Issues and Ideas Organizational Identity Raises for Scenario Planning

Organizational identity (understood as a ‘logic of appropriateness' such that organizations act based on how they define themselves) has emerged as one of the core concepts of management theory. Despite this, it has been under-attended to in scenario planning literature and practice, perhaps due to scenario planning's heritage of focusing on an organization's external environment. An organizational identity perspective is important to incorporate into scenario planning because scholars have shown that identity becomes highly salient under conditions in which scenario planning is used (turbulence, uncertainty and disruption) unsettling taken for granted assumptions leaders have about who the organization is and raising questions for them about their capacity to adapt. Organizational identity also mediates what is observed in the external environment and acted on - in scenario planning terms, shaping what drivers of change are deemed most important, what scenarios are developed, and the strategic options that are created. And finally, for organizations to adapt, their identity must co-evolve with strategy and changes in the environment placing identity at the core of scenario work. This paper explores the implications of an organizational identity perspective for the process of scenario planning and in doing so contributes to the call in the literature for a better understanding of why scenario planning is not always successful