The Role of Strategic Foresight in Creating Strategic Flexibility and Rational Decision Making

Aim and Increasing environmental uncertainty has brought increasing challenges to various organizations. Today, environmental uncertainty has spread in the business environment; the advent of globalization, highly destructive business models, and rapid technological change have increased the instability and complexity of the competitive landscape. The growing entanglement of organizations with their environment often results in emerging and unpredictable behaviors. It is very unlikely that unforeseen events, with significant consequences, will only affect one company individually and not affect the entire industry. The growing uncertainty of today's environment has faced significant challenges for organizations, and all companies, depending on the type of environment in which they operate, more or less deal with it. One of the most effective ways that organizations can cope with these changing conditions is to develop dynamic capabilities. One of the most important areas for the development of dynamic capabilities, which is also mentioned in the strategic management literature, is strategic foresight. Therefore, the main purpose of this study is to investigate the role of strategic foresight in creating dynamic capabilities of strategic flexibility and rational decision making with the moderating effect of environmental uncertainty. Given that the main purpose of this study is to determine the role of strategic foresight in creating strategic flexibility and rational decision making with the moderating effect of environmental uncertainty. This research is a descriptive-survey research in terms of the purpose of an applied research and in terms of the nature or method of data collection and is correlational in terms of the relationships between research variables. The data of this research were collected using a simple random sampling method and a researcher-made questionnaire using the indicators and research questions of Herhaus and Lining (2020). The opinions of professors and experts were used to validate this questionnaire. Cronbach's alpha was used for reliability which was set to 0.943. SPSS and smart pls software have been used to test the hypotheses of this research. The research data were collected from 156 knowledge-based companies in the field of electricity, electronics, photonics, telecommunications and automated systems in Tehran that is according to the limited statistical population and based on the Cochrane Limited Society formula. The results show that strategic foresight is effective in creating dynamic capabilities of strategic flexibility and rational decision-making, as well as environmental uncertainty that moderates the relationship between strategic foresight and rational decision-making. Therefore, from the research hypotheses, the first, second and third hypotheses were confirmed and the fourth hypothesis was not confirmed.Hypothesis 1: Strategic foresight is effective in creating strategic flexibility.Hypothesis 2: Strategic foresight is effective in creating rational decision making.Hypothesis 3: Environmental uncertainty modulates the relationship between strategic foresight and strategic flexibility.    Hypothesis 4: Environmental uncertainty does not moderate the relationship between strategic foresight and rational decision making.Discussion and The first, second and third hypotheses of this study were confirmed by path coefficients and appropriate statistics. The fourth hypothesis of this research was rejected from 1.96 due to its lower statistical value. According to statistical tests, the highest correlation is between strategic foresight and strategic flexibility. In order to improve dynamic capabilities, it is better to focus more on creating strategic flexibility. Increasing environmental uncertainty is an undeniable part of today's business environment, and all companies, depending on the type of environment in which they operate, more or less deal with it. To overcome these environmental unrests and tensions, every company has to take steps to survive otherwise, like hundreds of prominent companies, after something unexpected happens in their environment. , Unable to survive, will be excluded from the competition. One of the most important and efficient ways to deal with this environmental uncertainty is to create and strengthen dynamic capabilities. These dynamic capabilities play a very important role in creating competitive advantage. One of the important measures that can bring dynamic capabilities and is one of the results of this research is strategic foresight activities. The first component of strategic foresight activities is environmental studies. Companies should do their best to identify, review and evaluate changes and environmental trends so as not to be taken by surprise. Nokia is the best example of this. The company was once the leader in the production of mobile phones, but due to lack of proper environmental research and failure to discover the growing trends of customers to smart phones, the market leadership was handed over to Apple and Samsung. The second part of strategic forward-looking activities is scenario planning. Companies need to plan ahead for all the different situations and events so that they can respond quickly and accurately if needed. Companies cannot withstand environmental change if they have only one specific plan and strategy, such as stores that only serve their customers in person, with many problems after the outbreak of the Corona virus. They met and their sales fell sharply, but in the face of stores that provided online sales in addition to face-to-face sales, they were able to continue to make money and profitability. The next part is the creation of knowledge. To implement any proper strategy, knowledge related to it is needed. If companies want to adopt appropriate strategies with turbulent environmental conditions, they have to create knowledge in this area. Organizational structure and culture are the last components of strategic foresight. If the organizational structure and culture is in conflict with a particular goal, no matter how hard one tries to achieve that goal, nothing special will happen in the end, so if companies want dynamic capabilities, they need to create a structure and culture. Proper organization and support of strategic forward-looking activities provide a good basis for achieving dynamic capabilities.