Transforming Visions into Actions: Strategic change as a future-making process

Abstract

This paper draws on a longitudinal, qualitative study to develop an empirically grounded model of strategic change as a future-making process. We provide an alternative to linear models of strategic change and illustrate how, through iterative future-making cycles, an abstract vision for the future transforms into action. Our study exposes how shifts in the locus of situated actions and movement of people and ideas between organizational spaces widen participation and transform an imagined future into the everyday ways of working across an organization. We highlight the inclusionary affordances of bounded spaces as sites for interactions where movement of ideas and participants designing a desired future ‘give form’ and ‘make’ the future in the present.