1 Post-structuralism in Information Systems Research – the fundamental role of Semiotics Semiotics 2009 – September – A Coruña Ângela Lacerda Nobre ESCE-IPS

2 Key argument 4 Structuralism has had an immense influence in the second half of the twentieth century across all knowledge areas 4 It evolved from Levy-Strauss work in the 1950’, based on Saussure’s semiotic theory 4 Structuralism (and Systems Theory) has many advantages (eg., progression of positivist science) - but it needs to renew itself…: post-structuralism

3 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

4 Dominant thinking 4 Both management and information systems research have been dominated by structuralist approaches to organisational reality 4 Objectivist, positivist and cognitivist epistemologies are prevalent in organisational disciplines 4 Complementarity versus the primordial role of informal and pre-reflexive processes

5 Semiotics 4 Ancient history – it accompanied the development of Western thought 4 F. Saussure and C.S. Peirce – the theoretical basis of contemporary semiotics 4 Misinterpretations according to dominant schools of thought 4 Present times: the need to use and to apply the semiotic resources that are available

6 Diverse examples 4 Sebeok - biosemiotics 4 Knorr-Cetina – sociology of sciences 4 Latour – actor-network-theory and material semiotics 4 Social philosophy theories, from Foucault to Bordieu, from Bakhtin to Wittgenstein 4 State-of-the-art of management and IS theory: enchantment with social aspects (Web 2.0), with no theoretical background

7 Conclusions 4 Semiotics as an active and powerful resource to address current organisational challenges 4 The need for a militant dissemination of semiotic thinking and practice through a diversity of channels 4 Revolutions start at home – how to create a common understanding of the semiotics potential? THE END