Scenario Planning in Organizations: How to Create, Use, and Assess Scenarios

While there are several books that cover portions of the topic of scenario planning, none of them cover it in its entirety. The key weaknesses shown in most competitive titles in publication:None address the complexity (practical and theoretical) of the scenario planning process. Recent books are edited volumes that do not incorporate a unified perspective and are rather disjointed collections of chapters unconnected from each other. None of the books currently available provide any mention of evaluative techniques. Thus, there are multiple gaps in the literature that remain unaddressed.This book will add important new knowledge and fill in the information gaps by providing a comprehensive view of scenario planning within the larger organizational and national contexts. The work will address scenario planning as a system itself, its role and connection to organizational strategy, and will provide discussion of the importance of theory and provide a theory of the system. The goal is a book that will discuss theory in a way that is useful to practitioners, describe research studies that bring academic rigor, and yet, also inform practice in that they demonstrate the effectiveness of scenario planning. Evaluating scenarios and scenario planning projects will also be discussed, as well as a phased process for conducting, managing, and framing scenario work. The key contribution of the proposed text is that it will genuinely bridge theory and practice, research and implementation, and generally serve as a text suitable for graduate courses, and thoughtful practitioners seeking understanding beyond a "how-to" manual.