Collaborative Futures: Integrating Foresight with Design in Large Scale Innovation Processes-Seeing and Seeding the Futures of Europe
By Angela Wilkinson, Martin Mayer & Verena Ringler
Large scale societal and political changes can be enabled via open and collaborative innovation processes in which diverse interests collaborate to co-create the future. These social learning processes do not claim to know about the future but instead call for learning with alternative futures to become more agile and adaptive, overcome inertia and create movement. We illustrate this process of large scale systems transition through reference to a specific case study on the futures of Europe. The initiative combines a variety of futures methods – scenarios, visioning and value creation modeling – to support an open-ended process of collaborative innovation and empower the co-creation of new potentialities. Learning developed in this multi-stakeholder, multi-method transformational foresight initiative is relevant to a wide range of scholars and practitioners in different fields with interests in collabrative strategy, complex systems redesign, transition management. Key lessons include the value of convening both institutional insiders and outsiders, the benefits of opening up the past to look forward, and the resourcing challenges in sustaining an open-ended process and nourishing a new and still fragile network of actors.
The Futures of Islamic Banking in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC)
By Nedal El-Ghattis
The purpose of this paper is to discuss the discourses that concern the futures of Islamic banking in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC). The Futures Triangle method is employed to provide insights into existing social dynamics affecting Islamic Banking. These futures will be profoundly affected by knowing whether the factors that contributed to the establishment of Islamic banking and finance are still in existence and still effective or not. A discussion on what the future directions of those factors are and whether they will evolve to become new factors is also included.
CLA as Process: Mapping the Theory and Practice of the Multiple
by Marcus Bussey
This paper argues that Causal Layered Analysis aka CLA is a method of the multiple that offers a process–theory of knowledge that facilitates new becomings and alternative futures. It makes the case that agency and social learning are enhanced through understanding human contexts as layered and dynamic. To do so it draws on the work of French philosophers Deleuze and Guattari who offer the organic metaphor of the rhizome as a way to understand the hybrid and multiple nature of reality. CLA is an ideal vehicle for articulating this insight and enabling futures practitioners in their work to empower those in contexts to realise their preferred futures.
Using Causal Layered Analysis to Understand the Alliance between Social Workers with Their Professional Association
by Gilbert Fan & Joan N. W. Khng
The decline of professional associations due to the advent of new technologies and the expanded function of social service agencies to professionalize the social worker have impacted the level of alliance of professionals with their professional association. How aligned professionals regard themselves in relation to their professional association has implications for the challenges faced by such associations and as well as their possible futures. This article introduces how Casual Layered Analysis (CLA) can be applied to analyse and understand the level of alliance of social workers in Singapore with their professional association and the probable futures of the Association. This methodology employs an interpretative and critical approach to analyse the data to uncover layers of “truths” that are intended to help develop possible futures for the issue under study, as well as the action steps required to form that future. It allows in-depth insights into different ways of understanding underlying issues inherent in a phenomenon as well as proposing possible solutions, with adherence to methodological and scientific rigor. By taking the data through four intertwining layers of analysis, namely Litany, Systemic (Social Causes), Worldview and Myth or Metaphor, the research process promotes critical reflection and interpretation of data. Numerous underlying and concealed issues are revealed, in a way that cannot be accomplished using other mainstream research methods.
The Effects of Scenario Planning on Antecedents to Participant Engagement at Work
by Helen Allison Hawkins & Thomas J. Chermack
This study sought to understand the effects of scenario planning on antecedents to participant employee engagement at work. The study used the Gallup Q12 as the measure of antecedents to engagement and was a quasi-experimental pretest / posttest with treatment and control group design. A comparison of the pretest and posttest results did not show a significant difference for either the treatment or control groups. The research results are discussed as well as limitations and attempts at distilling what can be learned from the non-significant findings.
