Future Perfect

DAVIS, Stanley M., 1990. Future Perfect. In: EVANS, Paul, DOZ, Yves and LAURENT, André (eds.), Human Resource Management in International Firms: Change, Globalization, Innovation. Online. London: Palgrave Macmillan UK. p. 18–28. ISBN 978-1-349-11255-5. [Accessed 18 March 2024]. Scientists make discoveries about the universe.From these discoveries evolve new technologies.Utilizing the new technologies, we build new products, services and businesses.Lastly, we shape organizations to run those businesses.None of these steps can precede the one that goes before and clearly, organizations are the last link in the chain. Newton, for example, made discoveries about the universe. These developed into industrial technologies from which we grew industrial economies, industrially-based corporations and, finally, industrial models of management and organization. Then Einstein and colleagues in his field made new discoveries about the universe. Resultant new technologies are now coming on stream, we are building new businesses, and we do not yet have new models of management and organization. To place ourselves currently, we are moving into new businesses in the new economy. Until they have developed, we are bound to use earlier models of management and organizational forms that, in fact, are no longer appropriate to the new products and services that have emerged. FRASER, Jack, 2022. Processing Novel and Competing Demands: Essays on Managerial Approaches to Change. Online. PhD Thesis. Available from: https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/items/3a2b2be5-ec8a-432b-bbd8-86f75152b6ae [Accessed 18 March 2024]. GIOIA, Dennis A., CORLEY, Kevin G. and FABBRI, Tommaso, 2002. Revising the past (while thinking in the future perfect tense). Journal of Organizational Change Management. 1 January 2002. Vol. 15, no. 6, p. 622–634. DOI 10.1108/09534810210449532. Accounting for organizational history is essential to any change process. We argue, however, that the intentional revision of that history also can be important. We treat history as malleable, because events and actions from the past are susceptible to reinterpretation as organizations try to align with the way they see themselves in the present and want to see themselves in the future. Because change is a prospective, future‐oriented process, whereas sensemaking is a retrospective, past‐oriented process, making sense of the future requires an ability to envision the future as having already occurred, i.e. to think in the future perfect tense. We offer an initial conceptual exploration of organizational change from a revisionist history perspective that turns on future perfect thinking, a view that enlarges our conceptualization of the ways in which history affects organizational adaptation and change. SCHUTZ, Alfred, WALSH, George and LEHNERT, Frederick, 1972. The phenomenology of the social world. Evanston (Ill.): Northwestern university press. Northwestern university studies in phenomenology and existential philosophy. ISBN 978-0-8101-0390-0. 306.42 WEICK, Karl E., 1988. Future Perfect. Academy of Management Perspectives. November 1988. Vol. 2, no. 4, p. 333–334. DOI 10.5465/ame.1988.4274780.