Scenarios and forecasting: Two perspectives

This paper discusses scenarios based on two world views, each giving a pers pective on the futurity of organizational actions. The first looks at a pro blematic situation as something to be clarified through rationalistic reaso ning. Scenario building is examined as a way to turn intuitive knowledge of a problematic situation into clear research questions that may be explored by systems analysis and forecasting. However, a distinction must be made b etween the predictable and the indeterminate in a situation; in other words , a characterization of the future in terms of multiple scenarios. The scen ario planner alternates intuitive exploration of the situation with rationa l analysis and forecasting in an iterative way until a satisfactory descrip tion of the future has been derived. An alternative processual perspective suggests that organizations construct their reality socially, in an ongoing conversation. Scenarios help organizations explore unknown territory by al lowing the internal strategic conversation to be linked to other relevant c onversations taking place elsewhere. In conclusion, scenarios introduce the required variety of ideas and also lead to a gradual alignment in understa nding of what the new situation means for the group and what its collective response should be. Therein lies one of the fundamental dilemmas of organi zational learning. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science Inc.