Different types of actors (social, policy, and business) face the varied global-level challenges from digitalization, climate change to multipolarization of economic power that question the prevailing institutional order and structures at multiple levels from organizations to national, regional and even global structures (Gras et al., 2020). At the intersection of policymaking, business, and societal transformations, it can be particularly challenging to find common ground for the formation of collective vision and shared beliefs on opportunities. How and where can the “space” for sharing ideas openly between businesses, policymakers and societal actors emerge?

Applying the concept of social imaginaries that refer to how people collectively see, sense, think and dream about the world, this paper builds a framework suggesting collective international opportunity recognition as a mechanism for agency in complex evolutionary institutional change. Social imaginaries are a resource for both understanding the prevailing institutional order as well as for creating representations of possible futures. Thus, providing shared ground for agency. To further our understanding on how this takes place, our framework brings forwards identification of the contextual elements that provide “space” for different types of agentic roles. Thus, widening the discussion on the heroic agent as a rational decision maker that prevails number of business and organizational studies.

Our empirical study explores the policy – business – social interaction in context of environmental sustainability advancement and green transition. In practice, we are in process of gathering empirical data from the imaginaries and opportunity beliefs in terms of sustainability advancement as the basis for collective agency within selected policymakers, businesses and societal actors through futures workshops.

Eventually, we explore this complex framework in the context of urgently pressuring climate crisis that demands complex understanding as well as democratic, collective actions, while the geopolitically turbulent times set different kinds of challenges to different actors in this endeavor. By exploring the complexities of collective agency from the futures perspective, we aim to provide new insight into futures studies. Simultaneously, by enlightening these multi-level dynamics, our aim is to contribute to the emerging field of international business policy research.