Modern foresight literacy as a tool for team development

The article analyses cases from international and Russian practice for providing justification for development of foresight literacy as a team development instrument. University development teams are informal structural units for solving peculiar types of tasks which cannot be solved within the scope of current authority of individual team members. In that respect it is extremely important for a team to include key experts (including those at executive positions) in those areas of university life which require qualitative change. On the other hand, we must take into consideration that development team is not a direct unit of decision making at the university as its main task is to prepare justification and pilot versions supporting decision making process of relevant executive structures and positions at the university. This difference of roles between «development team» and «decision making center» poses a great practical problem for organization of change and development process management at universities and other organizations. Research task was to look at the challenging position «development teams» and «decision making centers» and see how modern development team should conduct its activities without substituting the functions of decision making centers and performing own function of supporting decision making process of a special type, related to defining the future of the organization in different time horizons. Basic context for such research task in this article is the analysis of international experience of foresight research inclusion into the decision making system. Foresight research, which started in 1950s for regulating decision making support processes related to different time scales of future activities, has a special place in future studies which underwent dynamic growth in the history of Western culture of XX century. Particular interest is caused by cases reflecting the fact that at this historical stage accumulated experience of foresight research has become a source of intensifying global trend of broadening the sphere of future - oriented educational practice of developing foresight literacy, foresight thinking, interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary formats of team activities etc. Therefore, the main results of conducted research include problematization of approaches to questions of supporting team development seen via peculiarities of interaction between «development team» and «decision making system» in the context of modern foresight culture development experience. Further research aspect definitely does not cover all range of questions related to development team activities but is a key one and is the gist of research value and originality. Practical suggestions concerning support of university development teams are related to conditions allowing the team to include modern foresight methodology into its activities: trends and pilot modules of mastering foresight literacy for ensuing inter- and transdisciplinary of team activities.