edicting and preparing for the future. At the beginning of the chapter, they state that much of managing is about events that will occur in the future. However, they point out that relatively little time is spent by managers thinking about and planning for the future. Those companies which devote more energy to anticipating future trends and adapting to these trends will continue to be more successful than those companies which don't (Bruner, et al., 1998, pp. 11-13).
The authors then discuss how developing scenarios can aid managers in forecasting future trends. There are eight steps to developing scenarios: (1) identify the focal issue or decision; (2) identify the key forces in the local environment; (3) identify the driving forces or trends that influence the key forces in the local environment; (4) rank the factors identified on the basis of importance and uncertainty; (5) select the scenario logic from the drivers or forces; (6) flesh out the scenarios by understanding the trends identified in steps 2 and 3; (7) analyze the implications of the focal issue or decision under each scenario; and (8) identify the leading indicators or signposts which will alert us to the unfolding of a particular scenario (Bruner, et al., 1998, pp. 16-20).
At the end of the chapter, the authors developed three macroenvironments which can be used as the foundation for many different scenarios. This was done by extrapolating the three most important recent trends in world business: cooperation, coordination, and national autarchy. According to the authors, these three trends lead to three scenarios which would seem to best anticipate the future. Under the cooperation scenario, current themes would continue, resulting in moderate inflation, stable employment, and strong national cooperation. Under the coordination scenario, multilateral organizations would come to dominate global economic policy, resulting in rapid economic growth, declining...