This paper addresses four forecasting methods. The first is the Delphi technique, which could be considered one of the core tools of future forecasting. The remaining three are interrelated and consist of environmental scanning, issues management, and emerging issues analysis. These three have in common the aim of surveying the environment to determine likely issues that are going to impact upon an organization, community, or individual. Although, they are similar in this regard, they do differ on the urgency of the issues to be focused on.
The Delphi Technique
Essentially, Delphi is the name given to a set of procedures for eliciting and refining the opinions of a group – usually a panel of experts (Brown, 1968).
It is a way whereby a consensus and position of a group of experts is reached after eliciting their opinions on a defined issue and it relies on the “informed intuitive opinions of specialists” (Helmer, 1994).
This collective judgment of experts, although made up of subjective opinions, is considered to be more reliable than individual statements and is thus more objective in its outcomes (Masini, 1993).
As Linstone and Turoff (1975:3) write, “Delphi may be characterized as a method for structuring a group communication process, so that the process is effective in allowing a group of individuals, as a whole, to deal with a complex problem.”
Although there are a range of Delphi techniques now in use and adapted for various needs, it is still possible to talk of a broad procedural outline that they follow. Firstly, the subject of the study is circulated to the participants in an unstructured manner to enable them to comment on the issues in question. This material is then synthesized by the monitoring team (one or more people coordinating the study) and distributed to the participants in a questionnaire format. It needs to be mentioned here also that this first round is very often circumvented by the issue being explored comprehensively by the monitoring team which gathers the information and uses it to frame the questions to the respondents.
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Secondly, a questionnaire is drawn up to ascertain the opinions of the experts and to try and begin to elicit points of convergence and divergence. Thirdly, the questionnaires are distributed repeatedly, each time with the information from previous questionnaires that has been interpreted and reformulated by the coordinating team. The feedback often provides textual and statistical material to participants with the groups response as well as their own and asks them to reconsider their response or if their response is radically different from the group to justify it. The aim is to repeat this process until finally a certain level of consensus or stability is reached. A final report, pulling the responses together, is then prepared by the coordinating team (Masini, 1993).
It is very difficult to evaluate the accuracy and reliability of a judgment method such as the Delphi, because the technique is based on determining the opinion of panel members and the findings thus become person and situation specific. Therefore, each application of the methodology will be different, preventing comparison and measurement to be carried out. The only way Woudenberg (1991) argues you can evaluate its accuracy is to compare it with other judgment methods in the same situation and many of the previous evaluations of Delphi have not done this. In addition, much of the work undertaken to evaluate the Delphi technique has been done with university students asking almanac-type questions. This raises questions about the applicability and validity of results when trying to evaluate the technique for its effectiveness in generating alternative futures (Amara, 1975).
Environmental Scanning
environmental scanning is a systemic futures methodology that was developed by Aguilar in 1967 (Preble, 1978).
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It is often “used for management issues and usually attempts to link Futures Studies and strategic planning or management as an intermediary step or one that precedes other Futures Studies exercises”. (Masini, 1993) I agree with Masini who argues that scanning the environment is one of the fundamental tasks of futurists and futures studies.
Environmental scanning is a tool by which planners and others can obtain information both about the specific topic area in which they are located and their general environment. Masini (1993) quotes Renfro and Morrison to describe environmental scanning: “The environmental scanning system can identify important emerging issues that may constitute either obstacles or opportunities. This process helps institutions allocate their resources in a way that anticipates or responds to changes in the external environment.” Masini (1993) herself describes the process as “an outside in one that substitutes the inside-out perspective of forecasting and planning.” Originally used for economic trend purposes, it was broadened to include technological trends and social and environmental factors in the 1970’s.
Several studies have explored the relationship between environmental scanning and corporate performance and all have found a positive link between environmental assessment and performance (Preble, 1978).
It has also been noted that environmental scanning has become a widely accepted part of the strategic planning process of many US firms and that the effectiveness of strategic planning in an organization depends greatly on the capacity for environmental scanning (Jain, 1984).
Issues Management
Issues management grew out of the recognition by corporations and other institutions that they need to take account of and participate in, when appropriate, the public policy process. Renfro (1993) argues that a new situation is upon the corporate sector in which the public are playing an increasingly important role in the direction of organizations. “Leaders of organizations simply found that outside participants were having as much impact on the future of their organizations as they were, or more. By the late 1970’s, CEO’s reported they were spending an average of 50 percent of their time on external issues. By one estimate, this had grown to 70 percent by the mid 1980’s.”
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The focus with this methodology is definitely on the near term and with reasonably established issues. For example, Renfro (1993) defines an issue as a specific question or matter that is already in dispute. An issue must have possible resolutions and “a decision point must be of some relative proximity to the dispute” (Renfro, 1993).
In addition, we can see the focus on the near term when Ewing (1979) argues “…issues management is confined to emerging issues whose definition and contending positions are evolving in the public arena and legislation or regulation is likely in a moving time frame of 18 to 36 months out.”
Emerging Issues Analysis
Following the same notion of issues management, emerging issues analysis (EIA) tries to also determine likely issues that are going to develop and require a community or policy response in the future. The major difference between the two is the focus on the stage of development of the issue – or in EIA terms, the point on the S curve. Whereas issues management scans the environment for issues likely to require a legislative response in 18-36 months, EIA aims to identify issues much earlier in the gestation period. For example, Molitor (1977) writes that with EIA, “The time-span for a social problem – from first appearance in visionary and artistic literature, to pickup by the mass media, to documentation in academic and historical journals – is anywhere from 35-85 years.”
It was through EIA that the concept of issues developing along an S curve pattern was mapped. The curve is portrayed on a graph with the time dimension along the horizontal axis and the number of events along the perpendicular axis. The S curve starts at the very bottom left hand side with issues that are barely discernible and moves up through the emergence and development of the issue and on to its resolution and subsequent interest decline.
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Conclusion
This paper has explored the four forecasting methods, the Delphi technique, environmental scanning, issues management and emerging issues analysis. Although, the differences are clear between the Delphi and the other related three methods, but they also can be used in an integrated way. Results from Delphi studies are regularly being included in the scanning process of, for example, an issues management structure. The outcomes from Delphi studies are also often subject to cross impact matrices and other tools to validate and establish their plausibility. Emerging issues analysis is perhaps the most future orientated of the methods and offers the most interesting trend analysis tool. Although there are identified shortfalls in each of these methods, each is still considered central to futures research. I think it is important, when we are discussing futures methodologies, that we heed Ascher & Overholt’s (as cited in Linstone, 1987) comment, to not get caught up in a fetish for methods, whereby the method dominates the substance.
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