Anticipatory Thinking as a Key Competence in Management for Sustainability: The Results of Research Among Polish Teenagers

It seems that the need to change the existing lifestyle of contemporary societies has never been more urgent. According to experts, the optimal model of sustainable development assumes that change can occur if the global society obtains and develops competencies defined as key to sustainable development. These competencies include anticipatory thinking, which allows us to envisage the results of our decisions and actions from multiple perspectives. Anticipatory thinking is extremely important at many levels in the context of sustainable management, including human resource management, economic management, environmental management, and natural resource management. This paper attempts to answer the question about the level of anticipatory thinking declared by Polish students living in rural and urban areas. This study was conducted among 877 students aged 13–20 years from the Małopolska region (southern Poland). A correlational research design was adopted, in which the method used was a survey, and the technique was a self-assessment test. We investigated which selected sociodemographic characteristics of the teenage respondents were related to a high, moderate, or low level of anticipatory thinking. Girls showed a lower level of anticipatory thinking, whereas age and education level were not significantly correlated with the level of this competence.