پیش بینی استراتژیک و یادگیری سازمانی: بررسی و تجزیه و تحلیل انتقادی

Learning phenomena are a growing concern for strategic foresight, especially with respect to the question of integration of reflection and action. Although an agreement seems to emerge between practitioners and theorists about strong ties linking strategic foresight and learning (in particular organizational learning), the true nature of this link remains ambiguous. This article seeks to shed light on this link and to analyze the cognitive dimensions of foresight through a critical survey. The investigation follows the original ambivalence between foresight attitude and activity thus underscoring not only the virtues of foresight in learning phenomena, but also the limits of the usual literature.

Learning phenomena are a growing concern for strategic foresight1, especially with respect to the integration of reflection and action [1] and [2]. An agreement seems to emerge between practitioners and theorists about the strong ties linking strategic foresight and learning processes (especially organizational learning), but the true nature of this link remains vague. The works that feed into the usual literature are indeed marked by a strong diversity about practices (use of tools or not, strategic impact of reflection, and mobilization size,) and analysis unity (some works focus on isolated individual, some on decision-makers, and others on all actors of the organization). The aim of this article is to explore the link and to analyze the cognitive dimensions of foresight through a critical survey. Our investigation follows the original ambivalence between foresight ‘attitude’ and ‘activity’. Attitude focuses on how to enlighten decision-makers' choices, in particular by widening their frame of analysis. Foresight ‘attitude’ thus refers to the cognitive dimensions of anticipation and to individual learning (§.1). Foresight ‘activity’ concerns collective processes mobilizing several actors and involves more interactive learning forms (§.2). This survey underscores not only the virtues of foresight studies in learning, but also the limits of specialized literature. These limits are emphasized in a discussion (§.3) by using the appropriate concepts and works from the organizational learning field.

To grasp the true nature of the link between foresight and organizational learning, one has to confront foresight practices with a complete and coherent theoretical framework built from a detailed analysis of the concept of organizational learning. In recent works [54][55], this has been attempted through the construction of a typology based mainly on the review of experiments by researchers and business professionals. At first, a structured survey concerning organizational learning was proposed to build a coherent theoretical frame mainly based on the situationist approach [56], [57] and [58]. This approach appears relevant, notably to explore the articulation between individual and organizational learning, as well as between foresight attitude and activity. This school of thought identifies heterogeneous learning communities within organizations [59], [60] and [61]; in other words, privileged places of knowledge creation and diffusion. These communities are intermediate social structures offering an adequate context to analyze learning processes. Epistemic communities and communities of practice are in particular “the place where the most dramatic knowledge creation is likely to occur” [59]. Epistemic communities are oriented toward new knowledge creation; whereas, communities of practice are oriented toward achievement of an activity. Organizational learning is thus dependant on the way these communities interact. Foresight practices were then confronted with this framework through the realization of a typology based partially on a review of the experiences of the LIPSOR6. This typology emphasizes that the impact of foresight on organizational learning is the link to two main dimensions: - mobilization level: Does the foresight reflection use a low number of participants by mobilizing a restricted working group only, or does it involve a large part of the members of organization? - strategic impact: Does foresight reflection lead to either directly or indirectly strategic actions? Strategic actions mean difficult reversible actions, focused on the long term and which involve a change of the organizational framework. As part of strategic decision, foresight reflection is an exploratory phase; strategic choices, a normative one. As such, they cannot be totally confused. However, there is a different degree of strategic involvement according to the foresight approaches. Some mark a clear separation between exploratory and normative phases and have an indirect impact on policy decisions. Others are more bound to strategy because they are marked by a strong will to make the call to action, or because these two phases are brought by the same actors: decision-makers. Four profiles of foresight practices emerge from this typology as seen below in Fig. 1, Typology of foresight approaches. Each one has differentiated effects on organizational learning: Decision-making support: the objective of these approaches consists in generating information about future stakes to feed strategic reflections. The results of foresight reflection are used as elements of decision-making support in the same way that of other tools (strategic surveillance and benchmarking). So they are just one of the components included in the decision-making process. Strategic orientation: the objective here is to contribute to the strategic decision processes by allowing leaders to investigate together the possible futures. Foresight reflection is limited to the decision-makers and so induces a sharing and/or a questioning of strategic vision. It contributes in this way to the implementation of new strategic actions. Mobilization: foresight reflection here involves a large number of people without direct strategic purpose. Mobilization approaches are generally used in a context of strong changes, to make actors in organization understand better the new stakes stemming from evolutions of the environment. Change drive: these approaches consist in elaborating strategic actions by leaning on a large foresight reflection. The purpose is to associate strategic orientation and mobilization approaches in a complementary way.Overall, this analysis highlights the fact that foresight approaches are all sources of knowledge creation. Indeed, working groups of foresight studies do match the characteristics of epistemic communities, if we refer to the definition of Cowan et al. ([62], p. 234): “small working groups, comprise knowledge-creating agents who are engaged on a mutually recognized subset of question, and who (at the very least) accept some commonly understood procedural authority as essential to the success of their collective activities”. However, with regard to diffusion and inscription in the practice of new knowledge, foresight approaches have unequal effects and differ by promoting more or less “accomplished”7 forms of learning [63] and more or less rich interactions between heterogeneous learning communities. Lastly, this reflection emphasizes that beyond tools and methods, practitioners have to focus their attention on procedures; in other words, the way reflection is concretely led in terms of role and composition of the groups of individuals mobilized in the reflection. Procedures may be based on a set of ‘organs’, which will be activated or not, e.g., steering committee, technical committee, main working group, and secondary working groups. Procedures indeed constitute a central element to achieve the objectives of an approach and to develop meaningful learning processes. This normative dimension of the typology so supplies to practitioners an explicit analysis grid helping them to conceive and to implement foresight approaches fitting organizational needs not only on a practical level linked to procedures and to methods but also by taking into account their implicit cognitive dimensions. In addition, this normative aspect of the typology makes it possible to stress that beyond the traditional role of decision-making support, some foresight studies (that have at the same time a strategic and a mobilizing dimension) may be regarded as knowledge management and tools to drive change.