Strat.
Change 23: 171–183 (2014)
Published online in Wiley Online Library
(wileyonlinelibrary.com) DOI: 10.1002/jsc.1969
‘Space of Possibles’? Legitimacy, Industry Maturity, and
Organizational Foresight1
Lindsay Stringfellow
University of Exeter Business School, UK
Mairi Maclean
University of Exeter Business School, UK
The roots of the awareness and
perception from which
organizational foresight emerge
are often unconscious, being
embedded in invisible cognitive
structures which organize
practices.
The emergence of organizational
foresight is intimately linked to
the institutional context of the
firm, the modes of legitimacy
which dominate that environment,
and how balanced these
conditions are with the subjective
disposition of the organization.
The stability and convergence that
characterize mature industries
orientate organizations toward
institutional legitimacy and the
conservation of existing social
relations and practices.
Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Strategic Change: Briefings in Entrepreneurial Finance
RESEARCH ARTICLE
T he dispositions and invisible cognitive structures central to organizational foresight
are more likely to emerge in young or transforming industries, which are less
constrained by the need to achieve institutional legitimacy.
Introduction
Organizational foresight can be viewed as a technical, rational process involving
the analysis of an organization’s environment by its management, who anticipate
and design strategies for the future (Constanzo, 2004; Constanzo and MacKay,
2009; Tsoukas and Shepherd, 2004a,b). Another perspective that we adopt in this
paper sees organizational foresight as the accumulation of microscopic emergent
actions that together conspire to make the future of the organization (Cunha,
2004; Tsoukas and Chia, 2002). We build on the practice perspective of foresight
as a social process through which organizations act on the present in order to make
sense of possible futures (Andriopoulos and Gotsi, 2006; Loveridge, 2008). Fore-
sight is a web of decisions made by agents with a personal stake in the outcomes,
and it has been linked with the ability to be a vigilant sensor, a skilled improviser,
and able to cope with local problems as they emerge (Chia, 2004a,b). An organi-
zation’s stake in the outcomes, however, will vary according to its own character-
istics and those of the industry in which it operates, and some organizations may
seek to maintain the status quo. Often the development of foresight emerges
subconsciously, from the relationship of the context of the organization and its
practices to the pathways of possibility inscribed in invisible cognitive structures,
and it is this aspect of foresight that we aim to uncover.
In this paper, we draw on the work of the pre-eminent French sociologist
Pierre Bourdieu (1977, 1990) and his theory of practice in order to explore how
organizational foresight emerges in relation to social structure. Bourdieu’s work
1
JEL classification codes: M10, M11, M14.
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DOI: 10.1002/jsc.1969
172 Lindsay Stringfellow and Mairi Maclean
provides a relational framework for multilevel analysis
that overcomes the dualities of structure and agency, and
which is inherently focused on practice. It thereby allows
a deep understanding of foresight to emerge, one that
appreciates the ‘reweaving of actors’ webs of beliefs and
habits of action to accommodate new experiences’
(Tsoukas and Chia, 2002: 567). Bourdieu’s social theory
centers on practice and reproduction, which link with the
idea of foresight, acknowledging that:
. . . all actors are conditioned by the past — that is,
by the particular trajectories they have historically
followed — what is possible in the present and in the
future cannot ignore what has gone on before — social
systems have memory. (Tsoukas and Shepherd,
2004b: 139)
We also draw on theories of legitimacy to conceptual-
ize how organizations embedded in mature versus emerg-
ing industries have different possibilities to ‘penetrate and
transgress established boundaries’ (Chia, 2008: 27).
Drawing on recent empirical and conceptual contribu-
tions in entrepreneurship, we develop a Bourdieusian per-
spective of foresight as the emergence of a ‘space of
possibles’ (Bourdieu, 1996b: 236), which creates the pos-
sibility for agency, and we present a model of the dynam-
ics of organizational foresight across more or less
institutionalized environments.
With this agenda in mind, we have structured the
paper as follows. In the first section, we outline the theo-
retical foundations of the legitimacy literature and how
different perspectives relate to organizational foresight.
Next, we detail research in entrepreneurship to illuminate
further the role of context and field dynamics on processes
of legitimation and the practice of foresight. Following
this, we discuss Bourdieu’s theoretical framework and how
the concept of foresight relates to habitus and the space
of ‘possibles’ within fields. Finally, we return to the entre-
preneurship literature and show how recent conceptual
and empirical developments using Bourdieu’s theory of
Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
practice shed light on issues of legitimacy and organiza-
tional foresight, before discussing our implications for
practice and research.
The legitimacy landscape
If foresight is linked to learning and sense making (Tsoukas
and Shepherd, 2004a; Weick, 2001) and the capacity to
grasp the relevant features of social currents likely to shape
the direction of future events (Whitehead, 1933), it is also
discernibly interwoven with issues of legitimacy. Legiti-
macy denotes the conformation of an entity with the
norms, values, and expectations of the social context
within which it exists (Oliver, 1996; Suchman, 1995). It
is inherently a social construction, which signals a subjec-
tive judgment of acceptance, appropriateness, and desir-
ability, allowing organizations to access the resources
needed to survive and grow (Zimmerman and Zeitz,
2002: 414). Legitimacy is therefore a precondition for
organizational survival, and tempers the sphere of oppor-
tunities open to firms. It is an important constituent of
organizational foresight, since it helps organizations to
understand the nature of the challenges, particularly in
gauging the strategic usefulness of passive conformity or
active manipulation (Oliver, 1991). Perceiving future
changes and foreseeing emerging challenges is a primary
strategy for maintaining legitimacy, and a range of per-
ceptual strategies is needed to monitor the cultural envi-
ronment and assimilate elements into the organization’s
processes (Suchman, 1995). Similarly, organizational fore-
sight indicates ‘the organisational ability to read the envi-
ronment — to observe, to perceive — to spot subtle
differences’ (Tsoukas and Shepherd, 2004b: 140).
The legitimacy literature proposes two main approaches
to managing legitimacy, strategic and institutional, and
these contrasting perspectives can create conflicting
accounts of legitimacy (Oliver, 1991). The strategic
approach to legitimacy sees competition and conflict
among social organizations as involving the conflict
between systems of beliefs or points of view (Pfeffer, 1981:
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9). The strategic perspective depicts legitimacy as a
resource that organizations manage and extract instru-
mentally from their environments in order to achieve their
goals (Suchman, 1995). Institutional legitimacy, by con-
trast, emphasizes how culture directs organizations to
conform to generally accepted norms, values, and beliefs
(Scott, 1994). Therefore, legitimacy is not an operational
resource, but rather a set of constitutive beliefs externally
constructed which make the organization appear natural
and meaningful (Suchman, 1995). Subconscious adapta-
tion means that organizations reflect similar forms and
practices, and isomorphic processes limit the potential for
resistance or strategic action (DiMaggio and Powell,
1983).
Institutional legitimacy appears counter-intuitive to
organizational foresight, since isomorphic processes are
associated with the homogenization of structural forms
within organizations (DiMaggio and Powell, 1983) and a
diminishing capacity to respond to uncertain future
changes (Scott and Meyer, 1991). The paradox of embed-
ded agency means that actors are rooted in institutional
fields with shared cognitive frames, which makes it diffi-
cult to envisage new practices. As Weick (2001: 136) puts
it, as time passes organizations acquire ‘a trained incapac-
ity to see the world differently.’ The solution to this
paradox is that agency is distributed in the structures
actors have created, meaning that embedding structures
can provide a platform for the unfolding of entrepreneur-
ial activities (Garud et al., 2007). Institutional entrepre-
neurs break with existing rules and practices associated
with the dominant institutional logics, and ‘leverage
resources to create new institutions or to transform exist-
ing ones’ (Maguire et al., 2004: 657). Institutional entre-
preneurship can therefore link institutional views of
legitimacy and organizational foresight, which entails the
capacity to imagine alternative possibilities. Institutional
entrepreneurship requires the ability ‘to contextualize past
habits and future projects within the contingencies of
the moment’ (Emirbayer and Mische, 1998: 963) if exist-
ing institutions are to be transformed. Organizational
Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
‘Space of Possibles’? 173
foresight also requires a sense of time, a way of relating
past, present, and future, and a recognition that ‘the future
has no place to come from but the past’ (Neustadt and
May, 1986).
Strategic legitimacy concerns active behavior, and the
manipulation and deployment of evocative symbols to
garner legitimacy, for instance, through improvising or
resource combination behaviors (Tornikoski and Newbert,
2007). The proactive and managerial nature of strategic
legitimacy would make the practice of organizational fore-
sight one aspect of the development of this resource.
However, it is also true that strategic efforts often remain
a symbolic reaction to legitimacy efforts, and ‘ . . . orga-
nizations deem it as important simply to “appear” consis-
tent with the normative demands from their societal
context’ (Palazzo and Scherer, 2006: 74). Palazzo and
Scherer (2006: 74) suggest that the strategic approach is
overly focused on pragmatic legitimacy, which assumes
that organizations have ‘the power to strategically influ-
ence their societal context thus manipulating the process
of legitimacy ascriptions.’ Strategic manipulation does not
help to create moral legitimacy, based on conscious moral
judgments, or cognitive legitimacy, which relates to the
ways in which the societal context regards an organization
and its output, procedures, structures, and leader behavior
(Suchman, 1995).
The legitimacy literature suggests that the context in
which organizational foresight emerges is socially and cul-
turally embedded. The likelihood of foresight arising, and
the relative benefits of conformance, selection, manipula-
tion, and creation efforts (Suchman, 1995; Zimmerman
and Zeitz, 2002) are conditioned by the nature of the
environment, the characteristics of the organization, and
the process through which legitimacy is managed and
sustained (Kostova and Zaheer, 1999). Uncertainty, tur-
bulence, uniqueness, and complexity in the environment
may provide openings for organizations to strategically
put forth practices or models (Constanzo, 2004; Zimmer-
man and Zeitz, 2002) but in mature, institutionalized
contexts the strategic options may be quite different
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174 Lindsay Stringfellow and Mairi Maclean
(Suddaby and Greenwood, 2005). In the following
section, we draw on the legitimacy literature in entrepre-
neurship to illuminate the role of organizational context
(Welter, 2011).
Legitimacy in different entrepreneurial contexts
Entrepreneurship research tends to focus on the dynamics
of legitimation for new ventures, and often the context is
an emerging rather than an established industry. New
ventures lack indicators of legitimacy such as past perfor-
mance, making it vital that they foster an impression of
credibility and viability in order to persuade resource
holders to commit to the venture (Packalen, 2007; Zim-
merman and Zeitz, 2002). Drawing on the notion of
strategic legitimacy, researchers have examined how the
liability of newness is overcome using impression manage-
ment (Lounsbury and Glynn, 2001), social networks
(Smith and Lohrke, 2008), and symbolic management
(Zott and Huy, 2007). From this perspective, there are
manageable processes and practices that garner organiza-
tional foresight and enhance legitimacy, such as reflexivity,
organizational restructuring, and ‘the sensitivity of the
entrepreneur to changes in business conditions and their
willingness to act on them’ (Fuller et al., 2008). The insti-
tutional legitimacy of new ventures is less explored,
although Tornikoski and Newbert (2007) found it to be
less significant in emergence than strategic management.
There is relatively less attention paid in the entrepre-
neurship literature to the ongoing need to maintain legiti-
macy in established ventures. Such firms also need to
maintain a relationship with a fragmented environment,
heterogeneous demands, and the environmental unre-
sponsiveness linked to isomorphism (DiMaggio and
Powell, 1983; Suchman, 1995). Literature exploring the
concept of ‘entrepreneurial foresight’ has pointed out that
a key focus of importance for entrepreneurial activities is
mastering the art of continued anticipation, proactiveness,
and innovation (Fontela et al., 2006). The practice of
organizational foresight should assist developing entrepre-
Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
neurial firms in reacting to change but, thus far, the legiti-
mating capabilities of established ventures are often
perceived as reactionary rather than visionary (Dewald
and Bowen, 2010).
Research has been increasing into the dynamics of
entrepreneurial survival in new and emerging industries,
although the particular role of organizational foresight in
relation to strategic action is relatively underexplored
(Drori et al., 2009). New ventures entering an emerging
field face two legitimacy dilemmas: establishing the cred-
ibility of their own venture, and inventing and reinventing
the legitimacy of the field in the context of a dynamic,
turbulent environment. David et al. (2013) found that
actors in emerging fields could not leverage logics, posi-
tions, and collectivities within their field to establish
legitimacy, and must instead draw on external fields, and
seek the support of authorities and elites. Nicholls (2010:
612) found that ‘the pre-paradigmatic status of a field
allows resource-rich actors to leverage power over the
legitimating processes that characterize progress toward
institutionalization,’ which has significant implications
for non-dominant field actors. It has been proposed that
organizational foresight in high-velocity environments
requires proactiveness and ‘ephemeral, illusionary and
futuristic business models’ that can cope with a fast-
changing technological, competitive, and regulatory envi-
ronment (Bourgeois and Eisenhardt, 1988).
The dearth of entrepreneurship research that examines
legitimacy in mature fields may be explained by the fact
that entrepreneurship tends to highlight novelty, and dis-
ruptions generated by creative destruction (Shane and
Ventakaraman, 2000). Garud et al. (2007) note that,
from a sociological perspective, change associated with
entrepreneurship involves deviations from a specified
norm, and that in general entrepreneurship takes the per-
spective of change over continuity. By contrast, it is gener-
ally acknowledged that in mature industries roles and
relationships are relatively stable and that over time power
relations and coalitions will have been established (DiMag-
gio and Powell, 1983). Mature fields also tend to be more
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stratified, with elite firms able to sustain a logic that is
favorable to their interests, which makes entrepreneurial
efforts to gain legitimacy more arduous (Lounsbury and
Glynn, 2001). In mature fields, entrepreneurship may be
slowed down by the need to attend to issues of institu-
tional legitimacy, and this is likely to impact on the emer-
gence of organizational foresight. In order to explore
further the intricacies of legitimation and organizational
foresight in different institutional and environmental con-
texts, we now turn to Bourdieu and introduce his rich
system of thought as a tool for explaining the multidi-
mensional and situated nature of organizational practice.
Bourdieu’s practice perspective
Research momentum has been building in recent years in
management and organization studies into the role of
situated practice in explaining social phenomena (De
Clerq and Voronov, 2009a; Maclean et al., 2012a; Ozbil-
gin and Tatli, 2005). Practice theory links social structure
with shared understandings, and focuses on how actors
engage in iterative ‘wayfinding’ (Chia, 2004c) and impro-
vise their route through ‘a world that remains in a con-
stant state of flux’ (De Clerq and Voronov, 2009a; Tsoukas
and Chia, 2002). Bourdieu’s theory of practice offers a
conceptual framework that can accommodate the rela-
tional and institutional features that orientate the cultiva-
tion of organizational foresight.
Bourdieu’s work centers on a theoretical triad consist-
ing of field (representing the social structure), the various
forms of capital (which are related to power relations), and
the habitus (disposition) (Dobbin, 2008; Malsch et al.,
2011). Agents are in constant competition for capital
(which exists in economic, cultural, social, and symbolic
forms) within dynamic fields, which are distinct social
spaces where different forms of capital dominate (Bourdieu,
1986). For example, in the literary field, writers of popular
fiction gain access to economic capital that may be denied
to the literary elite, yet the field remains orientated toward
cultural capital (Bourdieu, 1993), which consists of
Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
‘Space of Possibles’? 175
‘socially rare and distinctive tastes, skills, knowledge and
practices’ (Holt, 1998: 3). The cultural elite dominate the
field, retaining the power to classify and categorize literary
work, which indicates status or symbolic capital, and the
elite act as gatekeepers to the field’s social networks and
memberships, thereby creating social capital (Anheier
et al., 1995).
The third element of Bourdieu’s theoretical triad con-
cerns habitus, which consists of ‘systems of durable, trans-
posable dispositions, structured structures predisposed to
function as structuring structures’ (Bourdieu, 1977: 72).
Habitus is key to understanding the relationship between
action and structure, representing a subjectively embodied
disposition or generative social psychological structure
that does not determine action, but rather orientates actors
to particular ways of thinking, feeling, and acting, thereby
guiding their goals and strategies. Contrary to criticisms
of habitus as overly structuralism (King, 2000), it repre-
sents an ‘active generative matrix of action’ (Lizardo,
2009: 9) and a cognitive structure capable of producing
and sustaining institutional action (Fararo and Butts,
1999). Thus, habitus is intimately related to issues of
legitimacy, as it is this ‘feel for the game’ that creates cul-
tural alignment between individuals and the field in which
they operate. Foresight is also congruous to habitus, given
‘[T]he practices produced by the habitus [are] the strat-
egy-generating principle enabling agents to cope with
unforeseen and ever-changing situations’ (Bourdieu,
1977: 72).
To explore this link further, organizational foresight
should be seen as rooted in cognition (Das and Teng,
1999) and a sensitivity to tensions and ‘unconscious meta-
physics’ shaping dominant habits of thought (Whitehead,
1933). Habitus explains our capacity to ‘think with the
body’ and to ‘know without concepts’ (Bourdieu, 1984:
471), which results in doxa. Doxa implies a complicity
between objective structures and embodied structures,
and ‘an adherence to relations of order which, because
they structure inseparably both the real world and the
thought world, are accepted as self-evident’ (Bourdieu,
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176 Lindsay Stringfellow and Mairi Maclean
1984: 471). Doxa legitimates socially produced structural
orders, and when objective and subjective orders are in
equilibrium these result in the tacit, taken-for-granted of
the social world (Berger and Luckmann, 1967) and in
effect produce belief. Ultimately, objective structural
arrangements are arbitrary and doxa creates a reality based
on the socially forgotten imposition of hierarchies of
value, or symbolic violence (Lizardo, 2009). These struc-
tures can come, however, out of phase; the existing order
can be transformed and questioned, and it is disjuncture
which may enable organizational foresight to arise.
Bourdieu (1996b) calls this the ‘space of possibles,’ and
this space presents itself as the relationship between sets
of dispositions and the structural chance of access to posi-
tions (Bourdieu, 1993: 64–65). The space of ‘possibles’ is
perceived through habitus, ‘which will, stimulated by this
perception, become able to occupy a position’ (Van
Maanan, 2009: 71).
From a Bourdieusian perspective, foresight would not
represent metaphysical agency, but is ‘produced by the
same system of embodied structures that would have
resulted in unproblematic accommodation had the objec-
tive structures remained in line with the subjective struc-
tures’ (Lizardo, 2009: 27). Lizardo (2009) makes an
insightful link between Bourdieu’s work and the little
recognized influence of the psychological genetic structur-
alism of Jean Piaget on his theoretical framework. Habitus,
Lizardo (2009) points out, is seldom seen as a structure
but usually as a stand-in for individual or subjective con-
sciousness, which is then faced with macro-level struc-
tures. The Piagetian notion of a psychological (cognitive)
structure (Piaget, 1970) allows:
. . . an appreciation of the sense in which the habitus
is a ‘structured structure’ and how the intersection of
field and internalized dispositions in habitus is in fact
the meeting point of two ontologically distinct but
mutually constitutive structural orders (objective and
internalized) and not the point at which ‘agency’ meets
structure. (Lizardo, 2009: 10)
Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Bourdieu notes that the most obscure principle of
action lies neither in structures nor in consciousness, but
rather in ‘the relation of immediate proximity between
objective structures and embodied structures in habitus’
(Bourdieu, 1996a: 38). Other authors have noted the
need to bring cognition into the sociological study of
culture and society (DiMaggio, 1997), but Bourdieu
understands cognition, in habitus, in a broader sense.
Habitus thus relates to the unconscious structure of fore-
sight and strategic sense making, which Chia (1994) notes
remains relatively unexplored.
In the next section, we draw on recent conceptual and
empirical developments in entrepreneurship to illuminate
how organizational foresight, legitimacy, and field dynam-
ics can be understood through a Bourdieusian lens.
Legitimacy and organizational foresight
Recent research in entrepreneurship has begun to explore
the notion of legitimacy using Bourdieu’s practice per-
spective (De Clerq and Voronov, 2009a; Stringfellow
et al., 2013). Theoretically, De Clerq and Voronov
(2009a–c) have developed the notion of legitimacy as an
enactment of entrepreneurial habitus, which enables a
theorization of the potentially contradictory nature of
newcomers’ legitimacy. The contradiction arises from
newcomers’ need to balance the need to ‘fit in’ with the
institutional norms and taken-for-granted assumptions of
field incumbents (De Clerq and Voronov, 2009a) and the
need to ‘stand out’ as an entrepreneur. Fields are character-
ized by particular forms of capital, and they reproduce
dominant narratives of how new entrants should behave
(Bourdieu and Wacquant, 1992), as well as specialized
and explicit knowledge and belief systems that are used as
evaluation criteria, requiring newcomers to fit in (Scott,
1994). However, newcomers must also stand out, as aspir-
ing entrepreneurs need to be perceived as challenging the
dominant narrative of a field and bringing something new
(De Clerq and Voronov, 2009a). The degree to which this
is the case depends on the extent to which the new entrant
is innovative versus imitative (Cliff et al., 2006), and the
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relative balance will depend on the maturity of the field
(Stringfellow et al., 2013).
De Clerq and Voronov (2009b) suggest that the rela-
tive benefit of institutional legitimacy, or fitting in, will
be high in mature fields. Building on this suggestion,
Stringfellow et al. (2013) present an empirical study using
Bourdieu’s practice theory to explore how legitimacy and
resource acquisition are constructed, relationally, by busi-
ness owners in a mature, institutionalized field. They
present a study of the owners of small accounting ventures
from which it emerges that two distinct groups of entre-
preneurs, with specific capital configurations, achieved
varying levels of success acquiring resources and legiti-
macy, which they term ‘traditional’ and ‘apostate.’ The
relationship of these groups to the dynamics of the field
sheds light on how practice informs organizational fore-
sight, and how the success of foresight-based actions is
intimately linked to the institutional context.
The ‘apostates’ in the study are those business owners
who have abandoned or renounced previously held beliefs
or principles (the doxa) as to how a professional accoun-
tant should practice. This profile evaluated the future
differently from the ‘traditional’ profile, and felt they were
Figure 1. Competing roles of doxa and foresight in mature and emerging fields.
Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
‘Space of Possibles’? 177
adapting to the changing environment and prevailing
trends from outside the professional field. In practice, this
meant that the apostates would apply professional codes
of ethics more loosely, forging close relationships with
their clients rather than maintaining their independence,
and being more openly orientated toward financial con-
cerns rather than client care (Stringfellow et al., 2013).
Ultimately, compared with the ‘traditional’ profile, the
apostates found it problematic to access resources such as
information and new clients, suggesting they lacked legiti-
macy in a mature field, where there is a doxic relation to
the social world (Bourdieu, 1977). By contrast, the large
accounting firms have been able to act as institutional
entrepreneurs through boundary bridging and boundary
misalignment processes, implying that they are ‘immune
to coercive and normative processes because their market
activities expand beyond the jurisdiction of field-level
regulations’ (Greenwood and Suddaby, 2006: 27).
Building on these insights, as well as the broader litera-
tures of organizational foresight, entrepreneurial legitimacy,
and Bourdieu’s practice theory, we have developed a model
of how foresight emerges relative to the maturity of the
field and its legitimating characteristics. See Figure 1.
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178 Lindsay Stringfellow and Mairi Maclean
In mature industries, habitus (which informs practice)
tends to be aligned with the objective structure of the
field, which is defined by a relatively stable social order
and a collective memory that favors constancy and is
resistant to change (Bourdieu, 1990). Legitimacy in such
fields is often based on cognitive and moral judgments of
the entity’s appropriateness to taken-for-granted norms,
or doxa, associated with an institutional perspective of
legitimacy. When there is alignment between the habitus
and the field, or a strong hierarchical structure within
the field, the ‘space of possibles’ will be limited and
therefore habitus inclines toward orthodoxy rather than
foresight. Dominant players who enjoy a position of
seniority and power in the field use conservation strategies
aimed at defending their position and sustaining the doxic
social relations of the field (Swartz, 1997). In mature
fields, the need to achieve institutional legitimacy tends
to limit the potential for creativity and foresightful prac-
tices, unless an exogenous shock, or the relationship
of organizations to the field, changes in such a way that
the field itself is transformed, for example through insti-
tutional entrepreneurship (Greenwood and Suddaby,
2006).
Newcomers entering a mature field will tend to pursue
strategies of succession aimed at gaining access to domi-
nant positions in the field, but these will tend to be con-
sistent with ‘fitting in’ and adopting existing cognitive
norms, models, scripts, and patterns of behavior (De
Clerq and Voronov, 2009b; Stringfellow et al., 2013;
Zimmerman and Zeitz, 2002). The collective memory
structures of habitus place boundaries around cognition,
creating the problem of reclusiveness ‘as illustrated in path
dependence, persistent organizational routines, and orga-
nizational memory’ ( Jarzabkowski, 2004: 533). Icono-
clasts or rule breakers in mature industries will lack
institutional legitimacy, and are likely to be punished as
deviants, as was found with the apostates in the Stringfel-
low et al. (2013) study. It is therefore less likely (although
not impossible) that organizational foresight will emerge
in mature, institutionalized contexts.
Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
By contrast, in emerging or transforming industries
there is a lack of clearly defined templates, and organiza-
tions need to legitimize new activity and establish patterns
of behavior (Déjean et al., 2004). Within such fields, it is
more likely that a disjuncture between the subjective
structure of habitus and the objective structures of the
field will occur; or alternatively, the field is less rigidly
stratified and therefore the space of possibles opens up.
This reflexive habitus can identify doxa, or taken-for-
granted structures and doctrines that were previously
invisible and accepted subconsciously. Heterodox dis-
courses, such as those associated with organizational fore-
sight, can therefore emerge which still relate to the past
and present dynamics of the field, but which position the
organization in accordance with anticipation of an alter-
native future. In emerging fields, newcomers can use this
foresight to generate strategies of succession aimed at
achieving dominance, whilst balancing the dual require-
ments of ‘fitting in’ and ‘standing out’ (De Clerq and
Voronov, 2009a). Alternatively, iconoclasts, who tend to
pursue strategies of subversion — which is a more radical
attempt to break free from the dominant group by dis-
crediting the status quo and legitimating its logics and
practices, that is acting as institutional entrepreneurs
(David et al., 2013) — may also channel organizational
foresight. Owing to the disjuncture of habitus from the
institutionalized norms of the field, foresight tends to be
associated with strategic and pragmatic legitimacy, which
is directed toward self-interested actions.
Discussion and conclusion
The practice of entrepreneurship is itself intertwined with
legitimacy and organizational foresight, the navigation of
dynamic tensions that exist between everyday structures
and sense making of those structures, and ‘the continuous
evaluation of different organisational futures’ (Fuller and
Warren, 2006). Here, we have used Bourdieu’s theory of
practice to explore how organizational foresight may
emerge, and how it relates to the underlying legitimating
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dynamics of the field. Foresight can emerge when there is
a disjuncture between the objective structures of the field
and the subjective structures of the habitus, since: ‘At
crucial points of disjuncture, dislocation invites distance
taking, reappraisal and the development of fresh under-
standings (Heidegger, 1962), which can be further refined
in light of experience and rendered dispositional’ (Maclean
et al., 2012b: 400). This means that social structures,
which normally function below the level of consciousness
and discourse, become apparent (Bourdieu, 1984). This
disjuncture may result from the unbalanced relationship
between an agent’s habitus and her position, because of
field-level transformations such as crisis, social and cul-
tural change, or because the field itself is young and in
flux. The resulting reflexive mode of habitus can identify
doxa, with the potential to generate instead heterodox,
foresightful strategies.
The objective structure of the field will condition the
style of these strategies and their respective chances of
success. Dominant incumbents in mature fields will
usually generate conservative strategies that defend ortho-
doxy or the prevailing discourse. Newcomers to mature
fields are likely to pursue succession strategies that are
aimed at ‘fitting in’ and gaining access to dominant posi-
tions. By contrast, newcomers in emerging or transform-
ing fields will use organizational foresight to generate
succession strategies that allow them to both fit in and
stand out. Iconoclasts are more peripheral to the domi-
nant group, and generate heterodox discourses aimed at
subversion, which ultimately may result in new organiza-
tional forms and institutional entrepreneurship. There is
a greater potential to create strategic legitimacy in new or
transforming fields, and organizational foresight is more
likely to flourish without the constraints of a high degree
of institutionalization.
Although there is always an opportunity to play the
game in more than one way, in mature, institutionalized
fields it is unlikely that iconoclasts who go against the
field’s doxa will be perceived as legitimate, unless they
possess sufficient resources to act as institutional entrepre-
Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
‘Space of Possibles’? 179
neurs (Greenwood and Suddaby, 2006). The struggle for
legitimacy goes hand in hand with the struggle between
positions and the agents who occupy them; and ‘in the
phase of equilibrium, the space of positions tends to
govern the space of positions-takings’ (Bourdieu, 1996b:
231). In a weakly institutionalized field:
. . . agents always have an objective margin of
freedom at their disposal (which they can yes or no
make use of, dependent on their ‘subjective’
dispositions), no matter how tight the requirements
included in their position may be. (Bourdieu,
1993: 65)
Radical changes in the structure of positions can only
happen under two conditions: if innovations are already
present in the field and they can be accepted by at least a
small number of people; or if support can be found in
external forces (Bourdieu, 1996b). The model of legiti-
macy and foresight that we have presented here does not
preclude the possibility of foresight emerging in mature
fields, but rather suggests that the doxic relation to the
social world in such fields means there is less likely to be
a disjuncture between habitus and the objective structures
of the field. Such fields are highly stratified, with stable,
routinized interactions between embedded members that
may limit organizational foresight, due to the taken-for-
grandness of institutionalized, embedded practice. The
‘space of possibles’ is more restricted, but this may be
disturbed by environmental factors such as ‘social
upheaval, technological disruptions, competitive discon-
tinuities and regulatory change’ (Greenwood and Suddaby,
2006: 28), which precipitate either the need for foresight,
or the entry of new players into the organizational field.
The core contributions of this paper lie in conceptual-
izing why organizational foresight may or may not emerge
in different institutional contexts and in theorizing the
consequences of foresight in relation to organizations
achieving either institutional or strategic legitimacy. Our
model illustrates a Bourdieusian practice perspective of
Strategic Change
DOI: 10.1002/jsc
180 Lindsay Stringfellow and Mairi Maclean
foresight that accommodates the structure of the field,
which determines possibilities, with the subjective rela-
tionship of habitus to the field that generates the invisible
cognitive structures central to organizational foresight. As
with all research, we acknowledge that this paper has
limitations, particularly (given spatial constraints), the
lack of empirical data to support our conclusions (see,
however, Stringfellow et al., 2013). Nevertheless, we hope
the model of foresight and legitimacy developed here can
serve as a basis for future research that takes a practice
perspective of foresight as an inherently social process.
Given that we created our model largely based on
Bourdieu’s writing, in conjunction with empirical findings
in a mature field, it would be interesting to examine its
appropriateness in young, emerging, or high-velocity
fields (cf. Sarpong, 2011; Sarpong and Maclean, 2011,
2012). Future studies could also examine dominant, new-
comer, and iconoclast groups to test if and how organiza-
tional foresight relates to the strategies of conservation,
succession, and subversion outlined in our model.
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BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES
Lindsay Stringfellow is a Senior Lecturer in the
Department of Organisation Studies at the
University of Exeter Business School. Her research
interests are related to issues of legitimacy,
particularly in the traditional professions, and
exploring broad issues of structure, agency, and
power conceived of within the theoretical domain of
scholars such as Bourdieu.
Correspondence to:
Lindsay Stringfellow
University of Exeter Business School
Rennes Drive
Exeter EX4 4PU, UK
e-mail: l.j.stringfellow@exeter.ac.uk
Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
‘Space of Possibles’? 183
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agement to acquire resources. Administrative Science Quarterly
52(1): 70–105.
Mairi Maclean is Professor of International
Management and Organisation Studies at the
University of Exeter Business School. Her research
interests include international business elites and
elite power, especially from a Bourdieusian
perspective, entrepreneurial philanthropy, history,
and organization studies.
Strategic Change
DOI: 10.1002/jsc
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