The possible verb derived means to transpose a text, a happening or an event into a script
(Romanian Explanatory Dictionary, 1988). Moreover, a noun has been created in
Romanian to describe the compulsive tendency to develop post-factum mental scenarios
for any event with some social implications.
In dramatic arts, therefore, the scripts cover both the written basis of what happens on the
stage and the happening itself, as a process. The meanings have been transferred to
numerous fields, “scenario” evoking today in common language both the written part and
the “movie” of the action, in its temporal unfolding.
Counselling has taken over these meanings through education, when using scenarios in
drama, role-play, simulation, debates and expositions with an opponent.
Gradually, the notion has enriched by adapting the traditional dramatic scenario to the
specific circumstances of other fields. We mean military strategy that gives (strategic)
scenario a spatial and temporal perspective, depth, planning and prediction. In military art
and strategic management, scenarios go beyond the meaning of a simple text, and are a
heuristic method of strategic planning and intuitive forecast that “exploits the capacity of
leaders to formulate ample and complex visions as a result of extensive and in-depth
information knowledge related to the phenomenon, process, action or activity that makes
the object of prediction” (www.actrus.ro/biblioteca/cursuri/management/habian/a31.pdf).
In order to stay in competition, marketing upgrades the scenario to the rank of ”a
systematic study trying to determine the probable evolution of the market, process that
might influence the dominant industry or the market patterns; the creation of scenarios
allows a company to adapt the strategy so that the risks caused by major changes on the
market remain minimal” (Lorenzo, 1993).
Social prognosis and management are the newest fields to have adopted the technique of
scenario and to have included it in their current methodological system. Scenarios as
prognosis instruments analyse “the evolution of a complex system starting from the
current tendencies and conditions of the system, as well as from the sum of actions of the
external environment on it” (Dictionary of sociology, 1993).
As managerial activity, scenarios are the detailed description of a hypothetical situation,
seeking a solution strategy (Joiţa, 2000).
In drawing up major strategies, prognoses (social, geo-political, economic), military arts
and (strategic) management systematically and simultaneously use a continuum of
methods (extrapolation, heuristics, pertinence trees, stimulating expert creativity) in
which scenarios are irreplaceable. From this perspective, the scientific, prospective,
heuristic and creative aspects of scenario are underlined.
This terminological and semantical analysis has led us to conclude that Scenario:
- is a complex notion describing a multivalent, multifunctional, flexible
activity regarding the domain it serves (artistic / scientific or theoretic /
practical);