Bridging Theory and Practice

Methodological Domination

Once upon a time,

There was a time when scenario planning lacked a method. Prior to the 1980s, scenario planning was essentially a guru-led practice. If you wanted to do scenario planning, you could not find a textbook or a set of guidelines for how to do it. If you wanted to do scenario planning, you pretty much had to hire one of the gurus like Herman Kahn or Pierre Wack or Peter Schwartz. These men practiced the art somewhat like magicians. Pierre Wack was fond of using the image of “pulling the rabbit out of the hat.” (Ogilvy 2005, 334)

Future studies research is dominated by a commitment to research methods almost as an end in itself, with scenario planning seen in the literature as the default methodology (van Asselt et al. 2010). According to Amer (2013), scenario planning is a practitioner driven method, with no single approach. Much of the literature summarizes the method or offers advice for development (Schnaars 1987; Wilkinson and Kupers 2013; Wilkinson et al. 2013). This proposition is fuelled by the roles of those that use scenario planning. Scenario planning has had fifty years of methodological fog, making it harder to define what scenarios are and how they can be constructed in a scientific way (Gabriel 2014; Schwartz 1996).

The Drive for Theoretical Knowledge

What is theory? As an academic, you are often ridiculed if your paper lacks a theoretical contribution. It is an automatic sign of rejection that your paper has not contributed to theory in many of the big academic journals (Hambrick 2007). If it is not represented as a theoretical framework, it is not worth it, some would say. Perhaps, as a result, we have lost the connection between theory and practice. In futures studies, the emergence of journals dedicated to the field are prevalent: Futures, Foresight, Technological and Social Changes, World Futures Review, and the Journal of Futures Studies. Beyond the English language journals, the internationalization of future studies is led by Futura, the Finnish futures group journal. Discussion of professional practice is associated with Compass, the journal of the Association of Professional Futurists.

Futures studies methodologies can be found in leading management journals such as the Journal of Technology Management, Harvard Business Review, Sloane Management Review, or Long Range Planning (Varum and Melo 2010). Most recently, we have seen the emergence of specialist journals that explore the futures of specific fields, for example, Journal of Tourism Futures (Yeoman et al. 2015).

Contributions

Futures methods are continuously evolving, and our educational practices must reflect recent developments while giving a clear outline of the big picture. There is growing awareness in the futures field that it is important to improve methodologies and take them further, instead of simply applying futures thinking continuously to various topics. The starting point for this development work is the realization that even when scenarios and other futures outputs are successful in practice, the theoretical grounding that sits behind them is lacking. For example, Chermack and Walton (2006) have made this critique of scenarios practice. From a theoretical perspective, practice must be grounded in theory. And this is important in teaching futures studies as education is based on critical thinking and questioning.

In this special edition, then, the paper by Minkkinen and colleagues raises the issue that having a solid theoretical base is especially important when teaching scenario thinking at the university level, because university education implies critical thinking and questioning, not transmission of dogmatic truths about established methods. The authors experiment with casual layered analysis (CLA) in a classroom environment. The paper discusses the disruptive process and discontinuities of CLA to increase reflexivity and prevent path-dependency. The authors position CLA in the middle of the scenario intervention process, to understand effect of sequencing from a pedagogical perspective. Although the results demonstrated success at creating space for reflexive and critical thinking, the results must be cautioned because of the small sample and because the project involved first-year students.

Kurki considers the evolution of futures through the framework of long-wave theory, discussing the results of thematic interviews of futures professionals in three geographic areas: Finland, South Korea, and California. Long-wave theory sees societies changing in forty- to sixty-year cycles driven by the interplay of economics and technologies, around which social practices evolve. Kurki approaches the question of theory through examining futures practices in their historical contexts, and their relation to commonly shared ideas about the future in each time period. Why do certain ways of thinking and researching the future seem more plausible than others at a given time? Is there a relationship between the methods used, the prevailing societal mind-set, and the view of the future proposed? The study concludes that the futures community, especially practitioners, have difficulty with theory. Kurki identifies from the interview data that foresight practitioners are currently divided between two competing paradigms: the expert-led quasi-predictive model that still dominates (and especially in the technology forecasting work and technical innovation policy orientation), and the systemic perspective, which questions the centrally organized process-view of foresight, and is more inclined to view foresight as a continuous, inclusive activity intended actively to provide tools for influencing the direction of change.

Raleigh and Heinonen propose that creative theory and critical futures studies should be entangled and elevated in participatory futuring engagements, thus producing more novel and varied ideas that better fit the purposes of futures studies. Their research is based on an analysis of three experiments using game-based futuring, stemming from causal layered analysis. The results conclude that practice informs theory, which has led to the development of new and viable participatory methods. By applying theories of creativity and criticality, participants were able to contemplate unknowable futures laden with complexity and uncertainty, overcome challenges in producing novel futures, identify high-impact and high-uncertainty futures lurking in blind spots, and gain distance from present-day understandings, thus clearly demonstrating the bridging of theory and practice.

Corsi considers the paths and challenges toward making futures more a science than art. He considers the Concept-Knowledge (C-K) approach to provide a unifying framework for expressing any of the futures (from possible to plausible, plausible to undecidable) plus the mechanisms for manipulating these futures. Concepts (C) contain propositions that are always undecidable. In contrast, Knowledge (K) is built on truth and stability, and is populated with propositions that possess a logical status. It contains the theories, practices, crafts, traditions, tests, verifications, and validations relative to some initial proposition domain. Using a series of cases and workshops, the C-K approach represents a call for design-based scenarios that clearly demonstrate the interrelationship of theory and practice.

Thus, this special issue on Bridging theory and practice contributes to the ongoing debate that Aristotle began on theoria and praxia. Without theory, there is no practice and without practice there is no theory. The two concepts are interrelated. In preparing this special edition, we hope that we have foregrounded each in a way that helps practitioners and theorists reflect on the relationship between them. We have not, of course, resolved the nature of the relationship, but that is the nature of research—to search for answers through a process of explanation.