Scenario planning: An investigation of the construct and its measurement

Scenario‐planning academicians and practitioners have been observing for more than three decades the importance of this method in dealing with environmental uncertainty. However, there has been no valid scale that may help organizational leaders to act in practice. Our review of prior studies identifies some problems related to conceptualization, reliability, and validity of this construct. We address these concerns by developing and validating a measure of scenario planning based on Churchill's paradigm (Journal of Marketing Research, 1979, 16, 64–73). Our data analysis follows from a sample of 133 managers operating in the healthcare field in France. To validate our scale, we used three approaches: first, an exploratory factor analysis; second, an examination of psychometric proprieties of all dimensions; and third, a confirmatory factor analysis. The results of this study indicate that scenario planning is a multidimensional construct composed of three dimensions: information acquisition, knowledge dissemination, and scenario development and strategic choices.

Arafet Bouhalleb (1) , Ali Smida (2)

1 LED - Laboratoire d'Economie Dionysien
2 CEPN - Centre d'Economie de l'Université Paris Nord

Scenario-planning academicians and practitioners have been observing for more than three decades the importance of this method in dealing with environmental uncertainty. However, there has been no valid scale that may help organizational leaders to act in practice. Our review of prior studies identifies some problems related to conceptualization, reliability, and validity of this construct. We address these concerns by developing and validating a measure of scenario planning based on Churchill's paradigm (Journal of Marketing Research, 1979, 16, 64-73). Our data analysis follows from a sample of 133 managers operating in the healthcare field in France. To validate our scale, we used three approaches: first, an exploratory factor analysis; second, an examination of psychometric proprieties of all dimensions; and third, a confirmatory factor analysis. The results of this study indicate that scenario planning is a multidimensional construct composed of three dimensions: information acquisition, knowledge dissemination, and scenario development and strategic choices.

Keywords: Churchill paradigm; reliability; scenario planning; validity

Domains: Humanities and Social Sciences

Arafet Bouhalleb, Ali Smida. Scenario planning: An investigation of the construct and its measurement. Journal of Forecasting, 2018, 37, pp.489 - 505. ⟨10.1002/for.2515⟩. ⟨hal-03845929⟩