world: the battle of Gaugamela (334 B.C.) where Alexander the Great defeated Darius III
with an army ten times smaller), the battle of Marathon (490 B.C.), Thermopile (480
B.C.), while in the Romanian history we have Vaslui (1475), C ălugăreni (1595) won by
armies that were outnumbered, but fought by novel strategic and tactical scenarios drawn
up by commanders of genius.
Another category of scenarios taken over and adapted by educational and career
management are the anticipatory ones used in socio-economic, financial prognoses,
geopolitics, demography, and meteorology.
Although they have been a constant subject for mankind since ancient times (let us not
forget that the famous Delphi oracle asked to offer “scenarios” for important events, as
wars and journeys), anticipatory scenarios attract the attention of scientists in 1950s,
becoming an object for futurology, the science of future (first mentioned by Flechtheim,
1943).
“In our age, the interdependence of the constitutive processes of societies and the
globalisation of economic, social, military relations has led to the emergence of a distinct
field of investigation in the form of futurology.” (Dictionary of sociology, 1993).
Since 1980s, when careerology starts out as “a science of developing human potential
throughout career”, strategic and anticipatory scenarios have been studied and applied
intensely to career counselling as well.
Theoretical background
Etymologically, the word scenario and its entire lexical family is based in the Latin root
scaena, with multiple meanings added function of the context: stage, theatre, show,
pomp, intrigue, set-up, rhetoric school, suggesting as many possibilities of understanding
(Romanian Explanatory Dictionary DEX, 1975; http://dexonline.ro)..)
Synthetically, scenario (Rom. scenario , Fr. scenario , It. scenario ) is a concept
representing:
- the succinct text of a play, film, action, etc., usually containing technical
directions for directing and staging. Scenarios also meet the demands of
readers. Radio scripts are often adaptations of literary texts (especially in the
form of theatre plays) to the requirements of radio broadcasting (Gu ţanu,
1999); - the action, process or events staged;
- a process unfolding after a pre-established plan. It has a figurative sense, by
extension (http://dexonline.ro).