What is future-making?
Future-making refers to the ways in which organizational actors produce and enact the yet-to-come. In contrast to earlier work on planning and prediction, research on future-making starts from the premise that the future is not objective and given, but a socially constructed temporal category, one that actors make in and through activities in the present. This premise has opened a rich field of inquiry.
Studies have explored the making of futures that are desirable or undesirable, sustainable or unsustainable, actionable or idealized—revealing how much of contemporary organizational life turns on how futures are made. Yet the field’s very richness raises its defining question: which of the many ways of engaging the future count as making it, and which do not? The network’s research agenda pursues this question across three theoretical perspectives.
Three Perspectives on future-making
Three salient theoretical perspectives currently shape the debate. Each foregrounds some aspects of future-making while backgrounding others; and each contributes something distinct to the conceptual foundation the network works toward., like pricing, duration and how to book.
The Practice Perspective
Building on the “practice turn” in the broader social sciences, this perspective understands future-making as a stream of activities through which organizational actors produce and enact the yet-to-come. Its central unit of analysis is ‘future-making practices’. The perspective foregrounds how futures are inseparable from the practices that bring them into being, how these practices are performed flexibly in response to the situation at hand, and how they form broader bundles whose performance carries organizational and societal implications. It thereby opens research to the manifold, often subtle and partly mundane ways in which futures are made.
The Communicative Perspective
Building on the “organization as communication” movement, this perspective understands future-making as a stream of communication through which actors produce and enact the yet-to-come. Its central unit of analysis is ‘communicative interactions’. The perspective foregrounds futures as a communicative phenomenon that is ‘talked into existence’; and draws attention to those futures that materialize in communication. It also widens the circle of actors whose contributions to future-making may materialize in communicative interactions, from managers and employees to the media and activists.
The Pragmatist Perspective
Building on pragmatist thought in the social sciences, this perspective understands future-making as an experiential inquiry into what may come, one that engages with the situation at hand. It foregrounds how futures emerge through reflective engagement with social and material situations, often represented in objects and artifacts; and positions future-making as an emancipatory, value-based process: an optimistic inquiry through which actors turn imaginings of desirable futures into actionable ways forward.
Publications
This is a tentative selection of key publications on future-making. We welcome recommendations for further readings that you think should be featured in this collection.
Comi, A., & Whyte, J. (2018). Future making and visual artefacts: An ethnographic study of a design project. Organization Studies, 39(8), 1055–1083.
Wenzel, M., Krämer, H., Koch, J., & Reckwitz, A. (2020). Future and organization studies: On the rediscovery of a problematic temporal category in organizations. Organization Studies, 41(10), 1441–1455.
Wenzel, M. (2022). Taking the future more seriously: From corporate foresight to “future-making.” Academy of Management Perspectives, 36(2), 845–850.
Thompson, N. A., & Byrne, O. (2022). Imagining futures: Theorizing the practical knowledge of future-making. Organization Studies, 43(2), 247–268.
Whyte, J., Comi, A., & Mosca, L. (2022). Making futures that matter: Future making, online working and organizing remotely. Organization Theory, 3(1), 1–20.
Pettit, K. L., Balogun, J., & Bennett, M. (2023). Transforming visions into actions: Strategic change as a futuremaking process. Organization Studies, 44(11), 1775–1799.
Feuls, M., Hernes, T., & Schultz, M. (2025). Putting distant futures into action: How actors sustain a course of action toward distant-future goals through path enactment. Academy of Management Journal, 68(2), 297–325.
Rauch, M. (2025). Between war and peace: How boredom shapes the enactment of idealized futures in extreme contexts. Academy of Management Journal, 68(3), 475–506.
Comi, A., Mosca, L., & Whyte, J. (2025). Future making as emancipatory inquiry: A value-based exploration of desirable futures. Journal of Management Studies.
Wenzel, M., Cabantous, L., & Koch, J. (2025). Future making: Towards a practice perspective. Journal of Management Studies, 62(6), 2426–2451.
Wickert, C. (2025). What is the future of future making in management research? Journal of Management Studies.
Wright, A. (2025). Back to the future? A caution. Journal of Management Studies.
Skade, L. (2025). The future looks bright: Toward a dialectical understanding of the future in the strategy-making process. Organization Theory, 6(3).