Knowledge Processes and Organizational Learning: A Radical Shift in Management Thinking?

The present chapter discusses the different epistemologies behind different strands of management thinking and calls for the need for further theoretical development. It proposes a specific management methodology, Semiotic Learning, that corresponds to an innovative approach to the field of organizational learning, one that draws on social semiotics and on ontological hermeneutics in order to develop an integrative perspective to the individual and to the social dimensions of organizational learning. Pragmatism stands for the inseparable nature of the individual and the collective aspects of learning. Though many organizational learning theories draw on pragmatism, Semiotic Learning argues for the need to develop further this perspective because once its underlying assumptions are understood its consequences imply a radical shift in relation to dominant management thinking.