Understanding the roles of signs and norms in organizations - a semiotic approach to information systems design

To apply semiotics to organizational analysis and information systems design, it is essential to unite two basic concepts: the sign and the norm. A sign is anything that stands for something else for some community. A norm is a generalized disposition to the world shared by members of a community. When its condition is met, a norm generates a propositional attitude which may, but not necessarily will, affect the subject's behaviour. Norms reflect regularities in the behaviour of members in an organization, allowing them to coordinate their actions. Organized behaviour is norm-governed behaviour. Signs trigger the norms leading to more signs being produced. Both signs and norms lend themselves to empirical study. The focus in this paper is on the properties of norms since those for signs are relatively well known. The paper discusses a number of different taxonomies of norms: formal, informal, technical; evaluative, perceptual, behavioural, cognitive; structure, action; substantive, communication and control. A semiotic analysis of information systems is adduced in this paper from the social, pragmatic, semantic, syntactic, empiric and physical perspectives. The paper finally presents a semiotic approach to information systems design, by discussing the method of information modelling and systems architecture. This approach shows advantages over other traditional ones in a higher degree of separation of knowledge, and hence in the consistency, integrity and maintainability of systems.     

9-11 information failures: a semiotic approach

The events leading to 11 September 2001 seem to indicate an interaction of oversights, which, in concert, compromised security. Here, we use a semiotic model to explain some of what went wrong prior to 9-11. Semiotics involves the study of signs and symbols to better understand their meaning and contextual relation. We begin with so-called information. For information to be useful, it must be necessary; and to be necessary, it must be universal in the same way as a mathematical expression is understandable by mathematicians worldwide, regardless of their native language. Current systems literature provides little that addresses what is necessary and why there is a requirement for universality in information representation and processing. Our semiotic model, adapted from the existing domain of semiotic models, provides such a universal model, defining it in five levels.     

Understanding the design of information technologies for knowledge management in organizations: a pragmatic perspective

Abstract.  Researchers report mixed findings on the successful application of information technologies (IT) for knowledge management (KM). The primary difficulty is argued to be the use of information management techniques and concepts to design and develop KM Tools. Also problematic is the existence of a multiplicity of KM technologies, the application and use of which differs across organizations. This paper argues that these problems stem, in part, from the information system field's over-reliance on design concepts from the functionalist paradigm. Hence, our contention that alternative perspectives, which bring into focus issues of ontology and epistemology, need to be brought to bear in order to understand the challenges involved in the design and deployment of IT artefacts in knowledge management systems (KMS). The philosophy of technology, with its emphasis on the primacy of praxis, and which incorporates ontological and epistemological concepts from phenomenology and hermeneutics, is applied to the findings of a participative action research study to illustrate how social actors interpret and understand worldly phenomena and subsequently share their knowledge of the life-world using IT. The outcome of this marriage of situated practical theory and philosophy is a set of design principles to guide the development of a core KM Tool for KMS.     

A semiotic framework to understand how signs in construction process simulations convey information

Planning the production sequence for a construction project requires the combination and transfer of information and knowledge from a large variety of areas. To support this knowledge combination and transfer, construction process visualizations, also referred to as 4D CAD, have proven to be valuable tools. Within these visualizations, signs, such as icons, indexes, or symbols, are often used to visualize contextual information related to the different construction activities. To understand the mechanisms of how these signs meaningfully convey such contextual information, this paper introduces a semiotic framework consisting of semiotic concepts, their definitions and relations. This paper also illustrates the power of the framework by applying it for analyzing the signs used in two construction process visualizations.     

Evolution of information systems in organizations

Of all organizational phenomena and management techniques, the use of computers and data processing have been perhaps the most distinct and penetrating. The steady progress of technology and common patterns of growth have inspired a whole body of literature on the evolution of information systems. This article reviews the relevant literature and the theoretical underpinnings of different views. We develop a framework which includes elements from economics, diffusion theories, organizational learning and growth and stages theory. Within this framework we integrate different views on the subject and look at what broader theoretical features are applied in the models presented in information systems research. On the basis of the review, we draw some conclusions about the limitations of the models and the need for future research in the field.     

Specification and design of transactions in information systems: aformal approach

In conventional information systems development, consistency between requirements specifications and design is achieved by manual checking. The application of the transformational paradigm to the specification and design phases is proposed. Requirements are expressed in the ADISSA notation, using the ADISSA method, a transaction-oriented refinement of structured systems analysis. The control part of a transaction is transformed into a formal specification, the FSM (finite state machine) transaction, by applying a set of rules. The design stage is realized by an algorithm which compares the FSM transaction into simpler transactions and implements them with a hierarchical set of finite-state machines. Consistency between the formal specification and the result of the design is achieved by proving that the latter has the same behavior as the former     

Soft systems methodology to information systems: a Wittgensteinian approach

Abstract. A logical foundation for information system design requires a theory of meaning. Ideational theories attach meaning to the ideas in the private world of a conscious subject. By contrast Wittgenstein held that language and meaning were primarily public and that a private, purely subjective, language was impossible. The iterative debate among stake-holders that takes place in the practice of soft systems methodology (SSM) can be understood as a Wittgensteinian language game in which meaning is created not just discovered. The conceptual models used in SSM can be developed into logico-linguistic models which express stipulative definitions. These definitions can be taken as a logical basis for information system design.     

Formative contexts and information technology: Understanding the dynamics of innovation in organizations

Most accounts of computer-based innovation in organizational settings assume a naive picture of organizational change, overlooking events, features, and behaviors that, though unexpected and puzzling, may be the sources of inventions, new knowledge, new organizational routines and arrangements. The ambivalent, untidy, and often unpredictable character of IT-based innovation and change is hardly captured, even by more recent theoretical approaches that have nevertheless provided a deeper understanding of the complex interaction between technology and organizations. Based on field observations of the failures and successes during a major systems development effort in a large European computer manufacturer, we tell a different story: We submit that failures at innovation, surprises, and a whole range of related phenomena can be accounted for by introducing the notion of formative context, that is, the set of institutional arrangements and cognitive imageries that inform the actors' practical and reasoning routines in organizations. Limited capability to inquire into formative contexts is responsible for the actors' limited learning, irrespective of their strategies, interests, espoused theories, and methods. Still, we suggest, plenty of opportunities for innovation lie in the open, pasted-up nature of formative contexts and a new vision of design based on “context-making” interventions can bring them to light.     

Organizational reconciliation and its implications for organizational decision support systems: a semiotic approach

This paper describes the key problems with the core concepts behind ODSS, and provides a critique from a theoretical perspective that draws on organizational theory and semiotics. We argue that any distinction between organizational decision support systems (ODSS) and other related systems such as DSS or group decision support systems (GDSS) should be based on the difference between the characteristics of groups and organizations. Our approach uses characteristics of communication within organizations to model information in order to support organizational level decisions. We illustrate the usefulness of this approach by examining a decision-making problem in the context of a British hospital.     

Embryonic approach to the development of information systems

Prototyping in information systems (IS) development has recently shown increased benefits. In principle, the prototyping process provides users with more opportunities to improve their work, to verify that their needs are provided for, and that the terms used in the interface of the designed system are consistent with those in use in their work. As a result, they should be highly motivated to participate in an IS development process.However, certain drawbacks inherited from traditional prototyping in industrial production could limit the use of this approach in IS development. Some problems are identified in this paper, such as: (1) product-oriented thinking; (2) feedback delay; (3) the preoccupation of designers with respect to the experimental approach; (4) problems arising from the users' participation being indirect, and (5) negative attitudes towards contradiction. This paper proposes an organic approach, the ‘Embryonic Approach’ (EmA), in order to explore the full potentialities of prototyping in IS development. This approach is based on two fundamental elements; an adaptive and expandable kernel-structure, and a built-in communication mechanism.     

Chaos theory as a model for interpreting information systems in organizations

Abstract.  Chaos theory concerns the qualitative study of unstable aperiodic behaviour in deterministic non-linear dynamical systems. Concepts from chaos theory have recently been applied as a model for interpreting organizational change and understanding organizational behaviour. This paper applies these concepts to the study of information systems in organizations. Key concepts from chaos theory are identified and used to develop an interpretive framework. The importance of understanding the initial conditions when an information systems strategy is developed or an information system is implemented is highlighted. The idea of strange attractors, patterns of behaviours of information systems, organizations and actors, which are repeated is developed, and the effect of internal and external events and choices is considered. These chaos theory concepts are applied to a case study of information systems strategy implementation in the UK probation service. It is concluded that concepts from chaos theory offer valuable support in developing a coherent and meaningful story concerning interactions between information systems and their host organizations.     

An integrated component design approach to the development of a design information system for customer-oriented product design

In product design, the designer must draw upon many different types of information including both product-user requirements and design developments in related fields. As each designer has his/her own subjective opinion, an appropriate link between the user requirements and design features must be carefully developed to generate the most suitable design recommendation.The objective of this research is to develop a component design approach for the generation and evaluation of feasible design alternatives to help designers make the most effective design decisions. The development of the approach is based on the concept of component design and interaction links between user requirements and design output parameter values so that the design alternatives can be generated. A confidence interval for order statistics is then used to determine if enough unique feasible design alternatives have been generated. The research is presented in conjunction with a ballpoint pen design to demonstrate the feasibility and advantages of this approach.The results should provide designers with a useful method for the development of a design information system that will efficiently generate and evaluate a set of feasible design alternatives in product design process.     

The roles of artificial intelligence in information systems

By classifying information processing tasks which are suitable for artificial intelligence approaches we determine an architectural structure for large systems. We visualize a three-layer architecture of private applications, mediating information servers, and an infrastructure which provides information resources.The base information resources are likely to use algorithmic techniques, since they will deal with many similar base objects. Their results are at higher level of abstraction, diverse, and fewer in number. The information servers must consider the scope, assumptions, and meaning of those intermediate results. Such processing will require techniques grounded in artificial intelligence concepts. Applications will need artificial intelligence techniques to augment the human interface and provide high-level decision support.Information processing in the intermediate layer is domain-specific and a module is constrained to a single ontology. Processing here is comprised of search and control of search, focusing, pruning, fusion, and other means of data reduction. There are also control tasks associated with effective resource management. Their results are then composable by higher-level applications, which have to solve problems involving multiple subtasks.The architecture presented here is a generalization of a server-client model. The mediating server modules will need a machine-friendly interface to support the application layer. The partitioning enhances maintainability, but raises questions of effectiveness and efficiency.Without new and composable structures we will be stuck with a mixture of obsolete large systems and isolated new applications. A formal partitioning provides a model where subproblems become accessible to research. Interoperation is now a distinct source of research problems. We identify some of these issues, and hope that composability of solutions will permit progress in building effective large systems.This paper is substantially based on [50] and [51]. I thank both the original and recent reviewers and listeners for feedback received on this material. Further comments were given by Marianne Siroker and Maria Zemankova.     

An operational approach to the design of workflow systems

We construct models as an aid to our thought process. A particular class of models, operational models, can be used for simulation and prototyping. The OPJ modeling language is suitable for building operational models of complex software systems.The notion of operational parameterized building block is the key point of the approach, which focuses on two major phases: domain modeling and system modeling. Domain modeling consists in providing the classes of the building blocks grouped into different schemata. System modeling consists in building an actual model using the building blocks taken from the above-mentioned schemata; such building blocks are connected to each other according to the rules expressed in the schemata and are given actual parameters.As an example, a workflow management system supporting business process managing travel authorizations is presented. The workflow system is modeled and then used to synthesize a distributed prototype.     

A prototype approach to information system design and development

Many organisations view the development of an information processing system as a linear process consisting of an ordered sequence of steps from conception to hand-over and make no provision for alternative strategies. While excellent in many circumstances, the linear strategy is not the only possible approach. This paper discusses alternatives, with particular reference to a prototype strategy, which has some important advantages.     

Hierarchical approach to analyzing security breaches in information systems

This paper proposes a hierarchical approach to analyzing information security in modern information systems that consists of multilevel collection, analysis, and control of events. We have analyzed the mechanisms and peculiarities of how malware acts at each level of the information system, determined the features of the mechanisms of action of malware, its masking, and possible methods for detecting malware.     

The complementary roles of expert systems and database management systems in a design for manufacture environment

Effective product design that satisfies functional requirements and can be manufactured easily requires vast amounts of knowledge on the part of the design engineer. This paper focuses on the complementary roles of expert systems and database management systems as they relate to the Intelligent Design System (IDS) in a Design for Manufacture (DFM) environment. Each technology complements the other in its strengths and abilities. The database management system provides during the design process. The expert system provides a reasoning mechanism for identifying manufacturing violations and generating meaningful recommendations. These components work cooperatively with a CAD interface to form a unified, intelligent design environment.An information flow analysis of the Intelligent Design System resulted in the development of three distinct classifications of information within the database: CAD data, a design catalog, and a knowledge base. The CAD data tables employ an, object oriented approach to store specific information about the physical contains cost, weight, and strength characteristics of the standard parts and fasteners used within the system. The knowledge base contains rules and heuristics concerning design and manufacturing methodologies.The placement of the expert system rules in the database represents an innovation. As a result, the expansion and updating of the materials, fasteners, standard parts, or manufacturing processes used by the Intelligent Design System is facilitated without increased due to the efficient management of the knowledge base by the database management system. This allows the designer to modify the knowledge and help the system to learn without the need for a knowledge engineer.