Responsible organizational transformation: Social and systemic challenges, and the role of foresight

This study highlights dynamics of responsible organisational transformation processes from a leadership perspective. The challenges of balancing multiple responsibility agendas in shifting cultural and systemic contexts are explored, focusing on foresight as a part of responsible transformations. Two organisations are studied with focus on the leaders as catalysts and simultaneously barriers of change processes with attention to personal details which provides enriched data that can be internalised by practitioners. Qualitative case study methodology is employed on a green construction company and an education based social enterprise, both of which had shifted radically around responsible goals. The paper highlights unique social challenges, new shades of established responsible management practices and presents a dynamic of organisational drift mediated by leadership. Foresight or lack-there-of is further found to be a factor of transformations that need to be constantly iterated, without which its inherent value is not harnessed. Divergence of stakeholder groups and their goals are presented as key moments of these processes that can lead to divided organisations. Various aspects of responsible management had been explored over the last decades. The authors contribute to the field by focusing on organizational transformations, lived experiences, a unique Hungarian, Eastern European context and the interplay between leadership practices, organizational culture, and the deeper learning needed for systemic change, offering practical implications for responsible management education and organizational development.