Strategic Foresight to Open Responsible Management and Non-Power Based Futures

Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) has for several years already shaken up the traditional conception of the company for responsible management. Today, we see a multiplication of responsible strategic tools to help companies to face the future but they still continue to integrate power into their thinking. The change has not been as revolutionary as expected and companies still have the same practices to think about their strategic action and their future consequences. The relationships are mainly based and thought on the concept of domination.

To help them to profoundly change, strategic foresight can be beneficial because, like CSR, it brings together several actors, the stakeholders, around the idea of collective creation of the future. In particular, it is through a systemic analysis and creativity and talent that the work is oriented. The systemic approach allow to focus on another idea of the relationships between stakeholders and no longer just on the question of the power they exert over each other.

To release the CSR debate from this persistent theme, the power of stakeholders, the following problem is addressed: how the use of strategic foresight impact the ability of the company to radically change its CSR strategy and practices and to make no-power-focused decisions for responsible futures?

Interesting results related to mindfulness, vigilance or even letting go in the face of frequent change situations allow us to recall strategic foresight. It is above all a philosophy of action. To better understand this, it is necessary to describe and define the actions, their upstream (decision-making, intentions) and their downstream (the consequences they may have). The scriptwriting process more than the scripts is thus at the heart of the debate.