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  • Organizing strategic foresi...
    Sarpong, David; Maclean, Mairi; Alexander, Elizabeth

    Futures : the journal of policy, planning and futures studies, September 2013, 2013-09-00, 20130901, Volume: 53
    Journal Article

    •We draw on practice theory to unpack strategic foresight as a social practice.•Strategic foresight is delineated as a contextual practice of ‘way-finding’.•We offer an integrating framework to theorizing strategic foresight in practice. Strategic foresight as a derived outcome of corporate foresight exercises has led to the dominant discourse on strategic foresight as an episodic intervention encompassing a proliferation of organizational foresight methodologies. We argue that such an approach is flawed, consigning strategic foresight to a narrow function in a planning perspective. To move the field into more fertile pastures for research, we draw on the practice theoretical lens to provide an alternative viewpoint on strategic foresight as a bundle of everyday organizing practices. In keeping with the practice approach to strategic foresight, we delineate strategic foresight as a continuous and contextual practice of ‘wayfinding’, that manifest in everyday situated organizing. We offer an integrating framework that contributes to the ongoing discussions about alternative approaches to theorizing strategic foresight.