Assessing organizational semiotics for IT systems design: improving information exchange processes across construction project stakeholders

Speaker: Bill Collinge

Title: Assessing organizational semiotics for IT systems design: improving information exchange processes across construction project stakeholders

Abstract: Construction projects are information-intensive collaborations between diverse collections of stakeholders and organisations. A recurring challenge for IT systems designers is to produce solutions better able to engage with the diverse informational requirements of varied construction industry professionals engaged on a construction project. This paper explores how organizational semiotics (OS) may be utilized in a construction project context in order to explore information exchange problems & issues prevalent in the domain. Organizational semiotics (OS) is the study of sign generation, exchange and interpretation in organizational contexts. It examines and explores how people and technologies interact and work together in the pursuit of business goals. OS tools may be used to develop and model IT systems which have a conceptual grounding in both technical (data-flow) and humanistic (behaviour) principles. We explore the potential of OS for developing new IT tools to mediate heterogeneous activities of information production and exchange across diverse stakeholders.