The ‘Future of Work’: Developing Plausible Scenarios on Work and Business Environments in 2030.

Uncertainty in the business environment is not a new phenomenon. Therefore, exploring the future of work through examining future economies, societies and the world at large is increasingly important for business, government and community. However, engaging managers and community leaders in future thinking, using scenarios, is a complex process as many tend to favor normative approaches. In an attempt to overcome recent criticism of scenarios being too normative and wanting to develop participant imaginations we adopted an approach based on systems thinking and wicked problems. In addition we used a Delphi/scenario method that uses participant voice to build scenarios. This modifies the Delphi/scenario approach discussed by Nowack et al. (2011) by developing scenarios from the first round of the Delphi, where participants were asked open-ended questions, and obtaining feedback on the scenarios in the second round. We find that this approach and method, utilizing feedback on the scenarios, enabled us to un...