Articles

Waar de Belastingdienst vorig jaar voorzichtig begon met een verkenning van de toekomst, timmeren sommige andere organisaties al lange tijd aan de weg met hun 'vergezichten'. Zo zijn de Shell-scenario's inmiddels ruim drie decennia een begrip. Belastingbulletin belde met Arie de Geus, in zijn tijd een van de voorvechters van het scenariodenken binnen de oliemaatschappij. 'Als je dit verstandig aanpakt, kom je nooit voor verrassingen te staan.'

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Ever since Herman Kahn in the 60's and the Shell planning pioneers in the 70's published their first scenarios, the organisational uses of scenarios have continued to multiply. Also increasing was the link with research and thinking in (developmental) psycholody, neuro-biology and linguistics with which scenario thinking seems to fit quite harmoniously ...

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VOEKS is 50, the Koninklijke 110 years of age. My father and I together have been there for 53 of those years- 1936 to 1989- i.e. all of VOEKS' life and half the lifespan of the Koninklijke. What a good moment to look back as well as forward. VOEKS is, obviously, strongly related to the Pension Fund. But there is a long history that preceded both.

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What distinguishing features characterize the New Economy? Is it a mere wave of new technology, or should we look deeper? Does it threaten only the weak and the meek? Or have the basic conditions to achieve long-term business success changed dramatically?

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Is there anything we can learn from companies older than ours? This was the question that some people at Shell asked themselves in the mid 1980's. Business history is a much neglected subject nowadays. Is that because today's world is so different from the past that history carries no lessons? Or are we so absorbed by the present that we do not afford the time to look at the past?

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Many a time, the search for a good answer to a good question leads to unexpected, but often satisfactory discoveries. Looking at the table of contents of this issue of the European Journal of Operational Research, one wonders whether one is looking at such a case.

Language creates reality. The language that we use when we speak to one another in our companies creates the reality that we face inside those companies. If we talk about the company as an asset-based, profit-producing machine, we create a different reality than when we see a company as a living thing, a community of people. Talking about companies in the language of a human community may make us see the corporate reality in a way that can help solve problems resulting from our previous views.

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Over the last 20 years uncertainty in and around the world of business has increased. Companies are no longer sure how to react to the changes taking place. This uncertainty raises vital questions. What should your managerial priorities be? And, first of all, what are the underlying causes?

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In the world of institutions, commercial corporations are newcomers. They have been around for only 500 years - a mere blip in the course of human civilization. In that time, as producers of material wealth, they have enjoyed immense success. They have sustained the world's exploding population with the goods and services that make civlized life possible ...