WHY HEIDEGGER?

Critical Insights for IS Design from Pragmatism and from Social Semiotics

Ângela Lacerda Nobre

Instituto Politécnico de Setúbal, Escola Superior de Ciências Empresariais, ESCE-IPS, Portugal

Keywords: Heidegger’s ontology; American School of Pragmatism; Social Semiotics; Semiotic Learning; information

systems design; organisational learning; knowledge management; communities of practice; collaborative

work; collaborative learning; innovation management; change management; organisational development;

sustained competitiveness; knowledge processes; knowledge-intensive organisations; knowledge-worker.

Abstract: Martin Heidegger’s ontology represents a landmark in terms of how human knowledge is theorised.

Heidegger’s breakthrough achievement is to consider scientific knowledge as a particular case of the

broader being-in-the-world instance. Science develops without needing to acknowledge this dependence

though in times of crisis, when previous approaches are no longer effective, it is the link with daily

experience that enables the rethinking of earlier assumptions. This valorisation of quotidian practices and

the centrality of experience and of informal knowledge – the prereflexive work – in terms of being the

antecedents of formal and explicit knowledge, has profound consequences regarding the creation of

organisational information systems. The American School of Pragmatism, developed by Charles Sanders

Peirce, had previously argued in similar lines in terms of the non-severing of the dual relations such as

theory/practice or individual/social. In later times, Social Semiotics, also developed under the same implicit

assumptions, where the individual and the social dimensions of human reality are mutually determined.

These arguments have been established for long as being relevant for information systems design by several

authors. However, there is an obvious lack of understanding of the kernel role of such theories in current

mainstream research. Concrete approaches to organisational learning - such as Semiotic Learning - are an

example of the huge potential that lies largely unexplored under the umbrella of socio-philosophy.

1 INTRODUCTION

Heidegger’s (1962) ontology, Peirce’s (1931)

pragmatism and social semiotics (Halliday, 1978,

Kress, 1985, 2003) are independent theoretical

works. However, they share a common concern and

propose a unique approach to how to theorise

knowledge. Their concern regards the excessive

abstraction of knowledge creation, away from the

ongoing practice that occurs within social contexts.

Their approach radically link all knowledge creation

with the actual experience, socially embedded and

embodied, of participation in discursive practices.

Why Heidegger? Why is Heidegger’s argument

relevant for information systems (IS) design?

Because it captures the essence of human

rationalisation. Because it explains why contexts are

important, why language matters and why

participation, collaboration and signification are

critical. Contexts, language, participation,

collaboration and signification may be accepted as

being crucial elements in the task of requisite

analysis and organisational processes design.

Frequently there is no need to justify or to explain

why such elements are critical because they have

been naturalised, understood as being obvious.

In most of the cases, when business processes are

analysed, there is a sharp distinction between the

procedural and repetitive tasks that may be

automatised, and the cultural specific and social

related processes that are often treated with distance.

Most IS design directly addresses the first and

formal processes and leaves the informal processes

for the intranet chat-rooms, at best. Initiatives such

as sharing best-practices or Kaplan and Norton’s

(1996) Balanced Scorecard do mention the

importance of knowledge sharing and of social

capital but fail to recognise the centrality of such

processes at organisational level.

The present paper rests in the following arguments,

following a social science research approach:

435

Lacerda Nobre Â. (2008).

WHY HEIDEGGER? - Critical Insights for IS Design from Pragmatism and from Social Semiotics.

In Proceedings of the Tenth International Conference on Enterprise Information Systems - ISAS, pages 435-441

DOI: 10.5220/0001721804350441

 SciTePress

• Social and cultural determinations take

precedence over procedural and functional

knowledge;

• What occurs at prereflexive level will

determine and condition formal and explicit

knowledge formulations;

• There is no complementarity between

formal and informal knowledge - informal

knowledge is primordial and central;

• Informal knowledge and social and cultural

specificities have been neglected for so

long because they escape the effort of

standardisation and of predictability;

• IS have been wrongly assumed by

mainstream research as being exclusively

concerned with procedural specifications;

• There is a huge potential for IS design in

terms of addressing the social, community

building and meaning-making dimensions

of daily organisational practices;

• Such IS challenge is directly related to the

creation of unique competitive advantages,

radical innovation and continuous

organisational change and development;

• Social philosophy offers key insights that

enable the sound grounding of crucial

concepts such as knowledge sharing or

collaboration and the recognition of their

inescapable social nature;

• There is a longstanding tradition in

computing science research that

acknowledges the kernel role of such

inputs, though it is non-mainstream;

• There continues to be an urgent need to

directly address the facilitating and

enabling role of technology in addressing

collaborative work and learning concerns;

• IS design must directly incorporate ongoing

organisational learning and knowledge

management practices into its architecture;

• When there is a call for strategic alignment

between business strategy and IS or

between formal and informal knowledge it

is usually already too late;

• Such alignment must be built-in into the

system from the start so that there is the

emergence of self-organising patterns for

sustained organisational development;

• Business success critically depends on

successful organisational practices that in

turn depend on the effectiveness of IS

design;

• IS effectiveness relies on situatedness,

discursiveness and understanding, which

are Heidegger’s formulation of human

rationality.

This long list of arguments repeats one single leit

motif – informal and prereflexive knowledge plays a

kernel role in business success, IS design is a direct

enabler of collaborative work, and socio-philosophy

theory offers crucial insights for organisational

innovation and sustained competitiveness.

2 SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY

Within the scientific area of computing science there

is a tradition of developing and incorporating

philosophical works into information systems

research. Several authors have based their

computing science research on social philosophy

(e.g. Stamper, 1973, Golkuhl, Lyytinen, 1982,

Winograd, Flores, 1986, Liu, 1993, Filipe, 2000,

Clarke, 2000, Andersen 2000, Ulrich, 2001, Dietz,

2003, Bynum, Rogerson, 2004). Different areas have

been explored, including ontology, pragmatism,

semiotics, social constructivism, philosophy of

language and philosophy of action.

«There is the need for redefining information

science in terms much more comprehensive,

multilevel philosophy of information, of

which semiotics forms the foundation.»

(Ulrich, 2001).

When designing work processes, workflows,

organisational structures or information systems, the

definition of these processes not only determine

abstract formalisations but they also have a direct

effect on the people who are to perform such work,

through the actual enactment of the work practices

themselves. Designing information systems is also

designing ways of being, as Winograd and Flores

argue, based on Heidegger’s ontology.

«All new technologies develop within a

background of a tacit understanding of

human nature and human work. The use of

technology in turn leads to fundamental

changes in what we do, and ultimately in

what it is to be human. We encounter the

deep questions of design when we recognise

that in designing tools we are designing ways

of being.» (Winograd, Flores, 1986).

The advantage of using philosophical based

approaches is that they enable a richer understanding

of organisational reality and of its human interaction

phenomena. «There is an urgent need in information

systems definition and design for developing

standards for critical reflection on practice. I believe

practical philosophy can and should become a major

source of such standards.» (Ulrich, 2001).

This understanding opens new perspectives and new

approaches in terms of actual organisational

ICEIS 2008 - International Conference on Enterprise Information Systems

436

practices which may lead to the optimisation and

increased effectiveness of organisational

performance. These potential positive and economic

related effects occur through a greater efficiency in

terms of how sensemaking is addressed, explored

and potentiated at organisational level. Sensemaking

may be studied from varied disciplinary

perspectives. The present paper explores the social,

ontological and semiotic nature of sensemaking at

organisational level.

3 HEIDEGGER’S ONTOLOGY

Probably one of the most interesting and

illuminating ways to grasp meaning creation within

a community is through Martin Heidegger’s [1889-

1976] thought. Heidegger’s work Sein und Zeit -

Being and Time (1996), first published in 1927, in

which he defines the notion of ‘being-in-the-world’,

proposing a radically innovative ontology that has

changed the course of development of socio-

philosophy, affecting phenomenology, contemporary

hermeneutics and post-structuralist philosophy

(Benton, Craib, 2001).

«If being [Seiende] is predicated with

manifold significance, then what is the

leading, fundamental signification? What

does Being [Sein] mean?» (Krell, 1992)

(Krell’s notations).

Heidegger’s philosophy is centred on the

question of being, and it develops a complex account

of our being-in-the-world. Heidegger believed that

Western philosophy had lost touch with the

important questions of human existence. He gave an

urgent account of the human search for the

significance of our own ‘being’, and of human life

as a search for its own meaning and identity,

unaided by any external authority or fixed values.

Heidegger’s “phenomenology of everydayness”

works to counteract the tendency toward the

“displacement of meaning into subjectivity, which

began with the rise of modern science” (Guignon,

1983). By regarding the self as nothing other than its

“meaningful expressions”, Heidegger is able to fully

break away from the Cartesian tradition. Heidegger

identifies critical prejudices regarding the study of

being:

«’Being’ is the self-evident concept. ‘Being’

is used in all knowing and predicating, in

every relation to beings and in every relation

to oneself, and the expression is

understandable ‘without further ado’.

Everybody understands, “The sky is blue,” “I

am happy,” and similar statements. But this

comprehensibility only demonstrates the

incomprehensibility. It shows that an enigma

lies a priori in every relation and being

towards beings as beings. The fact that we

live already in an understanding of Being and

that the meaning of Being is at the same time

shrouded in darkness proves the fundamental

necessity of recovering the question of the

meaning of ‘Being’.» (Heidegger, 1962).

Since the seventeenth century, there has been a

growth in interest in knowledge and cognition which

rose from the earlier development of modern science

in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries (Gorniak,

2004). Knowledge had always been important to

humankind but this knowledge was previously

understood as being implicitly contextualised and

embedded, while in modern age it acquired as if a

life of its own, independent and autonomous from

the contexts from which it emerged. This process is

explained by Guignon (1983), an expert on

Heidegger’s ontology, who claims that, with

modernity, the epistemological question gained

precedence above the ontological concern, and that

the importance of Heidegger’s monumental work is

related with this shift in perspectives. «Epistemology

is the philosophical discipline concerned with the

nature, origin and validation of knowledge, or

shortly, the theory of knowledge.» (Ulrich, 2001).

Ontological concerns are inseparable from the

contexts where knowledge processes take place

(Guignon, 1983). In technical terms, with modern

age, the epistemological concern of “knowledge

about knowledge” became prioritary. The

ontological question of the context of such

knowledge, and of who and what is this being whose

knowledge is being considered, was neglected.

Guignon, based on Heidegger’s work, contests that

any epistemology is necessarily based on certain

ontological assumptions, and though these may be

unacknowledged and unidentified they can never

stop being present. Therefore, the argument goes

that the dominance of epistemic concerns over

ontological ones needs to be balanced in favour of

further comprehension of reality as a whole, and of

the ontological dimensions of knowledge.

Heidegger’s ontology developed from Husserl’s

phenomenology, which explicitly calls attention not

to individuals in isolation but to the individual in

context. Individuals are constantly affected,

determined and conditioned by surrounding

circumstances (Ortega y Gasset, 1961). There is a

change of perspective in phenomenological studies

so that the focus of attention goes to the overall

environment, and to the social embeddedness and

WHY HEIDEGGER? - Critical Insights for IS Design from Pragmatism and from Social Semiotics

437

continuous networks of relationships which take

place in such environment.

«Almost every great philosophical work carries

with it a more or less explicit reinterpretation of the

nature of philosophy and the methods appropriate to

fulfilling its aims» (Guignon, 1983). As was referred

above, Heidegger shifts his orientation from

epistemology to ontology. For Heidegger, the basic

theme of philosophy is ‘being’. The question of

being has this central position because any inquiry

into one of the areas of philosophy, e.g.,

epistemology, logic, ethics, or aesthetics, operates

within a tacit set of presuppositions about the

‘being’ of the entities with which it deals. What is

true of the discipline of philosophy holds for the

sciences as well. Every science presupposes some

conception of the being of the entities that are the

objects of its inquiry. The ontologies of the regional

sciences, Heidegger says, have already been worked

out “roughly and naively” on the basis of our

“prescientific” ways of interpreting and

experimenting “domains of being”.

«Scientists work within frameworks that

determine in advance what sorts of question

are appropriate and what kinds of answer will

make sense. Generally, there is no need for

scientists to question the ontological

frameworks in which they work. During

periods of crisis in science, however, it is

precisely these frameworks that are called in

question.» (Guignon, 1983).

When what are at issue in the sciences are no

longer questions within the frameworks of those

sciences but the very frameworks themselves, the

“ontological presuppositions of the regional

inquiries must be made explicit” (Guignon, 1983).

Heidegger believes that philosophy alone can fulfil

this role. Philosophy that he sees as not itself being

bound by any framework, and which is “the study of

frameworks in general”. The inquiry into the ‘being’

of entities in general Heidegger calls “ontology

taken in the widest sense”. It is a “science of Being

as such”, and its task is to provide “a genealogy of

the different possible ways of Being”. Ontology in

the widest sense lays out “the conditions for the

possibility of any science”. And philosophy, as

ontology in the widest sense, is the “science of

sciences”. The Anglo-American tradition of

analytical philosophy, according to Guignon,

generally tends to see philosophy as a set of current

topics or problems that are to be discussed within

pre-given frameworks. The method is “argument and

counter-argument along tacitly agreed-upon

guidelines.” (Guignon, 1983). In contrast, Heidegger

maintains that it is these philosophical frameworks

themselves that are the source of traditional

philosophical problems.

«The ontological task of a geneology of the

different possible ways of Being (which is

not constructed deductively) requires a

preliminary understanding of “what we

properly mean by this expression ‘Being’”.

The question of Being thus aims at an a

priori condition of the possibility not only of

sciences which investigate beings of such and

such a type – and are thereby already

involved in an

understanding of Being; but it

aims also at the condition of the possibility of

the ontologies which precede the ontic

sciences and found them.» (Heidegger,

1962).

Heidegger devoted a lot of time to the idea of

“being-with”, and talking and communicating was

one way to be with others: «Discoursing or talking is

the way we articulate “significantly” the

intelligibility of being-in-the-world.» (1927).

Discourse, for Heidegger, is broader than talk,

including all our inner and outer expression which

plays the same role as talking. According to

Guignon, in Heidegger’s perspective, talk and

discourse «do not have the purpose of transmitting

messages of information, are not ways of getting

things we want more efficiently, and do not give

expression to “me-I”». Rather, talk and discourse

have the purpose of “finding significance and of

sharing understanding, and give expression to

human being-in-the-world.”.

Heidegger (1962) refers to discursiveness,

situatedness and understanding as the basic

elements of rationalisation, i.e. how human beings

spontaneously use their rationality in everyday

situations, therefore including philosophical and

scientific reasoning circumstances as special cases

within this everyday use. Heidegger’s ontology is

profoundly marked by this common use of

rationalisation processes.

«If we are to understand the full import of

Heidegger’s conception of ‘meaning’, then,

we must avoid seeing it as referring to

something inner in any sense (...). Heidegger

identifies three existentialia of what is called

‘Being-in as such’: situatedness,

understanding, and discursiveness (...).

Meaning is that which makes possible that

projection of possibilities in understanding

(...). What is the source of this most

primordial level of intelligibility? Heidegger

says that it is ‘discursiveness’. The concepts

of ‘discursiveness’ and ‘meaning’ are closely

ICEIS 2008 - International Conference on Enterprise Information Systems

438

related, so to clarify one is at the same time to

illuminate the other.» (Guignon, 1983).

Heidegger’s concepts allow for a rich

interpretation of the critical role of community life

for human beings’ organisation within a society, a

culture and a civilisation (Guignon, 1983). Life in

the knowledge and network economy of the

information age continues to be grounded in the

same network of communities, and of social and

cultural embedded meaning creation processes.

Castells’ (2000) notion of the “networking logic”

and his assertion that Western society is

technologically overdeveloped and socially

underdeveloped, is consistent with Heidegger’s

work.

Heidegger sees the world as expressing the aims

and interests of a culture. This implies that the

concepts of “discursiveness” and of “meaning” are

closely related. Social subjectivity becomes a central

concept:

«To be Dasein is essentially to be a nexus of

the socially constituted relations of a

culture... Heidegger’s phenomenology of

everydayness works to counteract the

tendency toward the displacement of meaning

into subjectivity which began with the rise of

modern science.» (Guignon, 1983).

Guignon (1983) states that his own work, by

highlighting the historicist and hermeneutic

dimensions of Heidegger’s work Being and Time

(1962), there is a break with standard interpretations

of Heidegger’s thought as “mainstream

existentialism”. According to Guignon, only when

Heidegger’s historicist and hermeneutic orientation

has been brought to light can the moves of followers

such as Gadamer (1975), or critics such as Derrida

(1978) and Foucault (1972) be seen as significant in

a larger philosophical context.

At organisational level, the relevance of the

social context might be highlighted through

Heidegger’s work. The development of communities

of practice theory (e.g. Brown, Duguid, 1991, Lave,

Wenger, 1991) and situated learning (e.g. Streibal,

1991, Savery, Duffy, 1994, Ritcher, 1998) implicitly

draw key notions from Heidegger’s philosophy.

Ontological and phenomenological perspectives are

particularly relevant to the study of IS. These social

perspectives critically influence IS design. Once

such social concerns are taken into account, there is

a stronger chance that there will be an adequate

climate for the promotion of knowledge sharing and

of collaborative work and learning at organisational

level.

4 SEMIOTIC LEARNING

«Semiotics is currently the most complete and

sophisticated theory of meaning and culture.»

Lagopoulos (1993).

Semiotic Learning is defined below through a set of

propositions. This organisational learning

methodology aims at clarifying how socio-

philosophy theories may be applied in practice.

Following a qualitative methodology typical of

social science research this approach was applied in

practice with positive results in three different high-

tech software companies. Individual interviews and

a sequence of small group meetings formed a

learning cycle that was implemented and tested.

Proposition 1: Learning. Learning is the action of

exploration, use and possible expansion of a certain

potential, ontologically defined and community

level contextualised.

This proposition concerns the process of

manifestation of reality, of being, and thus

corresponds to a socio-ontological perspective on

learning; this action of making concrete a certain

potential is a ubiquitous process fundamentally

grounded on experience and on practice, which

occurs within specific cultural and social contexts

and through particular webs of relationships that

play an active role, the contexts and the

relationships, in determining the learning process

itself.

Proposition 2: Organisational Learning.

Organisational learning is the process of gaining

awareness to the social and ontological

organisational dimensions - the social embeddeness

and embodiness of organisational practices and of

knowledge processes - thus valuing quotidian

community level meaning-making.

This corresponds to the process of meaning

creation which occurs within organisational

communities; these community level daily practices

are themselves constitutive of learning at

organisational level; this socio-ontological

perspective on organisational learning addresses the

exploration of the potential of organisational reality

at a concrete and practical level.

Proposition 3: Organisational Learning

Facilitation. Facilitation is the process and action

of promoting open social and discursive practices

thus enabling and nurturing organisational

learning, through interpreting organisational

communities as the central setting for the creation

of sustainable core knowledge processes.

The environment, the channel and the medium

through which organisational learning processes are

WHY HEIDEGGER? - Critical Insights for IS Design from Pragmatism and from Social Semiotics

439

facilitated and promoted are highly relevant and

may contribute in a decisive way to the end goal of

helping to raise awareness towards the socio-

ontological dimensions of learning and knowledge,

present in daily organisational practices.

Proposition 4: Social Semiotic Processes. Social

semiotic processes are meaning-making and

signifying actions: they are actual, concrete and

ongoing social and discursive practices which

intrinsically carry the capacity, contain the

potential and enable the production, expression,

interpretation and exchange of signs and of

symbolic reasoning.

All social processes are interpretable, i.e. are

passible of a signification process, thus have an

inherent semiotic nature; social processes transport

and are the vehicles of signification and of

meaning-making capacity; this signification is

continuous, collective, provisory and dynamic and it

takes part within specific communities, which, in

turn, are characterised by specific social discourses

and discursive practices, including non-oral forms

of communication.

Proposition 5: Semiotic Learning. The concept of

semiotic learning is defined as the meaning-making

process of acknowledging, empowering and valuing

the centrality of the organisational community and

of the social and discursive practices, semiotic and

ontological, that it hosts, thus sustaining core

knowledge.

Community-level practices are fundamental

meaning creation settings and actions which

condition and determine core knowledge processes,

affecting overall organisational formal procedures

and structures at a prereflexive and informal level;

the semiotic learning concept uses a socio-

ontological and social semiotics perspective in order

to enable the exploration of each organisation’s

potential; semiotic learning is one possible

interpretation and is one specific proposal of an

approach to facilitate organisational learning.

Proposition 6: Semiotic Learning Method. The

Semiotic Learning method is a social process,

composed of a learning cycle, which facilitates

organisational learning through the proposal of

specific social and discursive practices based on

free association, thus enabling the experimentation

of different perspectives and relationships and the

interpretation of issues related with daily

organisational reality.

This facilitation occurs in a way that raises

awareness towards the ongoing meaning-making

processes and it leads to the valorisation of such

processes as core and fundamental aspects of

organisational learning itself; the application of this

method and learning cycle is performed by a

specialised facilitator.

Proposition 7: Semiotic Learning Cycle. The

Semiotic Learning cycle is an iterative and

interactive process that stimulates the creation of

new organisational practices, processes and

settings, which enable the exploration of each

concrete situation and of each organisation’s

potential in a dynamic way.

A learning cycle implies that there is no

predefined target to be achieved but rather that

learning is a continuous, ubiquitous and

unavoidable process; this learning cycle, composed

of four steps, is performed at small group level,

within knowledge-intensive organisations, through

the proposal of open dialogue and reflexive

discussion on theoretical and practical issues related

with management and philosophy theory and with

the daily context of organisational reality.

Proposition 8: Knowledge - Intensive

Organisations. Knowledge-intensive organisations

are those which are centred on and organised

around their core knowledge processes and are

based on the community level social and discursive

practices that constitute, create and sustain such

knowledge processes.

Knowledge-intensive organisations are the

Semiotic Learning method’s addressees; as a

distinguishing criteria, this method is directed in

particular at three specific characteristics of such

organisations: (i) knowledge processes have an

important collective dimension; (ii) knowledge

processes are non-repetitive and therefore are

impossible to be predetermined and predefined; and

(iii) there is an explicit interest and commitment

towards questioning and improving current

knowledge processes and organisational practices.

5 CONCLUSIONS

The present paper has served three main goals: (i)

raising awareness to the crucial role of social

philosophy for IS research; (ii) highlighting possible

links and synergies between IS design and

organisational learning; and (iii) stressing the

importance of IS as enablers and facilitators of

collaborative work and learning, and of knowledge

sharing at organisational level.

Probably the over ambitious nature of such goals

leads to the need to follow these themes in future

ICEIS 2008 - International Conference on Enterprise Information Systems

440

work. Nevertheless, there is an urgent need to create

a critical mass of computing science researchers

interested in sharing work related with these topics.

The urgency in creating such pool of researchers is a

crucial motivation of the present paper.

The present paper is based on research that was

triggered at the first ICEIS conference, through

Ronald Stamper, as keynote speaker, and his team,

Joaquim Filipe and Kecheng Liu. The present

research has followed the root-thinking of

organisational semiotics to its social philosophy

basis. Social philosophy offers highly challenging,

sophisticated, effective and productive perspectives

for IS design. The full potential of social philosophy

to the improvement of IS design thus still lies largely

unexplored.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I am grateful to Roger Tagg’s comments, from the

University of South Australia.

REFERENCES

Andersen, P., 2000. What semiotics can and cannot do for

Human Computer Interaction. In Proceedings of

Computer-Human Interaction (CHI) Workshop on

Semiotic Approaches to User Interface Design, The

Hague, The Netherlands.

Benton, T., Craib, I., 2001. Philosophy of Social Science.

Hampshire, UK, Palgrave.

Brown, J., Duguid, P., 1991. Research that Reinvents the

Corporations. Harvard Business Review. Jan-Feb.

Bynum, T., Rogerson, S., 2004 Computer Ethics and

Professional Responsibility. Oxford, UK, Blackwell.

Castells, M., 2000. The Rise of the Network Society. The

Information Age: Economy, Society and Culture.

Volume I. Malden, Blackwell.

Clarke, R., 2000. An Information System in its

Organisational Contexts: a Systemic, Semiotic,

Longitudinal Case Study. Ph.D. Thesis, University of

Wollongong, Australia.

Derrida, J., 1978. Writing and Difference, (trans.) Alan

Bass. London and New York, Routledge.

Dietz, J., 2003. The Atoms, Molecules and Fibers of

Organizations. Data and Knowledge Engineering,

47(3).

Filipe, J., 2000. Normative Organisational Modelling

Using Intelligent Multi-Agent Systems, Ph.D. Thesis,

University of Staffordshire, UK.

Foucault, M., 1972. The Archaeology of Knowledge.

London, UK, Tavistok [Fr 1969].

Gadamer, H.-G., 1975. Truth and Method. London, UK,

Sheed and Ward [first published in 1965].

Goldkuhl, G., Lyytinen, K., 1982. A language action view

of information systems. Proceedings of the 3rd

International Conference on Information Systems,

Ann Arbor.

Guignon, C., 1983. Heidegger and the Problem of

Knowledge. Indiana, USA, Hackett.

Halliday, M., 1978. Language as Social Semiotic: The

social interpretation of language and meaning.

London, UK, Edward Arnold.

Heidegger, M., 1962. Being and Time. (Translated by J.

Macquarrie and E. Robinson). New York, Harper &

Row [Original publication in 1927].

Hodge, B., Kress, G., 1988. Social Semiotics. London,

Springer-Verlag.

Kaplan, R., Norton, D., 1996. The Balanced Scorecard:

Translating Strategy into Action. Boston, Harvard

Business School Press.

Krell, D., ed., 1992. Martin Heidegger Basic Writings.

New York, Harper & Collins Publishers.

Kress, G., 1985. Linguistic Processes in Sociocultural

Practice. Victoria, Australia, Deakin University.

Kress, G., 2003. Literacy in the new media age. London,

Routledge Falmer.

Lagopoulos, H., 1993. Postmodernism, Geography and the

Social Semiotics of Space. Environment and Planning

Series D: Society and Space. 11(3).

Lave, J., Wenger, E., 1991. Situated Learning: Legitimate

and Peripheral Participation

. USA, Cambridge

University Press.

Liu, K., 1993. Semiotics Applied to Information Systems

Development. Ph.D. Thesis, Twente University, The

Netherlands.

Peirce, C., 1931. Collected Papers. (eds.) C. Hartshorne,

P. Weiss. Cambridge, USA, Belknap Press of Harvard

University Press.

Rorty, R., 1979. Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature.

Princeton, N.J., USA, University Press.

Savery, J., Duffy, T., 1994. Problem based learning: an

instructional model and its construtivist framework. In

B. Wilson (ed.) Constructivist learning environments:

Case studies in instructional design. Englewood

Cliffs, NJ, Educational Technology Publications.

Stamper, R., 1973. Information in Business and

Administrative Systems. John Wiley & Sons.

Streibel, M., 1991. Instructional plans and situated

learning. In Anglin (ed.), Instructional technology,

past, present and future. Englewood, UK, Co.

Libraries Unlimited.

Ulrich, W., 2001. A philosophical staircase for

information systems definition, design and

development. Journal of Information Technology

Theory and Apllication. 3(3).

Winograd, T., Flores, F., 1986. Understanding Computers

and Cognition – a new foundation for design.

Reading, MA, USA, Addison-Wesley.

WHY HEIDEGGER? - Critical Insights for IS Design from Pragmatism and from Social Semiotics

441