Scenario Planning for Organizations’ Sustainable Development: Using Scenarios for Effective Change Management

Abstract

The complexity and the dynamics of the organizations’ environment determine the level of uncertainty which they face, and a turbulent environment, defined from these aspects presents the most complex, and rapidly changing environment. Strategic planning enables companies to understand the complexity of the environment, to anticipate and respond to changes, and to define how the future will look like, but scenario planning wraps up the whole process of planning into a future framework -“the future will be like this”. As such, scenario planning leads to the establishment of a flexible organization which is robust to sudden radical changes, through thorough research of the future, enhanced managerial awareness of environmental uncertainty, and enhanced organizational learning. Furthermore, scenario planning may be used for many business applications, such as risk management, crisis management, contingency planning, change management and many more. In the case of change management, managers by implementing scenario planning, identify the signals of change from the internal and external environment, examine their effects and formulate plans for adopting changes. Therefore, this research paper aims to show the relationship between scenario planning and change management processes in organizations striving towards sustainable development in the contemporary turbulent environment.