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How Organizations Manage the Future pp 25–43Cite as

Palgrave Macmillan

From Defuturization to Futurization and Back Again? A System-Theoretical Perspective to Analyse Decision-Making

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Abstract

This chapter aims to increase our understanding of the ways in which forms of organizing the future can be observed and interpreted. In a first step, it outlines a system-theoretical perspective that provides a starting point to analyse how organizations refer to time by making decisions. Organizing is conceptualized as decision-making and decisions as present operations that split past and future with the ambition to affect the future. In a second step, this theoretical perspective is illustrated by an analysis of the historic discourse on decision-making with the aim to shed light on the modes of how decision-making and the production of time are intertwined in organizations. Whereas at the beginning of the last century, the concentration of past information was important for decision-making, the following decades have been more future-oriented. Today, an extreme concentration on future potential along with a ‘feel’ for the present becomes important.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute for Sociology, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität (LMU), Munich, Germany

    Victoria von Groddeck

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  1. Victoria von Groddeck
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Duisburg-Essen, Essen, Germany

    Hannes Krämer

  2. European University Viadrina, Frankfurt (Oder), Germany

    Matthias Wenzel

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von Groddeck, V. (2018). From Defuturization to Futurization and Back Again? A System-Theoretical Perspective to Analyse Decision-Making. In: Krämer, H., Wenzel, M. (eds) How Organizations Manage the Future. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-74506-0_2

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