LAUSR

Abstract This paper provides an empirical analysis of a particular social anticipatory system emergence. Considering the anticipation phenomenon on a macro level as an intrinsic property of a social system, the authors exemplify its embodiment in interrelated constructs. The anticipation naturally spans various managerial domains of socio-economic space, bringing to it the time as a constructive element. How is the a posteriori anticipatory system empirically constructed? The study looks for evidence-based answers to this research question on the ground of the social constructionism. Following the attributive feature of any anticipatory system, the suggested approach highlights the contextual and performative aspects of the linkage between an image of the future and present social action. The model case under consideration is the Russian system for Skill Needs Anticipation and Matching (SNAM). We divide the system emergence into five distinct periods. Each period added a substantive new quality to the anticipatory function deployment, which ultimately led to the formation of a current modular structure of SNAM. The vulnerability of such structure appears at the junctures of the modules, where the conversion of SNAM constructs accompanies the shifts of the skill needs encoding layers.