Ghostly Futures and Organization Studies

The concept of hauntology has received increased attention in organization studies. Developed in philosophy and social theory, hauntology highlights how the present is never fully self‑contained but is shaped by temporal disturbances that unsettle its coherence. Most adaptations focus on ghosts from the past following a traumatic event or enduring and unexpiated social injustice. Building on this research, our paper develops the notion of spectral futurity to demonstrate how organizations are also haunted by arrivals from the future that upset linear time and spatial self‑presence. We identify three distinct forms in this respect: lost futures, denied futures and catastrophic futures. Each spectral futurity is rooted in different temporal traumas that subsequently engender the psychological states of disappointment, fatalism and nihilism. The concept explains how organizations become bound to foreclosed horizons of possibility. As a result, actors imagine futures that constrain rather than expand collective action. Only by recognizing and confronting these spectral futurities can organizations be released from the dismal present and encounter a liberating future yet to come.