Sign Systems, Information Systems, and Engineering

This paper will address the question of how an engineering approach to enterprise modelling and system development might be combined with an approach to enterprises that does justice to its inherent social character, and where the members of the organisation are responsible for their decisions and not just operators of the systems. In the analysis of this question the concept of engineering will be discussed, along with the characteristics of different kinds of sign systems. System based sign systems (as used in ICT and engineering, and suited to the use of mathematical and logical formulas) will be contrasted with human based sign systems (natural language, appropriate for the adequate representation of values and of individual cases).