The Implications of the French semiotic system of A.J. Greimas for organization theory and organization research: Elaborating what has escaped evolving thus far
The purpose of the paper is to elaborate a theoretical approach of a branch of thensocial sciences composed of organization theory, using the comprehensive French semiotic system developed by A.J. Greimas and his colleagues. Besides a field of sociological research, organization theory has multi-disciplinary characteristics with presence in political science, business research, economics, and information systems sciences, for instance. The research questions are:
- What comprise the appropriate semiotic deep structures to build into a Greimasian semiotic organization theory?
- What comprise the appropriate intermediate narrative semiotic structures in construcing a Greimasian semiotic organization therory?
- What comprise the appropriate discursive semiotic superstructures in a Greimasian semiotic organization theory?
Characterizations of semiotic deep structures include such much-used schemes as the semiotic square with its origins in medieval philosophy, commonly used to elaborate contradictions, contrarieties and other relationships between concepts. To take an example, the nature-culture dichotomy, relevant both in the social sciences and elsewhere, has often been elaborated by means of the semiotic square. Moreover, any other fundamental concept may be explicated using the scheme, including veridictory concepts and related to modalities, such as possibility, obligation, prohibition, or facultativeness.
Common characterizations of semiotic narrative structures include the widely known actant model with such elements as actants, actors, opponents, and objects that move from sources to destinations in a process of communication while the actants carry out their strivings in respect to these objects. To take an example, questions of "agency", common in organization theory interested in how capacity to act is vested in agents by their principals (on whose behalf the agents act) or while agents assume general cultural principles and standards, are commonly examined in organization theory and organization research. Arguably, the actant model has definite potential to clarify issues of organizational agency.
Semiotic superstructures are not absent from organization theory and research, either. These structures have presence, for instance, whenever discursive or rhetorical aspects of organizations are examined. Indeed, both discursive and rhetorical organization theories have evolved, and can certainly be examined in the Greimasian perspective.
The paper assumes the task of elaborating a Greimasian organization theory that, for reasons unknown, has not quite evolved thus far. The task of theoretical development grows from long-time familiarity with the semiotic theoretical system of Greimas on the one hand, and on the other the conviction that the Greimasian system has potential thus far unexploited in the domain of theoretical development of organization theory.
The paper uses available theoretical sources with special reference to original sources characterizing the semiotic system of Greimas. It is also necessary to put the Greimasian notions and their implications in a meaningful relation to relevant organization theories with present-day relevance and selected empirical instantiations of these theories in empirical research. Last but not least, the implications of the Greimasian semiotic system once projected onto the domain of organization theory need be elaborated as concerns research methods in the wide sense, thus including both such aspects as those of research design, and as concerns the specific methods and research techniques to tackle the different kinds of research material used in organization research, from "data" to documents to meanings that stakeholders to organizations ascribe.
País:
Finlandia
Temas y ejes de trabajo:
Semiótica y sociología
Institución:
Faculty of the Social Sciences, 00014 University of Helsinki, Finland
Mail:
pertti.ahonen@helsinki.fi
Estado del abstract
Estado del abstract:
Accepted