Heiko A. von der Gracht

Heading Toward a More Social Future? Scenarios for Social Enterprises in Germany

In recent years, the public sector in many countries has had difficulty keeping abreast of social problems due to restricted financial resources and limited organizational capacities. As a consequence, entrepreneurs have started to address social welfare issues that the public sector has been unable to tackle with an innovative approach called social enterprise. The authors present research on the future prospects of social enterprise as a sustainable business model for industrialized countries. As there is a lack of historical and current data, the authors aim to contribute to and structure the debate about the potential of the concept. Therefore, the authors provide initial data from a Delphi survey on the future development of social enterprise in a multistakeholder environment. Experts from academia, business, nongovernmental and governmental organizations, social enterprise investors, and social entrepreneurs evaluated 16 projections for the year 2030. Based on these results, the authors present comprehensive scenarios of four different possible developments of the future of social enterprise in Germany.

Sustainability in food service supply chains: future expectations from European industry experts toward the environmental perspective

Purpose – This study aims to examine the management of food supply chains in complex and volatile business environments, where the sustainability requirements of customers and legislation are increasing. This challenging situation gives rise to the question as to how a logistics company can achieve and sustain competitive advantage through environmentally-oriented sustainability. Design/methodology/approach – This empirical study gathers insights on emerging practices in European food service supply chains from two parallel Delphi surveys conducted with 145 industry experts from 27 countries. The long-term industry expectations of a leading provider in food service logistics are compared with an industry-wide external panel. The questions were designed to understand how managers perceive the emerging domain of sustainability in supply chains. Findings – Environmentally oriented sustainability will remain a key driver of success in the field. However, after applying the dominant logic concept for analyzing...

Delphi-based strategic issue management: crafting consumer goods supply chain strategy

Purpose – Consumer goods supply chains (SCs) are characterized by continuously changing customer trends. Early detection of these trends is crucial for deriving successful long-term SC strategies. The purpose of this paper is to present a systematic process to support decision makers in assessing future-relevant issues and developing strategies. Design/methodology/approach – In order to contribute to the quality of long-term decision making for SC strategy, we combine strategic issue management (SIM) and corporate foresight methodology. The authors develop a procedure that integrates the Delphi technique and SIM to empirically demonstrate how “Delphi-based SIM” can support SC strategy development. Findings – The paper demonstrates how to craft a strategy for consumer goods SCs supported by Delphi-based SIM. The authors are able to include and evaluate uncertain and ambivalent future developments. Pertinent strategic issues for the consumer goods SC include: consumer demographics, automated ordering, city ...

Energy-constrained and low-carbon scenarios for the transportation and logistics industry

Purpose – There is consensus among experts that the design of future supply chains will have to focus more strongly on environmental concerns. Sustainability will play a major role within the business and has an impact especially on the distant future. Thus, supply chain executives are challenged in designing sustainable supply chains for the future. The paper aims to discuss this issue. Design/methodology/approach – The authors develop expert-based scenarios, which describe how future supply chains could evolve by 2030. The authors focus on the transportation and logistics industry’s perspective to provide an industry-internal view. The data collection is based on an internet-based Delphi survey. Overall, 48 top executives from 20 countries, representing academic, governmental, and industrial perspectives, participated in the survey. Findings – The authors operationalized the research question into five concrete sub-topics relevant for investigation: energy and emissions, consumer behaviour, future trans...

ICT and the Foresight Infrastructure of the Future Effects on the Foresight Discipline

Information and communication technology (ICT) is being increasingly set up to improve the infrastructure of foresight. It will likely be used to implement more routine and continuous foresight processes in companies and organizations in the future. In this research, we look at the future implications of growing ICT application in foresight based on an extensive worldwide Delphi survey.

The future role of logistics for global wealth – scenarios and discontinuities until 2025

Purpose – The aim is to present research results on global logistics scenarios 2025 with focus on the future contribution the logistics industry can make to the triple bottom line – people, planet and profit. Design/methodology/approach – The research was conducted within the scope of an interdisciplinary foresight conference, where a group of 216 renowned persons from 16 countries in business, academia and politics discussed policies and strategies for the future role of logistics as an enabler and driver of global wealth. Attendants were asked to share their visions of the future via a real-time Delphi study. The results were further discussed in futures workshops according to World Cafe methodology for group dialog. Findings – Based on extensive desk research of scenario studies, expert workshops, and creative sessions, the authors developed 20 key Delphi projections for global logistics in 2025. Experts were asked to rate the projections probability, impact, and desirability as well as to provide rea...

The Competitiveness Monitor as an Innovative Foresight Support System for Mobility, Logistics and Beyond

A more volatile and uncertain world today puts a premium on companies possessing foresight capabilities [e.g. 1]. As the industry at the center of globalisation, logistics is especially vulnerable, yet its efforts on strategic foresight is lagging behind compared to other industries – not at least due to the large prevalence of small- and medium-sized enterprises (SME). As part of the Leading-edge Cluster Logistics and under the guiding topic of “Activating Cluster Potentials” the joint research project Competitiveness Monitor (CoMo) addresses this challenge. The result of the project will be the prototype of a collaborative online platform that combines three innovative supporting tools for futures-oriented decision-making in a foresight support system [cf. 2]. The project first underwent a rigorous multi-method requirement analysis. After project-internal workshops according to the “Volere Requirement Specification Template” we additionally surveyed the 130 cluster partners concerning their expectations and implemented a world-wide real-time Delphi study among approximately 1,000 futurists, thought leaders and foresight experts about the future role of information and communication technology (ICT) for foresight. At the moment the project is progressing according to plan, with two of the prototype applications already in programming.

Fatal Mix: Managers and Wishful Thinking

next nuclear power plant explode? Journalists are perpetual pessimists: The world is one huge catastrophe and everything will continue to get worse. The media follow a strange business model. The typical newspaper reader is just the opposite—fundamentally optimistic—which is not any more beneficial. Excessive optimism in business can deceive managers’ expectations of future developments, their planning, and ultimately their decision making. While optimism can be a motivator and not necessarily a foolish one, there is small but fundamental difference that you may miss: Whether or not decision makers have an influence on the outcome of the event they forecast. Wishful thinking occurs if this is not the case but unrealistic optimism still prompts decision makers to expect apples to fall off the trees in May—just because they want them to. This article offers a short, practically oriented, and awarenesscreating discussion of consequences and solutions of optimism, some of its related accounts and wishful thinking in particular.