BUSI3401: Facing the Future

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• To develop a deep and critical appreciation for futures-thinking and foresight methods, using academic frames, narratives, and insights.
• To develop an awareness of global systemic issues arising from major existential threats and the corresponding negative effects on businesses, markets, societies, and institutions.
• To develop students' anticipatory competencies, imagining and envisioning potential and predictable future scenarios, evaluating opportunities and threats on which the survival of people and the planet depend.

• Introduction of Futures Thinking and related frameworks/toolkits
• Sustainability and UN Sustainable Development Goals.
• Systems Thinking: Connectedness, Complexity, Change.
• Future of Work, Society, and Organisations
• Converging Mega-crises
• The Great Transformation: re-embedding the economy and market system and reforming governance.
• Disruptive Innovation
• Dystopian Futures
• Stakeholder perspectives and the challenges of reaching a consensus about the technical feasibility, economic rationality, and moral responsibility of effecting transformational change.
• The nature of complex interconnected outcomes that different courses of action might have.
• How futures thinking can create a more equitable, inclusive, innovative, and sustainable future.

Subject-specific Knowledge:

• Demonstrate a deep and critical understanding of the future challenges and opportunities for business and society.
• Apply and understand a wide range of future-orientated mindset theories and frameworks.
• Comprehend the underlying causes of system failure, including the multi-faceted perspectives of actors and stakeholders that influence the future responsibilities of businesses, society, and the environment.
• Understand the role of imagination and foresight in Futures Thinking.
• Critically appreciate the importance of collaboration and multilateral institutions' empowerment to facilitate the emergence of a cooperative and socially-just society.

Subject-specific Skills:

• Apply relevant analytical tools and frameworks to assess situations and strategic decision-making in hypothetical but realistic future scenarios.
• Apply Futures Thinking insights to develop knowledge and understanding of business and society.
• Engage in reflective practice and apply integrative values and cognitions.
• Appreciate and accommodate alternative perspectives and pathways.

Key Skills:

• Critical thinking, analysis, and evaluation.
• Futures Thinking, Systems Thinking
• Collaborative learning, including cooperation with others and participation in group activities.
• Reflection, imagination, and foresight (anticipatory competencies).
• Consideration of emergent issues from a range of perspectives.
• Reflective practice and writing.

• Learning outcomes will be met using workshop-based delivery, involving a combination of lectures, problem-solving exercises, case studies and discussions to provide opportunities for experiential learning, supported by guided reading and Scenario-Exploration-System gamification exercise.
• Workshops will be used to carry out the Scenario-Exploration-System, a student-led activity facilitated by student games masters, overseen by the Module Leader, using serious gamification and role-playing activities.
• Formative assessment will be individual reflection exercises and digital forum entries based on the students' experience of SES after each session. Feedback will be provided from their peers and the Module Leader.
• The summative assessment consists of two elements: an assignment and a reflective statement. The assignment will require the investigation of relevant literature and the application of relevant concepts and will test knowledge, understanding, and the application of Futures Thinking insights and frameworks. It will also include a broader reflective component considering the written assignment and the formative assessment.
• The Individual assignment will test knowledge, understanding, and the application of Futures Thinking insights and frameworks weighted at 80%.
• The summative assessment conists of two elements: an assignment and a reflective statement

Students will share two digital blog entries reflecting on their experience of the SES and will receive informal comments and engagement from peers and the Module Leader.

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