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.