiG) of the British Academy of Management (BAM).

Daniël Hartman completed the UWE MSc International Management at the Bristol Business School, University of the West of England in June, 2013. His research interest is in organisational learning, strategic foresight, and organizing in high-velocity environments.