Navigating (In)Visibility: Exploring Political Dynamics in Future-Making

Research output: Journal contributionsConference article in journalResearchpeer-review

Authors

Future-making has emerged as a pivotal research area exploring how futures are imagined, negotiated, and formed in organizational settings. Despite substantial progress, the literature has yet to fully address the political nature of future-making. More specifically, it remains undertheorized how actors who engage in future-making selectively disclose elements to different audiences, thus exposing these activities to potential contestation. Through a 15-month case study in a large industrial corporation, we explore the future-making activities of middle and lower managers as they pursue two strategic initiatives. Ultimately, the initiatives aim to realize a groundbreaking yet fictional technology that promises sustained market leadership. Our study provides a theoretical model explaining how visibility practices underpin the politics of future-making. Managers engage in concealing, obfuscating, and angle-playing, switching through those practices by performing both reversible and irreversible visibility moves. We introduce a visibility perspective to the research on future-making, affording a nuanced understanding of how organizational actors with limited formal decision-making power engage in political activity to develop and assert preferred futures.

Original languageEnglish
JournalAcademy of Management Annual Meeting Proceedings
Volume2025
Issue number1
ISSN0065-0668
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 01.07.2025
Event85th Annual Meeting of the Academy of Management - AOM 2025 - Copenhagen, Denmark
Duration: 25.07.202529.07.2025
Conference number: 85

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© 2025, Academy of Management. All rights reserved.

Recently viewed

Publications

  1. A latent state-trait analysis of current achievement motivation across different tasks of cognitive ability
  2. An interdisciplinary perspective on scaling in transitions
  3. Steering of land use in the context of sustainable development
  4. A Conceptual Structure of Justice - Providing a Tool to Analyse Conceptions of Justice
  5. Audiosoftware im Unterricht
  6. Using work values to predict post-retirement work intentions
  7. Mathematical Model of Double Row Self-Aligning Ball Bearing
  8. Rotational complexity in mental rotation tests
  9. Development and characterisation of a new interface for coupling capillary LC with collision-cell ICPMS and its application for phosphorylation profiling of tryptic protein digests
  10. The global context and people at work: Special issue introduction
  11. Microstructure, mechanical properties and fracture behaviors of large-scale sand-cast Mg-3Y-2Gd-1Nd-0.4Zr alloy
  12. Predictive mapping of plant species and communities using GIS and Landsat data in a southern Mongolian mountain range
  13. Toxicity testing with luminescent bacteria - Characterization of an automated method for the combined assessment of acute and chronic effects
  14. Degrees of Integration
  15. Optimizing price levels in e-commerce applications
  16. Why Emergency? Reflections on the Practice and Rhetoric of Exceptionalism
  17. Experimental Verification of the Impact of Radial Internal Clearance on a Bearing's Dynamics
  18. Do You Like What You (Can't) See? The Differential Effects of Hardware and Software Upgrades on High-Tech Product Evaluations
  19. Direct measurement of cognitive load in multimedia learning
  20. Exploring Difficult History Lessons, Identity Construction, the Artistic Expansion of Sitcom Storytelling Tools in the Black-ish Episode, "Juneteenth"
  21. Integrating indigenous and local knowledge in management and research on coastal ecosystems in the Global South
  22. Wireless power transmission via a multi-coil inductive system
  23. Revisiting the tolerance limit of Fe impurity in biodegradable magnesium
  24. Thermal synthesis of a thermochemical heat storage with heat exchanger optimization
  25. Computational Study of Three-Dimensional Lagrangian Transport and Mixing in a Stirred Tank Reactor  
  26. Land-use legacy and tree age in continuous woodlands
  27. Cognitive verbs in discourse
  28. Integration in Controllingsystemen
  29. Technology-centred learning processes as digital artistic development
  30. A flexible global warming index for use in an integrated approach to climate change assessment
  31. The First-Mover Disadvantage
  32. Jurisdiction and applicable law in cases of damage from space in Europe - The advent of the most suitable choice - Rome II
  33. The interaction of precipitation and deformation in a binary Mg-Ca alloy at elevated temperatures
  34. An Integrative and Comprehensive Methodology for Studying Aesthetic Experience in the Field
  35. Creating uncertainty in the governance of arrival and return: target-group constructions in Bavarian AnkER facilities
  36. Convergence or mediation? Experts of vulnerability and the vulnerability of experts' discourses on nanotechnologies
  37. Marketable and non-hedgeable risk in a duopoly framework with hedging
  38. It Matters to Whom You Compare Yourself
  39. Soft Landing for electromagnetic actuators through adaptive pre-action combined with a slide surface to avoid electrical saturation
  40. Downsizing, Ideology and Contracts
  41. Effectiveness of a gratitude app at reducing repetitive negative thinking as a transdiagnostic risk factor in the general population
  42. Process limits of extrusion of multimaterial components