What Is the Future of Future Making in Management Research?
Journal of Management Studies · 2025 · Volume 62 · Issue 6
Abstract
Future making, the work of enacting the yet-to-come by making sense of and giving form to imaginings of the future, has become topical in management studies lately. Triggered by pressing societal challenges like climate change, inequality and threatened democratic institutions vis-à-vis a societal ‘crisis mode’, management scholars have started to engage with the future as an open-ended temporal category, both as an object of analysis happening in and around organizations, as well as a way of scholarly inquiry. ThisPoint-Counterpointdebate about future making in management research comes right on time, as future-making research seems to be at a crossroads, potentially heading to a bright – or not so bright – future. The contributions to this debate collectively ask: What is the future of future making in management research, and they could not be more different in the pathways they envisage.
Keywords
Desirable future, future making, practice theory, scenario planning, uncertainty
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