Information, Organisation and Technology: Studies in Organisational Semiotics

Organisational semiotics is a discipline that is concerned with the interrelationships between individuals and groups, and between humans and technology, functioning in organisations and society. Organisational semiotics opens up the prospect of theory-building and the development of new methods and techniques to gain insights into organised behaviour and enacted social practices, in the presence and absence of various technologies. It shares common interests with many other approaches to information and organisations, such as computer science, computational semiotics, organisational engineering, and language action perspective. The common vision shared by these approaches is to treat organisations and related information systems and technologies within a unified semiotic framework, with particular reference to the huge range of issues that elude many traditional disciplines. The analysis and design of information systems develops methods for solving the practical problems but offers no rigorous, theoretical foundation for them or how information functions within and between organisations. The semiotic perspective accommodates the individual and the social, the human and the technical, intra- and inter-organisational interactions, at a level of detail that is required in the study, modelling, design, and engineering of new and alternative organisational and technical systems. This perspective is outlined in the chapter presentations of Information, Organisation and Technology.