A game of futures: the strategy of scenarios in a Danish medical company

Abstract

While the future has gained increasing attention in organizational research, the minutiae and intricacies of how organizational actors produce and enact the future remain little explored. In this article, we present an ethnographic study of a future-making practice called ‘the strategy of scenarios’ in a Danish medical company. We propose the concept of technologies of prefiguration to capture how such practices prefigure the future so as to make it actionable. Our study shows that this unfolds as a ‘game of futures’ in which prefiguration depends not only on an outward orientation towards societal developments, but equally on an inward orientation towards the political economy of the organization. Although rational reasoning forms part of this game, futures are established and negotiated through arational techniques of enchantment focused on ‘selling futures’. This challenges rationalist ideas of future-making, demonstrating the heterogenous, more-than-rational processes and distinct organizational logics by which futures are shaped.