Exploring the lived experience of Individual Foresight in organisations

Melissa Innes

doi:10.25907/00774

Individual Foresight (IF) is a valuable human ability that is not yet well understood in terms of its contribution to everyday work outcomes and organisational success. Understanding how employees utilise IF to achieve work outcomes and contribute to organisational goals could facilitate strategic human resource management (SHRM) practices that seek to identify, foster, and develop IF to build competitive advantage. Positioned in the KBV of the firm and focused on understanding the microfoundations of knowledge based dynamic capabilities (Zheng, Zhang, & Du, 2011), this study sought to understand the role and value of IF in organisations, firstly from the perspective of HRM professionals. It then explored the experience of employees who use IF to gain understanding about how foresight is manifested, utilised, and contributes to work and organisational outcomes. The overall research question this study addressed was: From the perspective of human resource management professionals, and through the experience of employees, what is the current understanding of individual foresight in organisations? Management literature has predominantly focused on the strategic role of foresight in organisations (Iden, Methlie, & Christensen, 2017; Rohrbeck, Battistella, & Huizingh, 2015; Slaughter, 1995), specifically for future planning. Whilst the business literature positions individuals as an important part of the strategic foresight process for organisations, it provides limited clarification about how individuals do foresight; or more specifically how they experience foresight in organisations. This study involves two phases, each adopting their own research design, undertaken in sequence. Phase One involves six in-depth interviews (Thematic Analysis) with HRM professionals across a range of industries to understand their perspective on foresight; while Phase Two involves 27 in-depth (Interpretive Phenomenological Analysis) interviews with employees from selected case organisations across two industries to develop and describe the essence of the individual experience of foresight. Phase One data provided rich insights into not only the perceptions of foresight held by HRM professionals, but also the personal experiences of executives in using or observing foresight in their organisation. Emergent themes and sub-themes revealed three broad areas: ‘IF Characteristics and contributing factors’ (e.g., emotional intelligence, past experience), ‘Challenges for developing IF’ (e.g., Culture, job role) and ‘Outcomes of IF’ (e.g., influencing others, IF in the decision-making process) with final Phase One broad emergent themes including ‘challenges of developing foresight in organisations’, ‘individual foresight’, ‘outcomes of individual foresight’, and ‘human resources practices’. A model of IF was presented and discussed, positioning broad emergent themes and their relevance for both IF in organisations, and Phase Two. Phase Two IPA interviews produced insightful data from the 27 employees across two organisations (one in insurance and finance, and one in utilities). Through a detailed IPA process, beginning with within-case analysis and progressing to across-case analysis, ten super-ordinate themes were captured in a model of IF incorporating ‘The Person’, ‘The Process’, ‘The Outcomes’ and ‘The Context’ of the IF experience. ‘The Person’ detailed three super-ordinate themes that explained the composition and interaction of individuals experiencing IF, ‘personal knowledge and experience’, ‘individual skills and disposition’, and ‘intuition’. During ‘The Process’ of IF, ‘learning collaboratively’, ‘developing understanding’, and ‘Cognition, reflection and future-thinking’ reflect an employees’ ability to partake in the IF process in organisations. ‘The Outcomes’ of IF comprise ‘decision’, ‘action taken’, and ‘formal policies and procedures’, revealing ways in which IF manifests and contributes to work and organisation performance, while ‘The Context’ summarised key findings associated with organisational culture that influence the IF experience in organisations. The findings revealed implications for HRM practitioners, as well as key contributions to existing theory and a future research agenda for IF. The IPA study resulted in a conceptual model for IF which illuminates the contextual setting in which IF takes place. Ways in which HRM practitioners can target organisational strategies to foster, develop and utilise IF knowledge to build foresight competence and gain a competitive advantage are proposed.

Exploring the lived experience of Individual Foresight in organisations

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