INTRODUCTION
Strategy formulation, at both corporate and
functional levels, is a knowledge-intensive social
process that involves managers with diverse cognitive
spheres. For the strategy process to produce a
useful outcome, shared mental models are constructed
as a result of the communication, exchange
and adaptation of the participating managers’ cognitive
models and the creation of new issue-specific
knowledge. What drives strategic dialoguing is a
form of persuasive argumentation (Vinokur and
Burnstein, 1974), and what creates shared models
is the construction of new knowledge through
argumentative discourse. From the knowledge
management point of view, knowledge is created
as the result of the integration/recombination of
different contexts within the ba (place) (Nonaka
and Toyama, 2003) of the strategic process, which
contexts are then modified according to the developed
shared beliefs (Demsetz, 1988; Kogut and
Zander, 1992).
On the other hand, there is a growing belief that
the long-term strategy of a firm, if it is not a purely
emergent process, at least has an emergent component
(Mintzberg and Waters, 1985) realized
through a cycle of sense making (construction of
shared meanings and common goals, selection of
problems and opportunities for the organization),