The Sign-Meaning Chain and its Implications for the Organization

Abstract

For anyone with an education in literary or philosophical confines, coming across the word “semiotics” in a business dictionary might seem strange. It is not among the terms that make up the common jargon of the manager, however, it is acquiring more importance as organizations become more complex. Although the concept is very old and it could be referred to, the philosopher, Umberto Eco (1991) was who got the concept out of the most tightly knit academic circles in his “treating general semiotics.” Eco defines semiotics as “the science that studies the life of signs within the framework of social life” while the R.A.E. (Spanish Society of Arts) defines it as “general theory of signs.” Towards the year 1995, the application of the principles of semiotics to organizations started to be used. The reason why a concept close to grammar or language construction should be of interest in business confines must be sought in the development of information systems (Gazendam, 2001). These have converted today’s organization into an ordered set of signs where, instead of “touching” a reality, it is represented by symbols which, at the same time are represented by other symbols, and so on, until n number of times. As a result, organizations have generated a language of electronic signs more and more distanced from tangible reality because the mobility of the sign is much higher than that which it actually represents. This is the phenomenon which has raised interest in semiotics from the confines of organizations.