Abstract
This chapter explains how models function as the glue that keeps organizations together. In an analysis of models from a semiotic and cognitive point of view, assumptions about evolutionary dynamics and bounded rationality are used. It is concluded that a model is a coherent sign structure, consisting of a network of a diversity of signs, and used by an actor for understanding or constructing a system of application. People use models because they are coherent, cognitively manageable units of knowledge. By their efficient organization, these knowledge units enable the development of flexible and adequate habits of action.
In an investigation into the complexity, coherence, boundaries, and components of models, assumptions about construction, emergence, and the coherence mechanism are used. Based on their use, models develop semiotic shortcuts in the form of new sign layers to the representation, namely iconic representations, language representations, and conceptual representations. Models change and find their boundaries based on a dynamics of coherence. The coherence mechanism must be seen as an alternative for foundational reasoning and fits well into an open, constructivist world view.
In an explanation of the role of models in organizations, assumptions about methodological individualism and distribution of knowledge are used. An organization is seen as a multi-actor system based on habits of action aimed at cooperation and coordination of work. These habits of action are supported by organizational knowledge in the form of shared artefacts, stories, institutions, designs and plans. Shared institutions, designs and plans can be seen as shared normative models that make up for the difference between the organization as a whole and ‘the sum of the individual actors. They are the glue that keeps the system together. Shared normative models are created by actors and, in turn, influence actor behaviour by forming habits, thus creating a cycle of selection and reinforcement, where some models and norms are reinforced and other models and norms disappear.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
References
Alexander, C. (1977). A pattern language: Towns, buildings, construction. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press.
Alexander, C. (1979). The timeless way of building. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press.
Austin J. L. (1962/ 1975). How to do things with words (New revised edition, M. Sbisà & J. O. Urmson, eds.). Oxford, England: Clarendon Press.
Ayer, A. J., & O’Grady, J. (Eds.). (1992). A dictionary of philosophical quotations. Oxford, England: Blackwell.
Barrow, J. (1998). Impossibility: The limits of science and the science of limits. London: Vintage.
Boden, M. A. (1988). Computer models of mind: Computational approaches in theoretical psychology. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.
Boisot, M. H. (1995). Information space: A framework for learning in organizations, institutions and culture. London: Routledge
Bosnian, A. (1996). Modellen van en in een organisatie [Models of and in organizations]. Leiderdorp, The Netherlands: Lansa.
Bouissac, P. (in press). Bounded semiotics: From Utopian to evolutionary models of communication. This book.
Broek, J. van den. (2001). On agent cooperation: The relevance of cognitive plausibility for multiagent simulation models of organizations. Capelle a/d IJssel, The Netherlands: Labyrinth.
Calvin, W.H., & Bickerton, D. (2000). Lingua ex machina: Reconciling Darwin and Chomsky with the human brain. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.
Coleman, J.S. (1990). Foundations of social theory. Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press and Harvard University Press.
Collins COBUILD English language dictionary. (1987). London: Collins.
Craik, K. (1943). The nature of explanation. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.
Dawkins, R. (1989). The selfish gene (Rev. ed.). Oxford, England: Oxford University Press. (Original work published 1976).
Emery, F. E. (Ed.). (1969). Systems thinking. Harmondsworth, England: Penguin Books.
Fayol, H. (1956). Administration, industrielle et générale [Industrial and general management]. Paris: Dunod. (Original work published in: Bulletin de la Société de l’Industrie Minérale, 3e livraison, 1916).
Fayol, H. (1984). General and Industrial Management (I. Gray, trans. and rev. ed.) [Administration, industrielle et générale]. London: Pitman. (Original work published in: Bulletin de la Société de l’Industrie Minérale, 3e livraison, 1916).
Franssen, M. (1997). Some contributions to methodological individualism in the social sciences. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Amsterdam.
Gazendam, H. W. M. (1986). Informatiebeleid en informatieplannen als besturing sinstrument [Information policy and information plans as management instruments]. Unpublished research note, University of Groningen, The Netherlands, Faculty of Management and Organization.
Gazendam, H. W. M. (1993). Variety Controls Variety: On the Use of Organization Theories in Information Management. Groningen, The Netherlands: Wolters-Noordhoff.
Gazendam, H. W. M. (1997). Voorbij de dwang van de techniek: Naar een pluriforme bestuurlijke informatiekunde [Past the technology push: Towards a pluralistic theory of information systems] [Inaugural lecture]. Enschede, The Netherlands: Twente University.
Gazendam, H. W. M. (2001). Semiotics, virtual organisations, and information systems. In K. Liu, R. J. Clarke, P. Bøgh Andersen, & R. K. Stamper (Eds.), Information, organisation and technology: Studies in organisational semiotics (pp. 1–48). Boston, MA: Kluwer Academic Publishers.
Gazendam, H. W. M. (2002). Conceptual analysis and specification of organization theories. In J. C. Wood & M. C. Wood (Eds.). Henri Fayol: Critical evaluations in business and management: Volume II (pp. 381–398). London: Routledge.
Georgescu-Roegen, N. (1971). The entropy law and the economic process. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Gibson, J. J. (1979). The ecological approach to visual perception. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin.
Giere, R. N. (1999). Science without laws. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Gigerenzer, G., & Selten, R. (Eds.). (2001). Bounded rationality: The adaptive toolbox. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.
Goldberg, A., & Robson, D. (1983). Smalltalk-80: The language and its implementation. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley.
Goodman, N. (1976). Languages of art: An approach to a theory of symbols. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett.
Hausman, C. R. (1993). Charles S. Peirce’s evolutionary philosophy. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.
Heusden, B. P. van, & Jorna, R. J. (2001). Toward a semiotic theory of cognitive dynamics in organisations. In K. Liu, J. Clarke, P. Bøgh Andersen, & R. K. Stamper (Eds.), Information, organisation and technology: Studies in organisational semiotics (pp. 83–113). Boston, MA: Kluwer Academic Publishers.
Holland, J. H. (1995). Hidden order: How adaptation builds complexity. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley.
Holland, J. H. (1998). Emergence: From chaos to order. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Homburg, V. M. F. (1999). The political economy of information management: A theoretical and empirical analysis of decision making regarding interorganizational information systems. Capelle a/d IJssel, The Netherlands: Labyrinth.
Johnson-Laird, P. N. (1983). Mental models: Towards a cognitive science of language, inference, and consciousness. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.
Jong, H. M. de. (1992). Twijfel en verantwoordelijkheid in het recht [Doubt and responsibility in justice] [Inaugural lecture]. Enschede, The Netherlands: Twente University.
Jorna, R. J. (1990). Knowledge representation and symbols in the mind. Tübingen, Germany: Stauffenburg Verlag.
Jorna, R. J., Gazendam, H. W. M., Heesen, H. C., & Van Wezel, W. M. C. (1996). Plannen en roosteren: Taakgericht analyseren, ontwerpen en ondersteunen [Planning and scheduling: Task-oriented analysis, design, and support]. Leiderdorp, The Netherlands: Lansa Publishing.
Kant, I. (1984). Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten (Herausgegeben von Theodor Valentiner, Einleitung von Hans Ebeling) [Foundations of the metaphysics of morality, edited by Theodor Valentiner, introduction by Hans Ebeling]. Stuttgart, Germany: Reclam. (Original work published 1785).
Liu, K. (2000). Semiotics in information systems engineering. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.
Marr, D. (1982). Vision. New York: Freeman.
Meyers Konversations-Lexicon: Fünfte Auflage. (1897). Leipzig, Germany: Bibliographisches Institut.
Nagel, E. (1961). The structure of science: Problems in the logic of scientific explanation. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.
Nauta, D. (1970). Logica en model [Logic and model]. Bussum, The Netherlands: De Haan.
Newcombe, N. S., & Huttenlocher, J. (2000). Making space: The development of spatial representation and reasoning. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.
Newell, A. (1990). Unified theories of cognition: The William James lectures, 1987. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Pagels, H. R. (1989). The dreams of reason: The computer and the rise of the sciences of complexity. New York: Bantam Books.
Peirce, C. S. (1958a). How to make our ideas clear. In P. P. Wiener (Ed.), Charles S. Peirce: Selected writings: Values in a universe of chance (pp. 113–136). New York: Dover. (Original work published in Popular Science Monthly, Jan 1878, pp. 286–302).
Peirce, C. S. (1958b). Letters to Lady Welby. In P. P. Wiener (Ed.), Charles S. Peirce: Selected writings: Values in a universe of chance (pp. 380–432). New York: Dover. (Original work published 1904).
Peirce, C. S. (1958c). What pragmatism is. In P. P. Wiener (Ed.), Charles S. Peirce: Selected writings: Values in a universe of chance (pp. 180–202). New York: Dover. (Original work published in The Monist, 15, April 1905, pp. 161–181).
Peirce, C. S. (1998). Pragmatism. In N. Houser, A. De Tienne, J. R. Eller, C. L. Clark, A. C. Lewis & D. B. Davis (Eds.), The essential Peirce: Selected philosophical writings: Vol. 2 (1893 — 1913) (pp. 398–433). Bloomington, IN: Indiana University press. (Original work published 1907).
Port, R. F., & Van Gelder, T. (1995). Mind as motion: Explorations in the dynamics of cognition. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.
Putnam, R. D. (1993). Making democracy work. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Rawls, J. (2000). A theory of justice (Rev. ed.). Oxford, England: Oxford University Press. (Original work published 1971).
Rorty, R. (1979). Philosophy and the mirror of nature. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Rumbaugh, J., Jacobson, I., & Booch, G. (1999). The unified modeling language reference manual. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley.
Sanders, G. J. E. M., & Neuijen, B. (1989). Bedrijfscultuur: Diagnose en beïnvloeding [Organization Culture: Diagnosis and Change]. Assen, The Netherlands: Van Gorcum.
Searle, J. R., & Vanderveken, D. (1985). Foundations of illocutionary logic. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.
Sebeok, T. A. (1994). Signs: An introduction to semiotics. Toronto, Canada: University of Toronto Press.
Schmidt, K. (1991). Cooperative work: A conceptual framework. In J. Rasmussen, B. Brehmer, & J. Leplat (Eds.), Distributed decision making: Cognitive models for cooperative work (pp. 75–110). Chichester, England: John Wiley and Sons.
Shoham, Y. (1988). Reasoning about change: Time and causation from the standpoint of artificial intelligence. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.
Simon, H.A. (1976). Administrative behavior: A study of decision-making processes in administrative organization (3rd ed.). New York: The Free Press. (Original work published 1945).
Stamper, R. K. (2001). Organisational semiotics: Informatics without the computer?. In K. Liu, R. J. Clarke, P. Bøgh Andersen, & R. K. Stamper (Eds.), Information, organisation and technology: Studies in organisational semiotics (pp. 115–171). Boston, MA: Kluwer Academic Publishers.
Thagard, P. (2000). Coherence in thought and action. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.
Uexküll, J. von, & Kriszat, G. (1970). Streifzüge durch die Umwelten von Tieren und Menschen. Frankfurt, Germany: Fischer. (Original work published 1936).
Uexküll, T. von (1998). Jakob von Uexkülls Umweltlehre. In R. Posner, K. Robering, & T. A. Sebeok (Eds.), Semiotics: A handbook on the sign-theoretic foundations of nature and culture: Vol. 2 (pp. 2183–2191). Berlin, Germany: Walter de Gruyter.
Veld, J. in’ t. (1988). Analyse van organisatieproblemen: Een toepassing van denken in Systemen en processen. Vijfde druk [Analysis of organization problems: An application of systems thinking and process thinking: 5th Ed.]. Leiden, The Netherlands: Stenfert Kroese.
Williamson, O. E. (1975). Markets and hierarchies. New York: The Free Press.
Williamson, O. E. (1985). The economic institutions of capitalism. New York: The Free Press.
Wolfram, S. (2002). A new kind of science. Champaign, IL: Wolfram Media.
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2003 Springer Science+Business Media New York
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Gazendam, H.W.M. (2003). Models as coherent sign structures. In: Gazendam, H.W.M., Jorna, R.J., Cijsouw, R.S. (eds) Dynamics and Change in Organizations. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-010-0161-8_10
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-010-0161-8_10
Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht
Print ISBN: 978-94-010-3986-4
Online ISBN: 978-94-010-0161-8
eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive