Expectations and learning as principles of shaping the future

Abstract

Recently, we have witnessed the growth in popularity of a new generation of planning tools, associated primarily to science and technology policy, that include among others, foresight, technology assessment, etc. These tools aim to improve our information on the possible future states of the world (either as results of our own actions or others) with the objective to improve our decision making when confronting choices or selecting different courses of action.

Along these lines, sociological studies in the area S&T development have brought to our attention the relevance of some variables associated to future, such as expectations or promises. We find that expectations on the development of science and technology are emerging and constructed within socio-technical networks known as TENs. Consequently, increasing importance has been given to expectations in influencing decision making processes of the innovation actors and there is an emerging tendency to establish generalisations based on these arguments. We would like to signal the risk of under theorised generalisations, especially in such that they conflict with some of the evidence based theories in social sciences.

The intention of this paper is not to reject these new sociological approaches or the empirical relevance of the variables identified, but to bring some insights from behavioural decision theory and organisation theory to insist that there are other variables that should be considered in the process of decision making and action in addition to or besides expectations and futures. Elements like learning, rules and identities also play a central role.