Path Enactment: How Actors Move Towards Distant-future Goals

Publikation: Bidrag til bog/antologi/rapportKonferenceabstrakt i proceedingsForskningpeer review

Abstract

Research on distant futures tends to apply oppositional thinking, such as between short- and long-term orientations. However, such thinking overlooks the ongoing processes by which actors move iteratively through time to address distant future goals as an ongoing process. Through a real-time study of a sustainability workstream, we investigated how actors engaged in what we call path enactment to stretch and configure paths of solutions towards distant-future goals. We show how the team under study enacted paths by moving between different combinations of ongoing and imagined solutions and how this enabled them to develop a feasible yet far-reaching sustainability strategy. We followed the team through three phases of path enactment, which consisted of identifying, elaborating, and consolidating paths. Path enactments were connected iteratively both between and within phases. In each phase three different mechanisms, inductively labelled bracketing, narrating, and calculating were at play. The mechanisms enabled the team to maintain focus on distant-future goals while connecting emerging paths forward and backward in time. Based on our findings, we develop a process model of path enactment towards distant-future goals that contributes to theories on organizational future-making in general and on future-making in the context of climate change in particular.
OriginalsprogEngelsk
TitelProceedings of the Eighty-third Annual Meeting of the Academy of Management
RedaktørerSonia Taneja
Antal sider1
UdgivelsesstedBriarcliff Manor, NY
ForlagAcademy of Management
Publikationsdato2023
DOI
StatusUdgivet - 2023
BegivenhedThe Academy of Management Annual Meeting 2023: Putting the Worker Front and Center - Boston, USA
Varighed: 4 aug. 20238 aug. 2023
Konferencens nummer: 83
https://aom.org/events/annual-meeting/future-annual-meetings/2023-putting-the-worker-front-and-center

Konference

KonferenceThe Academy of Management Annual Meeting 2023
Nummer83
Land/OmrådeUSA
ByBoston
Periode04/08/202308/08/2023
Internetadresse
NavnAcademy of Management Annual Meeting Proceedings
ISSN0065-0668

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