Cultural Semiotics in Strategy Conversation: Taking a Position on Strategy Through Knowledge Transfer

Abstract

This study reviews knowledge management as a construct for analysing strategy discourse; identifying key strategy artefacts; and how they may be interpreted by key stakeholders engaged in strategy discourse. The importance of storytelling and narrative in the development of strategy is recognised. In developing the notion of strategy as a people orientated construct, this study provides a theoretical foundation for the determination of how stakeholders in strategy may take a position on strategy.
This study defines an organisational model of the social interactions affecting knowledge transfer within organisations arising from problems of knowledge location, retention, and transfer. This ontological enquiry captures the epistemological characteristics of strategy artefacts interpreted by stakeholders in a senior management team. This paper goes on to underpin the value of a semiotic view as a diagnostic tool to determine the position that stakeholders take in the context of existing strategy discourse. From an etymological perspective this study posits a typology based upon a semiotic framework to help diagnose how stakeholders take a position based on their interpretation of key strategy artefacts; and to understand the nature of interpretation as a means of intervention by which the strategy narrative may be reshaped. What is of interest is how storytelling and narrative empowers individuals as they seek to disseminate and transfer knowledge from the past to shape the future. This study reveals the inflection that individuals may exert on knowledge artefacts; and the motivation of those who trade in knowledge assets, through storytelling and narrative, as players in the game of strategy search for coping strategies to adapt to the new reality.
Ultimately this study provides new insight into the power of semiotics in the early stage; and constructivism in the later stages of the knowledge management continuum; and describes how participants in strategy adopt a position on strategy.