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Post-structuralism in Information Systems Research

– the fundamental role of Semiotics

Semiotics 2009 – September – A Coruña

Ângela Lacerda NobreESCE-IPS

anobre@esce.ips.ptlacerda.nobre@gmail.com

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Key argument

Structuralism has had an immense influence in the second half of the twentieth century across all knowledge areas

It evolved from Levy-Strauss work in the 1950’, based on Saussure’s semiotic theory

Structuralism (and Systems Theory) has many advantages (eg., progression of positivist science) - but it needs to renew itself…: post-structuralism

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Basic insights

Semiotics – has been subject to influences from analytical and from continental philosophy – respectively, structuralist and post-structuralist

Semiotics constitutes a massive set of resources (as theories and as tools) to understand and cope with this paradigm shift

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Dominant thinking Both management and information systems

research have been dominated by structuralist approaches to organisational reality

Objectivist, positivist and cognitivist epistemologies are prevalent in organisational disciplines

Complementarity versus the primordial role of informal and pre-reflexive processes

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Semiotics

Ancient history – it accompanied the development of Western thought

F. Saussure and C.S. Peirce – the theoretical basis of contemporary semiotics

Misinterpretations according to dominant schools of thought

Present times: the need to use and to apply the semiotic resources that are available

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Diverse examples

Sebeok - biosemiotics Knorr-Cetina – sociology of sciences Latour – actor-network-theory and material

semiotics Social philosophy theories, from Foucault

to Bordieu, from Bakhtin to Wittgenstein State-of-the-art of management and IS

theory: enchantment with social aspects (Web 2.0), with no theoretical background

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Conclusions Semiotics as an active and powerful

resource to address current organisational challenges

The need for a militant dissemination of semiotic thinking and practice through a diversity of channels

Revolutions start at home – how to create a common understanding of the semiotics potential?

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