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Semiotic Learning - from

Organisational Semiotics to Organisational Learning

Ângela Araújo Lacerda Nobreanobre@esce.ips.pt, lacerda.nobre@gmail.com

ESCE-IPS PortugalSemiotics 2009 - September – A Coruña

Introduction

“Semiotics is currently the most complete and sophisticated theory of meaning and culture” (Lagopoulos, 1993)

Semiotic Learning (SL): – is the output of a research project on

Organisational Learning (OL) (Knowledge Economy context)

OS and OL OS - initiated by Stamper (1973) OL - initiated by Argyris (1978) Both address the organisational context OS aims at improving the effectiveness

of Information Systems design and implementation

OL aims at improving overall organisational effectiveness – parallel to Knowledge Management (KM)

Theoretical background

Socio philosophy theory Social tradition on Organisational

Learning Peirce’s pragmatism Heidegger’s ontology Halliday’s social semiotics

Key theories Pragmatism – it rejects all dualisms

(inside/outside, internal/external, individual/social, theory/practice, …)

Ontology – being-in-the-world is a broader instance of knowledge than subject-object, which is a particular case of the former

Social semiotics – meaning is created by active participation in social practices and use of language

From research to education Semiotic Learning (SL) – it revises key

social philosophy theory that is crucial to the fundamentation of management sciences

Management education severely lacks adequate theoretical basis, able to deal with the changing global environment and the increase in complexity

Semiotics may play that role of complementing traditional education with innovative perspectives

Rationale of SL

Tacit knowledge cannot be copied It is a source of sustainable competitive

advantages It can only be shared by active

participation in collective practices This implies: strengthening

organisational communities and organisational sense-making => SL

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Research question – (extended

version of the presentation)

“Is it possible to develop a conceptual framework and a

practical method that will facilitate learning in knowledge intensive organisations (KIO)?”

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Research objectives

• To analyse real cases of organisational community life

• To design a framework and method to facilitate organisational learning (OL)

• To test and validate such method

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Research method

Qualitative research method - Multi-grounded theory:

1 - Case studies and identification of key themes (social ties + community relations)

2 – Design framework to improve OL – Semiotic Learning (SL)

3 – Implementation and testing SL

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1 Cases - analysis of data (1/2)

4 organisations were analysed:

Type Study duration

Case A Eur. Agency 8 months

Case B Eur. Agency 1 week

Case C Nat. Agency 2 months

Case D Serv. Prov. 2 months

1 Cases – key themes (2/2)

1. organisational culture

2. leadership / followership relations

3. organisational images

Key insight: the greater the social interaction and level of trust, the greater the opportunities for sharing tacit knowledge, thus strengthening OL

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2 Design of SL (1/3)

In order

to strengthen OL enhancing

factors

to control OL hindering aspects

to promote organisational practices

that empower community-level

meaning-making

1. Framework: theoretical principles that direct practice

2. Method: set of procedures

3. Learning cycle

4. Learning steps

5. Relating theory and practice

6. Relating OL and socio-philosophical foundations

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2 Design of SL (2/3)

• To transmit to people/ groups/ organisations the importance of community relations

• To transmit this knowledge through practical experimentation

• To enable experimenting with new approaches to group interaction

• Key insight: concrete practices may be improved through new experimentations

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2 Design of SL (3/3)

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3 Testing (1/2)

4 organisations/ groups were used:

Type Profess. Backgr.

Group 1 Indep. Profes. psychologists

Group 2 IT company diverse

Group 3 IT company diverse

Group 4 Telecomm. diverse

To assess the raise in sensitiveness related to OL practices

Through the analysis of two indicators, according to the participants’ own perspectives:

• Raise in awareness• Professional and personal gains

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3 Testing (2/2)

In the organisations where SL was tested:• There was evidence of raise in

awareness towards OL• This suggests that it is possible to

facilitate learning and to improve OL processes

• The results are not to be generalised to all organisations

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Research results

SL OL is a meaning-making collective process, embodied in the organisation community and embedded in the organisational discursive practices.

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Key insights

Practice:The role of community relations

Semiotic Learning:

The practice of reflexive discussion

Theory:The role of

social context

An important contribution of this research is the development of a framework and a method that can help improve OL at a practical level, using different theoretical concepts that have seldom been applied in practice.

These positive exploratory results suggest that there is a rich potential to be further developed in future research.

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Conclusions