Semiotics as Strategy

The value of strategic conversation has been demonstrated by research that compares organisational performance before and after the conversation intended to improve internal alignment in support of the strategy. This paper will review the success attributed to the introduction of a balanced scorecard during a period of significant change in market conditions that were to challenge significantly the achievement of objectives. This paper will show the value of the semiotic square in defining the influence of storytelling and narrative on the development of the balanced scorecard. The framework will be illustrated by representation of the strategic conversations.

The paper will link the act of discourse as an act of annunciation and that that produces a semiotic function. Moreover, this paper goes on to argue that the semiotic function occurs as we accomplish a division between our exteroceptive and interceptive worlds. This combination takes the form of “taking a position”. The transitive nature of taking a position is the act of prolonging the phenomenological axiom in order to create a semiotic axiom.  It is the nature of discourse between polar opposites, of certainty and ambiguity, which is of interest to this study.  This paper will further argue that the balance between certainty and ambiguity determines the degree of adoption of strategy at an individual level.

There is a growing body of research on the nature of univocal and plurivocal discourse. Univocal discourse is unequivocal, definitive and without metaphor, it signifies one voice and a unified view of strategy. Plurivocal is deconstructive in nature and can signify equivocacy, ambiguity, and even logical inconsistency.  This study feels that the semiotic square offers an opportunity to map the typography of the discourse landscape and better understand the univocal and plurivocal nature of strategy conversation on knowledge management through storytelling and narrative.

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Semiofest 2013 presentation – G.-Smith

Semiotics as Strategy by Graeme CM Smith is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.