Transition to Sustainable Employment: Using Backcasting Technique for Designing Policies

The article presents the experience and results of a research project that used the technique of backcasting. Backcasting is a preferred method in transition management – especially with regard to sustainability issues – as it facilitates the deliberation of complex socio-economic issues and enables participants to think freely outside the realms of present cognitive frames and still find adequate, future-oriented policy answers. In the case of this particular Hungarian backcasting experiment, a sustainable employment scenario was developed and policy recommendations were determined for reaching such a desired future. The article attempts to demonstrate that applying future-oriented methodological approaches can indeed lead to the design of feasible sustainability policies even when dealing with path-dependent systems burdened with lock-in effects.