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Purpose: To propose an approach for exploring industrial marketing network environments through a social semiotic lens. Design/methodology/approach: This conceptual paper introduces social semiotic perspectives to the study of business/industrial network interaction. Findings: We describe how structures of meaning derived from a cultural history of signification and interpretive processes of meaning in action are co-determined in social semiosis. We emphasise the meaning of environments using this social semiotic approach, leading us to explore the idea of the 'atmosemiosphere' -the most highly complex business network level, in illustrating how meaning is made through structuration between structures of meaning and their enactments in interactions between actors within living business networks. Practical Implications: Figurative language plays an important role in the structuration of meaning. This facilitates establishing plots and, therefore, in the actors' capability to tell a story, which starts with knowing what kind of story can be told. By implication, the effective networker must be a consummate moving 'picture maker' and to do so, she must have competences in narrative, emplotment, myth-making, storytelling and figuration in more than one discursive repertoire. Originality/Value: In employing a structurational discourse perspective informed by social semiotics, our original contribution is a 'business networks as discursive constructions' approach in that discursive nets, webs of narratives and stories, and labyrinths of tropes are considered just as important in constituting networks as networks of actor relationships and patterns of other activities and resources.

Structured AbstractPurpose: Drawing on sociological theories of Giddens, Bourdieu and Goffman, we explore how different relationships are characterized between actors in interaction and determine whether social theories of practice resonate as being practical to business marketers. Design/methodology/approach: In our empirical investigations, we employ the Delphi Method whereby we 'elevate' 6 highly experienced marketing practitioners in Dubai and Bangkok, each in different industries and from different cultural backgrounds, to designated 'expert' positions in exploring the practical relevance of the practice-based theories of Bourdieu, the dramaturgy of Goffman and the structuration theory of Giddens in understanding practical experiences of managing in business (B2B) networks. Findings: Our results show that aspects of these theories are consistent with practitioners' experiences in many ways but the theories themselves do not appear to resonate with the modernist practical consciousness of our participants as being particularly pragmatic or practically useful except as resources they could selectively borrow from as bricoleurs of changing action. Originality/value: Social practice theories appear rather too abstract and complex to practical actors. It is therefore paradoxical that social practice theories do not appear as sufficiently 'handy' or 'ready-to-hand' in Heidegger's (1962) terms; being in need of translation into practical usefulness. It would appear that social practice theories can be a useful analytical vehicle for the academic analyst but cannot resonate with the modernist consciousness of the practical actor.Key words: social practice theories, business interaction, Bourdieu, Goffman, Delphi 1 | P a g e Exploring the Perceived Value of Social Practice Theories for Business-to-Business Marketing ManagersIntroduction Rationalistic thinking and statistical logic were for a long time in social science privileged over embodied influences upon judgment (Kahneman, 2011, p. 8). Social sciences from the 1970's were inclined to assume that people were generally rational. In this view embodied influences, such as emotions and intuitions, were retardants to the obvious benefits of rationality. Western 'Enlightenment' thinking promotes and privileges rational and 'foundationalist' logic, where thinking/knowledge should precede speech and action. In the Aristotelian / Cartesian West, language is crucially important for establishing the logic of the "knowledge-creation-application-performance" sequence (Chia, 2003, p. 953) because the knowledgeable person must first have a command of rhetoric to be effective and convincing. In Western cultures, knowing is a prerequisite of action and knowing is accomplished through language. To act rationally requires you to know what you are doing and to know what you are doing requires you to be able to communicate before doing it.This paper explores the complexities involved in comparing rationalist logic and some antifoundationalist alternatives provided by social pract...

All we are saying, is give theoretical pluralism a chance

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