Leeds Beckett University - City Campus,
Woodhouse Lane,
LS1 3HE
0009-0002-3472-6179
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Harnessing Futures Thinking: Fostering Moral Foresight and Imagination in Higher Education
31 October 2025
Springer Science and Business Media LLC Publisher
Beech N, Down B, Arrigoni A, Agnew D, Zaborski T, Gold JAbstract
Higher education institutions (HEIs) are vital in promoting sustainability by embedding sustainable development (SD) into their curricula, equipping future leaders with critical thinking skills to envision and implement positive changes. In alignment with UNESCO's Education for Sustainable Development (ESD), our “Futures Focused Management for Sustainability” module fosters innovative, systems-based, and futures-oriented thinking. It challenges narrow perspectives, encouraging students to embrace ethics, responsibility, and mindset transformation for sustainable practice by understanding long-term impacts. The module integrates ‘futures’ tools within a step-by-step framework, allowing flexibility to incorporate additional methods while addressing complex, real-world challenges. The Moral Mindset Matrix (Triple M) tool supported critical reflection on corporate sustainability and personal values, fostering students’ growth as sustainability-oriented professionals on our undergraduate module. Using an action research approach, and Braun and Clarke’s (2007) reflexive thematic analysis of reflective assignments from 37 participants revealed heightened self-awareness, systems thinking, and anticipatory skills, reinforcing transversal competencies critical for addressing sustainability issues. The approach appeared to deepen students’ understanding of SD principles, the SDGs, and the complexities of sustainable management practices, including power dynamics and stakeholder interests. By fostering a critical, transdisciplinary mindset, the module helps student to make informed, impactful contributions to society, encouraging reflection on their values and responsibility as sustainable citizens strengthening professional development.
Speaking Power: Strategic Talk and Boundary-Spanning in Boardroom Governance Exploring Communicative Competence through the BACS Typology
04 March 2026
Springer Science and Business Media LLC Publisher
Beech N, Gold J, Bruce D, Arrigoni A, Duncan A, Zaborski T, Beech SAbstract
This study examines how directors use strategic talk in boardrooms to shape decisions, navigate power, and influence organisational direction. Addressing limitations in dominant governance paradigms, it explores the lived communicative practices of elite decision-makers. Using ethnographic observation and Critical Discourse Analysis, it introduces the Boardroom Attributes, Characters and Skills (BACS) Typology comprising linguistic skill, contextual awareness, and interpersonal dynamics to analyse how governance is performed through interaction. Findings reveal that strategic talk serves not only to advance agendas but also to perform boundary work, construct legitimacy, and foster dialogical spaces. These practices are relational and context-dependent, often obscured by formal governance models. The BACS framework highlights how communicative competence varies across individuals and is shaped by power structures such as seniority and symbolic capital. The study advocates for more inclusive, reflective boardroom cultures by foregrounding discursive skill and contextual sensitivity. It challenges static governance models and contributes a nuanced understanding of how legitimacy and strategic influence are constructed through language. The BACS Typology offers both theoretical insight and practical relevance for enhancing strategic dialogue in elite settings.
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