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How Scenarios Became Corporate Strategies: Alternative Futures and Uncertainty in Strategic Management

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How Scenarios Became Corporate Strategies: Alternative Futures and Uncertainty in Strategic Management HOW SCENARIOS BECAME CORPORATE STRATEGIES: ALTERNATIVE FUTURES AND UNCERTAINTY IN STRATEGIC MANAGEMENT Bretton Fosbrook A Dissertation submitted to The Faculty of Graduate Studies in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy Graduate Program in Science and Technology Studies York University Toronto, Ontario December 2017 © Bretton Fosbrook, 2017 ABSTRACT How Scenarios Became Corporate Strategies tracks the transformation of scenario planning, a non-calculative technique for imagining alternative futures, from postwar American thermonuclear defense projects to corporate planning efforts beginning in the late 1960s. Drawing on archival research, the dissertation tells a history of how different corporate strategists in the second half of the twentieth century attempted to engage with future uncertainties by drawing heterogeneous and sometimes contradictory rational and intuitive techniques together in their developments of corporate scenario planning. By tracing the heterogeneity of methodologies and intellectual influences in three case studies from corporate scenario planning efforts in the United States and Britain, the dissertation demonstrates how critical and countercultural philosophies that emphasized ‘irrational’ human capacities like imagination, consciousness, and intuition—often assumed to be antithetical to the rule- bound, quantitative rationalities of corporate planning efforts—became crucial tools, rather than enemies, of corporate strategy under uncertainty after 1960. The central argument of the dissertation is that corporate scenario planning projects were non-calculative speculative attempts to augment the calculative techniques of traditional mid-century strategic decision-making with diverse human reasoning tools in order to explore and understand future uncertainties. Consequently, these projects were intertwined with an array of sometimes contradictory genealogies, from technical postwar military planning practices to countercultural intellectual resources that questioned the technological imperatives of modern life. Yet, by the mid-1980s, ii corporate scenario planning efforts transformed from contemplative strategies for exploring uncertainties into a method associated with the capacities of “thought leaders.” It was through the rising thought leadership industry of the late-twentieth-century that scenarios gained legitimacy, enabling multinational corporations to rely upon the charismatic authority of scenario practitioners in the face of unknowable futures. In making this argument, the dissertation revises assumptions in the history of postwar science and technology and science studies that pivot on the importance of impersonal, calculative strategies and technical capacities in uncertain conditions. iii To my wolf pack: Lowell, Zev, and Kate iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I am very grateful to be able to thank the numerous individuals and institutions that have influenced and supported this research. Though writing can be a very solitary endeavor, I have been fortunate to have had such a supportive intellectual community during my time as a graduate student. I would like to thank my supervisor Edward Jones-Imhotep for teaching me the craft of history. I did not enter graduate school as an historian of science and technology; Professor Jones-Imhotep is very much responsible for this change of course. I would also like to thank Michael Pettit for intuitively understanding my arguments well enough to lead me to the literature I did not know existed. I owe the greatest gratitude to Michelle Murphy for her brilliance and for supporting my intellectual work even at times when I did not. Thank you also to my external examiners Hunter Heyck and Matthias Kipping for offering their time and expertise. This research project would not have been possible without the financial support from the Government of Canada’s Vanier Canada Graduate Scholarship, and York University’s Provost Dissertation Fellowship and Graduate Scholarships. The Canadian Business History Association provided funds for my research at Hudson Institute and the University of Oxford. I also received support to present my work internationally by the Global Business Policy Council Scholarship from AT Kearny, the Alfred P. Chandler Award from the Business History Conference, the National Science Foundation award from the History of Science Society, and the Stephen Straker Memorial Scholarship from the Columbia History of Science Group. Through my work on the Techniques of the Corporation conference with Justin Douglas, Kira Lussier, and Michelle Murphy and the Technoscience Research Unit, I benefited from the Young Scholars Initiative grant from v the Institute for New Economic Thinking, and a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council Connection Grant. When I began studying the history of corporate scenario planning, I did not imagine that the contemporary scenario planning community would be so generous with their time. I want to thank the Oxford Scenarios Programme at the Saïd Business School at the University of Oxford for immersing me in their world without hesitation. Special thanks must be extended to Rafael Ramirez, Angela Wilkinson, Esther Eidinow, Cynthia Selin, and Cho-oon Khong. I also want to thank other scenario planners from Shell to the Global Business Network that provided invaluable information on the history of scenario planning: Napier Collyns, Nancy Murphy, Thomas Chermak, Stuart Candy, Art Kleiner, and Harriet Rubin. I also want to acknowledge those that took the time to reminisce with me about Willis Harman, including his daughters Susan Harman and Mary Beard, as well as his former students John Renesch, and David and Fran Korten. Librarians and archivists, including a special thanks to Christopher Jones at the Futures Library at the University of Oxford and Tim Noakes in the Special Collections at Stanford University, who helped me to find materials in their collections. Toronto has been an excellent intellectual home for me. I am particularly grateful to the Technoscience Research Unit members for providing such a collective and generative space for furthering my research, including Michelle Murphy, Martina Schlünder, Patrick Keilty, and Kelly Fritsch. I especially want to thank my closest collaborators Justin Douglas and Kira Lussier. Kira read every word of my dissertation, and kindly pushed me to articulate myself more clearly. Justin has been my interlocutor since the beginning, and I am grateful he stuck around to help me see this project to vi fruition. Graduate school would have been a lonely time if not for them. The York University Science & Technology Studies Department has been a lively place to grow as a scholar. I want to thank the faculty members for continually supporting my research, especially Bernie Lightman, Joan Steigerwald, Alex Rutherford, Jamie Elwick, Helene Mialet, and Aryn Martin. I want to personally thank Natasha Myers for bringing me to York University, and for encouraging me to be daring and creative in my scholarship. I also want to thank Matt Farish and Deb Cowen for enabling me feel at home with the critical geographers. And, finally, I want to thank my closest graduate student colleagues in the STS department at York, Jordan Bimm and Julia Gruson-Wood, who made me feel at home even when I was a stranger in a strange land. There are many other scholars that have provide instrumental guidance on my research and intellectual trajectory outside of Toronto. As an undergraduate at Mount Holyoke College, Karen Barad first introduced me to science studies, and pushed me to continue my intellectual path. Lucy Suchman engaged with me as I was deciding on doctoral research, and encouraged my work at York University. Others provided needed conversation and feedback, and surely made the research stronger, including Fred Turner, Jason Oakes, Peter Sachs Collopy, John Tresch, Rebecca Lowen, Kevin Baker, Joy Rohde, Imre Szeman, and the entire University of British Columbia Science & Technology Studies cluster, especially Carla Nappi. I also want to thank Walter Friedman for encouraging me to submit my work to a business history journal. I want to acknowledge Christopher Mckenna for generously hosting me at Brasenose College. Joanna Radin provided a burst of energy, enthusiasm, and smartness just when I needed it. My interlocutors at the History of Capitalism workshop at Cornell University helped vii me to learn that quantification was not all terrible. It was here that I met Dan Bouk and Louis Hyman, the first two scholars we invited to the Techniques of the Corporation Conference. At Techniques of the Corporation, Matt Wisnioski and Melissa Gregg turned out to be much more than I could have imagined, offering critical guidance and support. I left my San Francisco community to begin graduate school. I want to thank this community for inspiring me to be a writer, and for leading by example, especially: Sam Green, Astra Taylor, Rebecca Solnit, Michelle Tea, Lucy Corin, and Beth Pickens. Thank you to my entire San Francisco family for letting me leave without letting me go, including Scott Reed, Emma Bailey, Harris Kornstein, Kathleen Schaffer, Cordelia Erickson-Davis, Loren Robertson, and Dory Charlesworth (honorary SF member). In Toronto, I was so lucky to find a welcoming community of friends. Thank you for letting me in and helping me make a home: Les Bent, Marshall Haywood, Kirsten Dixon, Todd Orvitz, Djuna Day, Holly Coll-Black, Rupert Duchesne, Amy Langstaff, and
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