Organisational semiotics

Organisational semiotics examines the nature, characteristics and features of information, and studies how information can be best used in the context of organised activities and business domains. Organisational semiotics treats organisations as information systems in which information is created, processed, distributed, stored and used. As an emergent discipline, it benefits from the research of semiotics in various schools, and further develops its theoretical frameworks, methods and techniques for understanding, analysing, modelling, designing and implementing of information systems.

History

Organizational semiotics started around 1973 with Ronald Stamper’s seminal book on Information (Stamper, 1973), a book that was intended to be the first chapter of a book on information systems design called ‘organizational semiotics’.^[1]

Featured as an interdisciplinary undertaking, researchers working in the community of organisational semiotics come from different backgrounds and work together on the theoretical and practical issues relating to organisational and technical problems. From the first international meeting on organisational semiotics in 1995, the community aims to develop the subject into a science of information systems, as claimed at the IFIP 8.1 Working Conference.^[2]

See also

• Informatics (academic field)
• Information Systems
• Information management

References

1. ^ Gazendam, Henk W. M. (2004-03-23), "Organizational Semiotics: a state of the art report", SemiotiX (1), http://www.semioticon.com/semiotix/semiotix1/sem-1-05.html 
2. ^ “Organisational Semiotics: Evolving a science of information systems”, book edited by Kecheng Liu, Rodney J. Clarke, Peter B Andersen and Ronald Stamper, with El-Sayed Abou-Zeid, 2002 ISBN 1-4020-7189-2

External links

• Organisational Semiotics Community Home
• Organisational semiotics at the University of Reading