Future Making at a Crossroads 

Future making is “the work of making sense of possible and probable futures, and evaluating, negotiating and giving form to preferred ones” (Whyte, Comi, & Mosca, 2022, p. 2). While future making is gaining traction in management studies, fundamental questions remain about the practices of making futures and the types of futures at stake. Hence, future-making research is at a crossroads (Wickert, 2025): The very concept of future making – its theoretical underpinnings, outlook and focus – is open to debate, as scholars engage with this concept from across different research traditions. Wenzel, Cabantous, and Koch (2025) are concerned about a conceptual dilution of future making, in the absence of a unitary framework to theorize and explore how actors enact the yet-to-come. Two important questions are: what is the future of future-making research? How can we build a bright future for future-making research? (Wickert, 2025, p. 2). Addressing these questions is critical not only for the field of management studies but also for society at large, given the common quest to mitigate grand challenges such as climate change, systemic inequality and technological disruption. 

A Point-Counterpoint Debate 

We recently engaged in a lively debate on future making, which started at the 2023 Colloquium of the European Group for Organizational Studies (Cagliari, Italy) and led to publication of a Point-Counterpoint Debate in the Journal of Management Studies. In our Counterpoint, we contest Wenzel et al.’s (2025) Point on future making as any future-oriented practice, as well as Wright’s (2025) Counterpoint on future making as scenario planning. Wenzel et al. (2025) suggest adopting a practice-based perspective to explore the situated practices of future making, which they understand as performative, situational, heterogeneous and relational. Wright (2025), on the other hand, criticizes the emergence of future making as a novel field of inquiry, which seems to ignore long-lasting research on corporate foresight and scenario planning.  

Future Making as Emancipatory Inquiry 

We counterargue that future making should be regarded neither as an umbrella term (Wenzel et al., 2025) nor as old wine in new bottles (Wright, 2025). In our Counterpoint, we draw on Pragmatism and suggest viewing future making as an emancipatory inquiry, driven by a fundamental concern with empowering actors to make desirable futures – for themselves, their future generations, and the natural environment. This entails a democratic process where all concerned actors, including marginalized communities, negotiate what futures are desirable and collectively engage in crafting such futures. To this end, actors should leverage the experiential knowledge they develop from situated interactions with the world. They should also reflect in the course of action, to ensure that the futures in the making are robust and realizable (Comi et al., 2025, p. 9). 

A Value-Driven Perspective 

We agree with Wickert (2025) that the main fault line between the Point and the two Counterpoints is around values and whether future-making research should be value-free or value-driven. In our Counterpoint, we argue that embracing a value-driven perspective is crucial if we, as future-making scholars, are to address important questions about grand challenges, multiple crises, and ungovernable technologies. A value-driven perspective would also counter the problem of the conceptual dilution of future-making research (Wenzel et al., 2025) by directing efforts towards the craft of desirable futures. By proposing a value-driven perspective, we encourage scholars to move beyond merely describing the broad range of future-oriented practices. Instead, we invite scholars to explore and support the specific practices by which actors can engage in participatory processes to make desirable futures. 

Not Wishful Thinking 

We acknowledge that future making as an emancipatory inquiry is optimistic in its belief that actors can take action to improve their present conditions. However, this is not wishful thinking (Wright, 2025) and instead entails care, craft, and negotiation to enable people with different values to agree on a way forward and find shared values in the proposed future (without necessarily agreeing on the wider understanding of values). The work of giving form to desirable futures through a democratic, inclusive, and participatory process is difficult and fallible, but is worth the effort. It cannot be delegated, neglected, or postponed, given the urgency of the problems that we, as human beings, are facing. From a research perspective, it requires management research to embrace values and move away from the long-lasting assumption that desirable futures are compatible with managerial interest (Comi et al., 2025). 

Looking ahead 

Although we believe that a value-driven perspective is most insightful, we welcome dialogue with the Point and the other Counterpoint. We appreciate, for instance, Wright’s (2025) engagement with anthropologies of the future; and believe that Wenzel et al.’s (2025) practice-based framework is valuable also for future-making research that focuses on the exploration of desirable futures. A bright future for future-making research, we argue, can be built through a generative process that creatively explores differences, as Wickert (2025) does in his Introduction to the Point-Counterpoint Debate. By critically analyzing fault lines in current research on future making, Wickert (2025) identifies three important areas for future research on future making, including the exploration of the political dynamics of future making; the role of agency, resources and serendipity in future making; and non-linear perspectives on time and temporality.  

We believe these lines of research will lead future-making scholars to shed further light on desirable futures in a post-truth world; and will lead to a more inclusive conceptualization of the future. In our own research,^[1] we are currently exploring Eastern conceptualizations of time and temporality, which emphasize long-term thinking, cyclical appreciation of events, and harmony with others and nature (see also Comi, Graff, Xu, & Fei, 2024). Also, we have become increasingly interested in the “economies of worth” perspective (Boltanski & Thévenot, 2006; Van Elk, Reinecke, Trenholm, & Ferlie, 2024) to theorize the negotiation between different orders of value in future making, and to explore alternative possibilities for tackling common problems (Ostrom, 1990). Relatedly, we are exploring the question of how projects can make desirable futures (Whyte, Mosca, Comi, & Liu, 2025), and delving into the performative role of artifacts, narratives, and visualization in crafting desirable futures (see also our call for papers on “Future Making through Projects” in PMJ). Looking ahead, we see a bright future for future-making research: We are not concerned about the plurality of perspectives and instead see value in seeking generative tensions through dialogue. 

[1] Supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. W2432048).