The Future Looks Bright: Toward a Dialectical Understanding of the Future in the Strategy-Making Process

How uncertainty affects strategy-making

Dealing with uncertainty is inherent to the strategy-making process. Importantly, uncertainty is not the same as risk (Knight, 1921), which occurs “when decision makers [do] not know, with certainty, what a decision outcome would be but [do] know the possible outcomes associated with a decision” (Alvarez et al., 2018, p. 169). In contrast, uncertainty exists “when decision makers know neither the possible outcomes nor their probability of occurring when a decision [is] made” (p. 169). Hardy and Maguire (2016, p. 95) advanced a prospective organizing mode of risk that includes the practice of “problematizing existing expert risk knowledge and the ability of the past to predict the future”. While risk is a central topic in the strategic decision-making literature, scholars have recently called for a renewed focus on uncertainty due to its importance for strategy-making (Rindova & Courtney, 2020).

While some scholars have been interested in the overall perception of organizational uncertainty (Downey & Slocum, 1975), others have begun to investigate its implications for strategic planning (Boulton et al., 1982) or the strategic management of environmental uncertainties (Jauch & Kraft, 1986). While these insightful studies have advanced our understanding of the associated implications of uncertainty in strategy-making, prior research has primarily argued that strategy-making is about converting uncertainty into manageable predictability (Wenzel, 2022). Extending these insights, Packard and Clark (2020, p. 767) discussed choices between the logics of predictive and nonpredictive strategy: “the strategist must . . . understand which uncertainties require which logics and when a shift in logics is in order.” Given the subjective nature of strategy-making and potential benefits of embracing uncertainty, investigating how strategists deal with an uncertain future could yield insights with important implications for theory and practice.

An increased focus on temporality in the strategy-making literature

The future can be defined as “alternative states and possible outcomes that could occur but have not yet occurred because, to be actualized, they require the enactment of individual, social, and environmental events that are often serendipitous” (Lord et al., 2015, p. 264). This definition highlights the merits of such an approach in contrast to earlier studies that have mostly conceptualized time as a linear flow of past–present–future. From this perspective, one could conclude that the future comes into being when actors collectively enact it (Oomen et al., 2022; Wenzel et al., 2025).

Some scholars have noted that the emerging appreciation of the future is rooted in modern times. For example, Wenzel, Krämer, et al. (2020, p. 1441) argued that interest in the future is grounded in a post-modern shift in which “actors have begun to experience the future as [a] problematic, open-ended temporal category that they could not fully master through planning practices alone.” This is an important argument, as it reflects calls to take uncertainty seriously by reintroducing it into strategic management (Boulton et al., 1982; Jauch & Kraft, 1986; Kaplan, 2008; Packard & Clark, 2020). Taken together, this line of inquiry suggests that the future should be studied as an inherent concept of strategy-making, which indeed “is oriented toward the unfolding future” (Maclean et al., 2016, p. 623).

However, perhaps surprisingly, the majority of strategy-making research has neglected the future despite growing interest in time and temporality (Burgelman et al., 2018; Skade et al., in press). As a result, the literature on temporal work (Granqvist & Gustafsson, 2016; Kaplan & Orlikowski, 2013) has begun to address this deficit by emphasizing the need to theorize the future. For example, Kaplan and Orlikowski (2013, p. 965) argued that “projections of the future are always entangled with views of the past and present, and temporal work is the means by which actors construct and reconstruct the connections among them.” In a pivotal study, they found that temporal work is at the heart of the strategy-making process, conceptualized as “ongoing interpretations and interactions of multiple organizational participants in practice and over time” (p. 990). By paying attention to the unfolding of time, they highlighted its processual nature, with multiple futures being available and enacted in the present. Similarly, Rindova and Martins (2022) insightfully showed how “futurescapes,” i.e., organizations’ preferred futures, help social actors create narratives that shape future strategy. To reconcile the tensions between plausibility and desirability, they suggested that actors engage in “temporal reorganization” by reconfiguring existing relationships between past, present, and future. Similarly, Alimadadi et al. (2022) demonstrated how social actors can build on desirable and undesirable futures in uncertain contexts to successfully engage in strategy-making. In sum, the literature on temporal work has conceptualized strategy as a temporal construct.

Although these insights have significantly advanced our understanding of strategy-making as a temporal phenomenon, scholars have not focused on particular aspects of the future. As a result, there is a theoretical lacuna regarding how salient tensions and contradictions associated with the future affect strategy-making. This gap is problematic, as a shared understanding of how the future unfolds is necessary as actors collaboratively develop, renegotiate, and implement strategies.

How actors address future-related tensions and contradictions in the strategy-making process

In engaging with an unknowable future, actors involved in strategic decision-making encounter inherent tensions and contradictions that challenge traditional strategic planning (Seidl & Werle, 2011). However, tensions that emerge from competing demands, including the necessity for long-term stability instead of flexibility, the aspiration for control versus the acceptance of uncertainty, and the pursuit of innovation within the constraints of available resources, can, in turn, evoke organizational conflicts (Farjoun & Fiss, 2022). Addressing these tensions is, therefore, critical for strategists, as they significantly influence the efficacy of strategic initiatives in an increasingly complex environment. Cultivating a nuanced understanding of these tensions enables strategists to convert contradictions into novel strategic insights.

A larger body of research has begun to highlight how social actors address existing tensions and contradictions in relation to time and temporality. For example, Reinecke and Ansari (2015, p. 618) showed how conflicting temporal structures become entrained through ambitemporality, which occurs when “organizations accommodate seemingly contradictory temporal orientations.” The authors outlined how temporal reflexivity and appreciation of interdependencies help actors overcome these temporal conflicts. Adopting a dialectical view, Cuganesan (2022) studied dynamics of organizational conflict and found that the interplay of clock and event time could enable ambitemporality despite a dominant focus on clock time. These findings shed light on how and why organizational time regimes are infused with political struggles and highlight the importance of remaining attentive to different temporal structuring in organizations and related power asymmetries.

Another important concept associated with bridging different temporalities is temporal translation, i.e., addressing distant events in the past and future through situated activities in the present. Hernes and Schultz (2020) argued that temporal translation enables actors “to reflect on and potentially transform the temporal structures framing those activities” (p. 14); thus, distant futures and the present are “not only intertwined, but the distant may also be seen as flowing from the present” (p. 5). By engaging in temporal translation, actors may be able to “overcome the duality between present and past or future that tends to be assumed” (p. 17).

Similarly, Patriotta and Gruber (2015) suggested that “expectancy frameworks” are continuously updated through sensemaking of a near and disruptive future, thereby helping actors make temporal transitions between following a planned script and responding to unexpected events. Likewise, Rindova and Martins (2022, p. 214) discussed how temporal reorganization, “a mechanism for shifting beliefs about the feasibility and value of future actions,” helps strategists reconcile the tensions between the plausibility and the desirability of future worlds and overcome differences between the near and distant.

Finally, within the broader stream of ambidexterity research (Raisch et al., 2009), scholars have begun to theorize the process of temporal ambidexterity as “an organizational capability to demonstrate simultaneous and strong commitments to actions with short-term and long-term organizational implications” (Wang et al., 2019, p. 790). For example, Holotiuk et al. (2024) showed that temporal ambidexterity reconciles the trade-off between exploration and exploitation when actors rotate between R&D and other departments to facilitate digital innovation. Similarly, Wang et al. (2019) showed that organizations address intertemporal tensions in the context of new ventures. To resolve these tensions, they emphasize the managerial capabilities of founder-CEOs as key actors in managing such ventures. However, Farjoun and Fiss (2022, p. 359) argued that while temporal ambidexterity builds on existing tensions and conflicts, a dialectical perspective differs in that it entails an ontology of organizational activities that is “continually destabilized, and energized, by . . . contradictions and disequilibria” rather than striving for stability.

In sum, researchers have already identified how actors engage with tensions and contradictions of the future. They have drawn extensively on the concept of tensions to showcase that actors must navigate complex realities and their inherent temporal contradictions.

Taken together, many future-related tensions in the literature revolve around proximity (near versus distant) and flow (continuously unfolding versus disrupting the flow of time). Engaging with this body of literature, a dialectical perspective is already emerging, albeit implicitly, as it builds on existing insights beyond a straightforward both-and approach. While the literature demonstrates how actors navigate future-related tensions of proximity and flow, it does not fully describe the synthesis (i.e., a more-than approach) that a dialectical view would offer by generating new insights into strategy-making. This aligns with Farjoun and Fiss’s (2022, p. 343) argument that a dialectal perspective sees “contradiction as an engine for renewal and transformation.” These contradictions are not just obstacles, but act as generative forces that drive innovation and produce novelty (Benson, 1977). Recognizing these implicit dialectical assumptions, I briefly introduce the theoretical underpinnings of dialectics to clarify these latent insights within the literature.

Theoretical underpinnings of dialectics

The theory of dialectics has a long history (Hegel, 1900). Accordingly, the term is often associated with Hegel’s (1900) notions of thesis, antithesis, and the resulting creative synthesis as a new element leading to “change and development as a continuous pattern of affirmation, negation, and counter-negation” (Farjoun & Fiss, 2022, p. 347). Another prominent stream of research, based on Marx (1906) and in keeping with a critical assessment of political economy, has referred to struggles in “capitalism’s material contradictions that shaped modes of production, domination, and instrumental rationality” (Putnam et al., 2016, p. 110). Both approaches have a common aim to overcome dualisms through ongoing processes of contradicting, challenging, and synthesizing (Hook, 1994). In doing so, influential earlier work has provided a dialectical perspective on organizing (Benson, 1977, 1983), among others, and thus has contributed to an understanding of dialectical theorizing as “a general view of social life that is abstracted from the Marxist analysis of social structure and its ramifications” (Seo & Creed, 2002, p. 224). The lens of dialectics in organization theory has been greatly influenced by scholars such as Giddens and Foucault (Collinson, 2020). Extending these insights, recent organizational research has begun to showcase the theoretical strengths of a dialectical approach in addressing strategy-making (Farjoun, 2019), strategic planning (Chanin & Shapiro, 1985; Cosier, 1981), or strategic fit (Farjoun & Fiss, 2022).

Putnam et al. (2016, p. 71) defined dialectics as “independent opposites aligned with forces that push–pull on each other like a rubber band and exist in an ongoing dynamic interplay as the poles implicate each other.” This definition distinguishes dialectics from other tensions, such as paradoxes (see, e.g., Hargrave & Van De Ven, 2017), by highlighting how seemingly opposite poles can work together. This definition differs from Hegel’s (1900) understanding of dialectics and incorporates post-modern approaches into this perspective (Putnam et al., 2016). Such a perspective is especially useful for a processual understanding. As Benson (1977, p. 3) argued, a dialectical perspective is “fundamentally committed to the concept of process. The social world is in a continuous state of becoming—social arrangements which seem fixed and permanent are temporary.” Hence, this analytical tool offers a reflective lens for theorizing the underlying practices of such conflicts.

Taking dialectic relationships seriously, then, requires “focusing on the ways that organizational behavior is subject to competing efforts to shape and fix its meaning” (Mumby, 2005, p. 22). Consequently, exploring futures in strategizing from a dialectical perspective allows scholars to understand how different actors address, construct, and enact novel insights (Mumby, 2005, p. 22) through their daily practices without downplaying potential tensions and contradictions.

For example, consider an energy company with substantial historical investments in fossil fuels, now grappling with the complex and uncertain future of the energy market. By embracing the open future, the company acknowledges the need to adapt as the industry faces continuous shifts in technology, regulation, and societal expectations for sustainability. A dialectical inquiry reveals key tensions: the thesis represents the company’s longstanding reliance on fossil fuel investments, foundational to its growth and profitability. Meanwhile, the antithesis pushes for reinvesting fossil fuel revenues in renewable projects, aligning with market trends and regulatory demands.

Rather than choosing between these two perspectives, the synthesis emerges as a more-than approach that capitalizes on the strengths of each. This strategy involves leveraging revenues from fossil fuels to support renewable energy while developing capabilities for other potential energy solutions, such as hydrogen production. Here, the synthesis is not solely about investing in hydrogen, but about creating a flexible, dual strategy that allows the organization to remain open to multiple technologies and adjust as new market information emerges to capture opportunities across an evolving energy landscape. ¹

Surfacing tensions about the future

Any strategic issue may face different tensions regarding the perception of what “the” future is. In line with recent interest in how the uncertain future unfolds, I highlight two dimensions of the future—proximity and flow—that have been widely discussed in the literature, which are also relevant for strategy-making. Both dimensions relate to temporal features of the future—namely, proximity (near versus distant) and flow (continuous versus disruptive). While they are not mutually exclusive, I show that they are rarely discussed jointly. Hence, understanding how tensions about the future surface through a dialectical inquiry and how different combinations of these dimensions (near versus distant or continuous versus disruptive) enable a more nuanced understanding of how perceptions of the future affect these strategic issues.

Flow: Continuous vs. disruptive

The second tension arises between perspectives of the future as either continuous or disruptive. According to Beckert (2016a), a traditional approach to future-making involves seeing the future as a continuation of the present, “a circular repetition of events from the past” (p. 23). In contrast, a disruptive perspective of the future implies a modern understanding in which the future becomes “an unending disruption of the present” (p. 23) and therefore problematic (Wenzel, Krämer, et al., 2020).

This tension is omnipresent in the literature. For example, Costas and Grey (2014) studied how social actors had constructed “imaginary future selves” (p. 930) by envisioning the future to come as radically different from the present. Hence, they developed a notion of the future as a “discontinuous break with the present” (p. 909). In a similar vein, Schultz and Hernes (2013) investigated how Lego Group highlighted the ongoing influences of the past. Despite emphasizing the continuity of the future by “shed[ding] light on how connections between the past and future are highlighted, modified, suppressed, or ignored” (p. 17), their study showed how Lego’s future strategies had been significantly disrupted. Similarly, Hatch and Schultz (2017) highlighted how “historicizing” (i.e., using historical material to construct the present) helps actors to “connect their organizational past with its anticipated future,” and “keeps history alive by . . . expanding its material manifestation and meaning in the present” (p. 35).

Given these tensions associated with proximity and flow, “the dialectical vision of the future is not one of continuous, predictable development . . . rather, the future has many possibilities and the final determination depends upon human action or praxis” (Benson, 1977, p. 5). Four distinct, yet often implicit, perspectives of the future—incremental, expanding, punctuated, and speculative—relevant for strategists arise from different combinations of dimensions of proximity and flow (see Figure 2). Importantly, these perspectives depicted are not stable or fixed orientations of the social actors. Instead, they emerge through social processes in which actors interpret, negotiate, and make sense of possible futures (Rauch, 2025). In this view, these perspectives are constituted through situated meaning-making and are continuously shaped by actors’ perceptions (Beckert & Suckert, 2021), experiences (Chaudhry & Amis, 2025), and contextual temporal cues (Skade et al., 2025).

OPEN IN VIEWER

Figure 2.

Mapping different perspectives of the future across proximity and flow.

Imagining as a future-making practice

Dialectical inquiry can be enacted through future-making practices, which in turn enable social actors to synthesize existing tensions and contradictions associated with different perceptions of the future through mundane activities. Several studies have proposed the concept of “future-making practices” (Koch et al., 2016; Thompson & Byrne, 2022; Wenzel, 2022), which organizational actors can mobilize to construct and enact their future(s). A practice-based approach (Feldman & Orlikowski, 2011) focuses on the doings and sayings of individuals and on the mundane, everyday activities. These practices represent the everyday activities and “life-worlds” of social actors (Reckwitz, 2002) wherein “the future is shaped in practice—in the ‘now’—as it is interpreted and enacted” (Kaplan & Orlikowski, 2013, p. 967; see also Oomen et al., 2022). Such a practice perspective is similar to the onto-epistemological assumptions of a strategy-as-practice approach (Seidl et al., 2024), which emphasizes “the ‘what’, ‘who’ and ‘how’ of strategy practice” (Jarzabkowski et al., 2021, p. 2). Focusing on the doings of strategists seems to be particularly useful, as theoretical insights into the future-making practices of social actors under uncertainty remain scarce (Beckert, 2016b).

Imagining can be defined as an “active, generative, embodied, situated activity that is deeply intertwined with perceiving and thinking” (Elias et al., 2022, p. 3). Prior research has addressed how and why imagining the future is an important practice for strategy-making (Gibbert, 2010; Rindova & Martins, 2022; Szulanski & Amin, 2001). How social actors imagine futures is important because it plays “a key role in the coordination of organizational activities, in competitive struggles, and in the making of the future” (Beckert, 2021, p. 2, emphasis in original). Accordingly, future-making focuses on the mundane sayings and doings of social actors to study how imagining translates into concrete strategic activities.

While often understood as a cognitive activity, recent studies help to understand how imagining is also an embodied activity. To do so, strategists rely on “instruments of imagination” (Beckert, 2021), such as “strategic planning, capital budgeting, technology projections, economic forecasting, perceptual maps, and business modelling” (Thompson & Byrne, 2022, p. 249). For example, Pettit et al. (2023) show how imagining becomes a central practice in future-making during strategic change to dialectically juxtapose the “as is” with the “to be” (p. 7). They show that imagining is a practice that expands cognitive thinking and is embodied through actors’ concrete doings. Similarly, Comi and Whyte (2018) argue that imagining can be enacted through “sketches and pre-existing artefacts” (p. 1065) to generate futures. Their study of architects showcases how imagining is an embodied practice of giving form to the future by producing artifacts and materializing futures. They show how such visuals were used as imaginings to later form a “dialectical opposition of proposals and counterproposals” (p. 1069). Taken together, prior research has highlighted imagining as a central future-making practice that can be used to facilitate future-making as a process of ongoing dialectical inquiry. ³

For example, Thompson (2018, p. 245) developed a process model of imagining, showcasing how actors “use imagination and creative expression to create, alter and share perceptions and images of possible futures”. In a similar vein, Komporozos-Athanasiou and Fotaki (2015, p. 321) highlighted “imaginative abilities” to “produc[e] specific images of the future in the form of future uncertainties” (p. 335). Similarly, Thompson and Byrne (2022) showed that imagined futures are often enacted through practical knowledge. Furthermore, Beckert (2021, p. 2) explained that “imaginaries of how the future will unfold” help actors “cope with turbulent environments” (p. 2); evidence that instruments of strategic planning, capital budgeting, and technology projections can become intertwined suggests that imagining is more than “a discovery of optimal paths of relating to the future” (p. 6). Rather, imagining helps actors through a process of building different imaginary “as-if” futures and acting upon them.

As a practical tool, Gioia et al. (2002, p. 622) discussed how managers make sense of the future, and change in particular, via future-perfect thinking, i.e., envisioning organizational futures as events that have already occurred. This perspective helps actors “envision a future that becomes the product of a revised past” by “imagining the future in such a way that one considers the consequences of actions in the present” (p. 630). Hence, “while imaginaries are not exclusively future-focused, they do map on to distant futures, either as an ideal or a feared state” (Augustine et al., 2019, p. 1936). In a similar vein, Gümüsay and Reinecke (2022, p. 4) proposed acts of imagination as a process of “thinking backwards from a possible future” to help investigate the future.

As a result, imagining is distinct from other future-making practices such as foreseeing, wayfinding, or projecting. While these latter practices often involve linear extrapolation from existing knowledge or trends, imagining is a generative and situated activity that unfolds through the embodied and coordinated efforts of strategists (Rindova & Martins, 2024). Similarly, Whyte et al. (2022, p. 6) argue that future-making should be understood as “a performative set of practices that bring futures into being, beyond the latent awareness suggested in the term foreseeing and the indirect action suggested in wayfinding.”

Imagining, in this sense, is not merely about envisioning outcomes, but about shaping the very field of strategic possibility. Rindova and Martins (2022) propose that imagining operates through two narrative mechanisms: creative imagination, which allows actors to envision desirable futures, and productive imagination, which enables organizations to interpret autobiographical knowledge and link it to plausible futures. These mechanisms help align diverse stakeholders, reconfigure temporal structures, and activate firm-specific agency. Accordingly, they argue that “narrative shaping provides a mechanism for changing what audiences can imagine, and might be willing to accept and support” (Rindova & Martins, 2022, p. 218) as opposed to future-making practices based on deduction from prior knowledge.

Rindova and Martins (2024) thus contend that imagining is a core capability for engaging with the future, enabling the recombination of knowledge to “generate distinctive strategies and strategic advantages” (p. 499). It is not merely a forward-looking practice (as in anticipating), but a form of “future-oriented strategizing” (p. 499). Ultimately, imagining is a socially situated practice that allows strategists to articulate and pursue a strategic purpose for their organizations (Rindova & Martins, 2023).

In summary, by studying what actors do in their daily lives, scholars develop a better understanding of how tensions in the future-making process are addressed. Similarly, Tavory and Eliasoph (2013, p. 910) extended insights into future-making by discussing how actors collectively coordinate their futures and create possible futures. Thus, strategists must not only imagine and reflect upon their own future, but also coordinate and juxtapose it with the futures of others. Hence, imagining helps to facilitate a dialectical inquiry into alternative futures.

Dialectical synthesis

In this section, I describe how imagining enables strategists to address future-related tensions and contradictions, and discuss how tensions associated with proximity (near versus distant) and flow (continuous versus disruptive) can be synthesized via dialectical inquiry. In doing so, I build on insights on creative synthesis through imagining in strategy-making, which several scholars have outlined (Rindova & Martins, 2022, 2023; Szulanski & Amin, 2001).

An alternative perspective on the future in strategy-making

Much of the strategy-making literature has suggested that the future unfolds linearly, is simply “out there” (see Lord et al., 2015, p. 263), and can be predicted and captured by the proper strategic means (see Wenzel, Krämer, et al., 2020). As a result, it “downplay[s] the future as something that actors in organizations can prepare or plan for” (Wenzel, 2022, p. 847). This theorizing frames the future as a deterministic temporal category, which can be perfectly predicted through foreseeing (Dane & George, 2014; Tsoukas & Shepherd, 2009), forecasting methods (Fergnani, 2022), wayfinding (Bouty et al., 2019), or scenario planning (Hodgkinson & Healey, 2008).

In contrast, I have explored a dialectic understanding to identify and embrace contradictions and tensions related to different perspectives of the future in strategy-making. When future-making practices are taken seriously, strategists are able to engage more fully with the uncertain and open future. This insight emphasizes that future-making practices are performative, because “rather than predicting a given future, their performance brings the future into being” (Wenzel, 2022, p. 848). This has important implications for strategy-making.

First, my theorization highlights how tensions and contradictions associated with the uncertainty of the future can be synthesized in the strategy-making process, thereby extending previous work that has yielded insights into how such tensions are approached (e.g., Bansal et al., 2022; Kaplan & Orlikowski, 2013; Reinecke & Ansari, 2015). Adopting a dialectical perspective reveals how strategists can engage with an uncertain future by leveraging “a set of situated discursive and non-discursive practices that are simultaneously enabling and constraining, coherent and contradictory, complex and simple, efficacious and ineffectual” (Mumby, 2005, p. 20). This approach helps strategists critically challenge existing perceptions of the future by engaging with alternative perspectives and striving for synthesis. This involves embracing contradictions and tensions and imagining alternatives to avoid an “imaginary crisis” (Mulgan, 2020).

Second, by showcasing imagining as a central future-making practice, I have outlined how future-related tensions can be synthesized, yielding novel and creative insights that may help actors move beyond existing solutions as showcased in the illustrative examples of companies such as Airbnb, Netflix, and Zoom. I have shown how and why it is essential to leverage generative conflicts, similar to the suggestion of harnessing “disciplined imagination” (Szulanski & Amin, 2001) in strategy-making. In doing so, this paper highlights that imagining is more than merely a cognitive activity but an embodied practice that enables strategists to engage with the future through their daily doings. It is important to identify how strategists can embrace the uncertainty of the future to welcome the “open” future that does not return solely to strategic planning, forecasting, or other relatively deterministic prediction methods.

Advancing a dialectical perspective that recognizes different perceptions of the future

Emerging literature focused on temporality in general (Hernes, 2022; Schultz & Hernes, 2013) and the future in particular has begun to showcase the value of studying the future as an emerging reality enacted by a multiplicity of social actors (Feuls et al., 2025; Lord et al., 2015; Rauch, 2025). This paper extends prior research to support a greater appreciation of the complexity of the future and future-making by exploring underlying processes and practices. Such a perspective supports reflexivity, as “the Future that we are talking about is our historically specific, modern Future—not any Future” (Gumbrecht, 2001, p. 54, emphasis in original).

First, my theorization contributes to emerging insights on dialectical inquiry processes. Building on concepts such as ambitemporality (Cuganesan, 2022; Reinecke & Ansari, 2015) and temporal translation (Hernes & Schultz, 2020), I have identified four perspectives of the future—incremental futures, expanding futures, punctuated futures, and speculative futures—that shape how social actors engage with future-related tensions and contradictions in the strategy-making process. Foregrounding underlying assumptions about the future has surfaced insights that provide a better understanding of how an uncertain future shapes the strategy-making process and may help strategists avoid common pitfalls.

Second, this study contributes to emerging work on future-making. Scholars have recently begun to investigate the future-making practices mobilized by organizational actors (Wenzel et al., 2025; Wickert, 2025). However, more work is required to explore which practices exist and how they are enacted. The dialectic perspective helps address this gap by explaining how imagining can help social actors recognize and leverage their agency to enact and juxtapose different perspectives of the future. Similarly, other researchers have begun investigating practices such as anticipating (Flyverbom & Garsten, 2021), wayfinding (Chia & Holt, 2006), foreseeing (Tsoukas & Shepherd, 2009), and projecting (Mische, 2009) as possible ways to engage with the unknown future. Examining how and why social actors enact their futures on a daily basis opens various opportunities to study the creation of better futures within and beyond organizations. This can enable researchers to understand different onto-epistemological ways of exploring the future (Beckert & Suckert, 2021).

Ways toward future research opportunities

This study presents several interconnected paths for future research. The dialectical perspective developed here highlights the generative role of tensions between competing organizational futures. To engage with this contribution, future research could deepen and clarify the investigation into these dynamics while broadening the societal implications. I suggest three directions for future inquiry that remain rooted in organizational contexts and strategy-making under uncertainty.