Unmaking Futures Studies

There is a scientific controversy, with serious potential impact, brewing between the small world of Futures & Foresight Science, as is commonly understood by attendees of this conference, and the growing world of so-called “Future Making” literature – research that is set in management studies and the broader business literature. This presentation will introduce the issues, some relevant actors, and sketch-out some of the back-and-forth commentary between the, let’s say, “camps” in a scholarly conversation between worlds. This situation has the potential to culminate in a full-blown scientific controversy and painfully sideline voices in Futures & Foresight Science. The authors will review literature from the sociology of science on scientific controversies and what past insights portend for our small corner of academia. In the end, we will share, based on experiences from the last Academy of Management conference, the first to be hosted in Europe, some observations on the stakes of “Future Making” taking over the space in management studies that Futures & Foresight Science has long fought to occupy. We conclude by hazarding some conjecture about the potential for some collaboration in this new analytical space being created by Futures Making scholars.