TY - JOUR

T1 - Future and organization studies

T2 - On the rediscovery of a problematic temporal category in organizations

AU - Wenzel, Matthias

AU - Krämer, Hannes

AU - Koch, Jochen

AU - Reckwitz, Andreas

N1 - The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This work was supported by the Viadrina Center B/ORDERS IN MOTION based on funds from the Ministry for Science, Research, and Culture of the State of Brandenburg. Publisher Copyright: © The Author(s) 2020.

PY - 2020/10/1

Y1 - 2020/10/1

N2 - Even though organizational activities have always been future-oriented, actors’ fascination with the future is not a universal phenomenon of organizational life. Human experience of the future is a rather young product of modernity, in which actors discovered the indeterminacy of the future, as well as their abilities to ‘make’ and, in part, even control and de-problematize it through ever-more sophisticated planning practices. In this essay, we argue that actors have recently ‘rediscovered’ the future as a problematic, open-ended category in organizational life, one that they cannot delineate through planning practices alone. This, we suggest, has been produced through a pluralization of what we refer to as ‘future-making practices’, a set of practices through which actors produce and enact the future. Based on illustrations of the experienced problematic open-endedness of the future in prevalent discourses such as climate change, digital transformation and post-truth politics, we invite scholars to explore future-making practices as an important but under-appreciated organizational phenomenon.

AB - Even though organizational activities have always been future-oriented, actors’ fascination with the future is not a universal phenomenon of organizational life. Human experience of the future is a rather young product of modernity, in which actors discovered the indeterminacy of the future, as well as their abilities to ‘make’ and, in part, even control and de-problematize it through ever-more sophisticated planning practices. In this essay, we argue that actors have recently ‘rediscovered’ the future as a problematic, open-ended category in organizational life, one that they cannot delineate through planning practices alone. This, we suggest, has been produced through a pluralization of what we refer to as ‘future-making practices’, a set of practices through which actors produce and enact the future. Based on illustrations of the experienced problematic open-endedness of the future in prevalent discourses such as climate change, digital transformation and post-truth politics, we invite scholars to explore future-making practices as an important but under-appreciated organizational phenomenon.

KW - Management studies

KW - future

KW - future-making practices

KW - modernity

KW - planning

KW - Practice theory

KW - temporality

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85083554759&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.1177/0170840620912977

DO - 10.1177/0170840620912977

M3 - Journal articles

VL - 41

SP - 1441

EP - 1455

JO - Organization Studies

JF - Organization Studies

SN - 0170-8406

IS - 10

ER -