Introduction

Music is an important component of the information society. It is known that music can render both positive and negative influence on human being and society. However mechanisms of this influence in many respects remain unclear. Network science application to the analysis of pieces of music is an effective approach of modern cognitive technologies and can play an important role in understanding not only problems of music and other kind of information impact on a person, but also other global problems facing of the present society.

The reductionism as research method dominating in modern science, assumes that the studied system can be understood if properties of its elements are described. Music belongs to number of so-called complex systems which don't manage to be described and understood formally by means of such approach.

Methods

Since the end of the last century for studying of complex systems the new effective instrument of research - the theory of complex networks [1] have been developed. Nodes in such networks represent elements of these complex systems, and links between nodes – interactions between elements. Such networks form a peculiar backbones of the relevant complex systems that allows to model such systems in general as a whole and to overcome some shortcomings inherent to a reductionism.

Results and Discussion

The purpose of this presentation is to show that works of music can be described as multilayer networks, which structural and dynamic properties can throw new light on the nature of music as complex system.

A musical melody can be easily converted into a network structure if we take the musical notes of all possible durations as its nodes. It can be easily calculated that the number of nodes in one voce in such network shall not exceed 1800. Indeed, the number of piano keys equals 88; if we multiply it by 20 – the number of all possible time durations of notes (halves, quarters, eights e.t.c.) - we get the number of 1760. Connections between nodes (notes) in the network are established according to chronological principle: if note I starts to sound at the moment in time T, when note J at this particular moment finished to sound, there is a connection between the respective nodes of the network [2].

In our approach the same notes in different octaves belong to different network layers. On an example of " Prelude in A major " by Chopin will be described relationship between melodic and harmonic structures of music. Each of these structures can be represented as networks, and music - view as multilayer network.

We constructed directed network structure for melody of F.Chopin’s “Prelude A-Dur”. Figure 1 shows melody network of the piece.

Figure 1. Melody network structure for the Frederic Chopin’s prelude A-Dur N7 . The thickness of links corresponds to time of repetitions of appropriate musical intervals.

(See PDF version for the Figure).

Harmonic structure of a musical work has qualitatively different structure of relations between notes and should be described as a separate layer. We have created a network of harmonic structure of the Frederic Chopin’s prelude A-Dur N7 as the second layer. If a piece of music has polyphonic nature, it is easy to describe this musical work as multilayer network too. Multilayer structure of musical works is the consequence of multilayer organization of the human brain networks. It is assumed to briefly discuss the possible mechanism of emotional influence of music from network science standpoint.

Conclusions

Our understanding of complex systems is always associated with incompleteness of information on their structure and properties. A quantitative measure of incompleteness of information on system is its entropy. Recently in the theory of complex networks methods of calculation of entropy both simple monolayer, and multilayer networks on the basis of generalization of the most fundamental concepts and methods of statistical physics are developed [3, 4]. We are developing entropic approach for investigation of music as complex system now.

Acknowledgments

This work is performed with assistance of the Russian Humanitarian Scientific Fund (grant N 14-04-00369)

References and Notes

1. Caldarelli, G.; Scale-Free Networks: Complex Webs in Nature and Technology. Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, England, 2007
2.    Liu, X., Tse, C., Small, M. Complex network structure of musical compositions: Algorithmic     generation of appealing music. Physica A 389, 2010, 126–132
3. Anand K., Bianconi G, Severini S. Shannon and von Newman entropy of random networks with heterogeneous expected degree. Physical Review E, 83, 2011, 036109 .
4. Bianconi G. Statistical mechanics of multiplex networks: Entropy and overlap. Physical Review E, 87, 2014, 062806

Introduction

The financing of media by ads is a well-known basic – and is now changing substantially. Advertising most powerful by television but is gaining momentum in the internet – Social media” like Facebook, or Google even aggravate this phenomenon as "area of greatest concern".

Advertising is an important link between big media and big business handled usually by political economy and political ecology framework One increasing approach to this topic is socio-ecological which can be handled by an political ecology framework:
Since long there has been a fundamental discussion about sustainable consumption, about its relevance and limitations. In a broader context the discussion on consumer sovereignty (Scitovsky 1962) versus the shaping of preferences by marketing and the ad industry basically is an old issue. Currently Mander (2012) pinpointed a “privatization of consciousness“ and the imprinting of the individual beginning with children and various power relations in respect to media and advertising. Although this basically is not new, it is worthwhile to combine it with some political ecology. A general framework is given for the relevance of advertisement in a socio-ecologic transformation by combining knowledge from different fields of management science, psychology, media studies, regulation economics and of political economy. Advertisement is essential in the globalisation of unsustainable consumer styles / life styles.

The methodological approach is the selection and reinterpretation of useful concepts of political economy

When consumer sovereignty meets good old “monopolistic competition”:
What often seems to be forgotten: advertising as an important feature of good old “monopolistic competition” (J. Robinson, E. H. Chamberlin) commercial advertising on the one side is a result of oligopolisation with unessential product differentiation) and oligopolisation: commercial advertising is cause AND consequence of oligopolisation with unessential product differentiation in saturated markets and constructing brand images, successfully in protection and extension of market shares and oligopolistic profits with relentless consequences against SME by establishing “entry barriers” resulting in lock-in effects The consequence it the reduction of the role of consumer demands for paradigm shifting towards sustainability:
Whereas in neoliberal times the “antimonopolistic” fight has been reinterpreted as privatisation anyway it could be useful to redefine the antimonopolistic” agenda in a real step in the context of in a socio-ecologic transformation.

To achieve foundations for new regulation concepts (ad taxes) there have to be analysed some theoretical problems: WHERE in the internet sphere values added is produced? Where in the context of Amazon, Facebook or Google “labour is happening? At locations of the company? At which locations? Or at the location of the user and consumer? Anyway central is the notion of attention of users and consumers.

Conclusion: Plea for a global ad tax

Practical proposals to reduce unsustainable choices are discussed: The ban of commercial advertisement could be “optimal” in many relations, e.g. also to clear market distortions. But anyway initiating steps can regulate advertisement more strictly: In the neoliberal era taxes on advertising had been abolished or reduced in many European countries. But they are or could be relevant in times of tight budgets. As a new measure – analogously to financial transaction taxes (Tobin) - the design of taxes on advertising increasingly could be supranational or on the global level.

There should be tax exemption limits and there could be exceptions for disseminating fundamental innovations and especially on the local levels, and there should be some provision against substitution effects to indirect advertisement.
There have been well-known real significant measures of regulations of advertisement: The limitation of advertisements for cigarettes. There is also some ad limitation in Vermont. In China one element of the Bo Xilai policy for some time in Chongqing was the ban of advertisement in media. Stopovers can be e. g. the ban of advertising in public spaces, the control of advertising on the internet, the end the commercialization of childhood (Gannon-Lawson).

Mainstream in molecular biology derives from physical chemical assumptions about the genetic code that are basically more than 40 years old. Recent empirical data on genetic code compositions and (re)arrangements by mobile genetic elements and noncoding RNAs, together with results of virus research and their role in evolution, does not really fit into these assumptions. If we look at the abundance of regulatory RNAs and persistent viruses in host genomes, we will find evidence that the key players that edit the genetic codes of host genomes are consortia of RNA agents and viruses that drive evolutionary novelty and regulation of cellular processes in all steps of development. This is coherent to empirical knowledge about natural languages or codes: No natural language or code speaks or codes itself. In all known cases there are populations, groups, consortia of competent agents that generate, represent and use such languages or codes. This agent-based approach may lead to a qualitative RNA sociology that investigates and identifies relevant behavioral motifs of cooperative RNA consortia.           

Our continent has never enjoyed as much peace between states as during the European integration process that started approximately half a century ago with the Treaty of Rome. European integration promised and for a long time also delivered policy output (economic, prosperity, environmental protection, reduction of inequalities, protection of minorities, etc). Though social scientists and legal scholars have warned of the deep democratic deficits of the existing model, as long as it delivered output, the problematic citizens’ input in European integration was not contested, until recently. National politicians tactfully kept the attention of publics away from Europe. Brussels, they argued, was geographically too far to concern ordinary citizens; moreover, it was too technocratic to interest them.

However, the current crisis brought to the light the thus far (hidden) inter-relationship of European and domestic policy. Compared to previous crises in European integration, this one attracted unprecedented public attention. Across the Union, very few party politicians, interest spokesmen, financial analysts, journalists or television pundits could remain indifferent to what EU officials were saying. EU-jargon moved beyond university lecture halls and parliaments and penetrated the national media and personal discussions around the continent. Citizens in all 28 EU MSs found themselves sharing anxieties and reflecting on the same issues. Electoral outcomes in one member were increasingly recognized as affecting the governing coalitions’ vulnerability in other members and the European Union (EU) as a whole. Thus, EU concerns penetrated deeply (and for the first time) in the conduct and results of national parliamentary elections. What is going on in the other member states, what government officials said, what public opinion wants, became suddenly daily topics in each other’s media. Through this crisis, we experience the Europeanization of the public sphere, the generation of a EU-wide discourse about Europe. I argue that at this moment when Europe is deeply politicized there is acute pressure for and firm resistance against more involvement of European citizens in EU decision-making. What are the promises and pitfalls of more democracy in the EU? Why should citizens be more involved in EU policy, and how could this be pursued in an information society? We pursue these questions with a focus on how information technology could contribute to this development.

Are we still able to monitor and to survey the information related to hot research topics? It happened that, according to my variety of scientific interests, I became aware of and sometimes directly involved in several directions of research related to the biological cell and coming from mathematics, computer science, linguistics, physics, chemistry, semiotics, philosophy, sociology and obviously biology, all starting with approximately the same claim: „Our aim is to understand the functioning of the biological cell”. But in their next steps you hardly recognize that they have a common aim. Each of them adopts a specific terminology, a specific jargon, and has specific bibliographic references with specific journals where the respective studies are published.  You expect that these different directions need to interact, but this expectation is not satisfied.  In most cases they ignore each other.  I suppose that the same scenario is valid for brain studies and for the field of information (inf) and communication (comm).

Various disciplines can be classified in two classes, according to their self-referential capacity.  It is meaningless to refer to „the physics of physics” or to „the chemistry of chemistry”, unless we have in view a metaphorical utilisation.  By contrast, it is perfectly meaningful and very important to refer to „the philosophy of philosophy”, „the literature about literature”, „the inf about inf”, „the comm about comm”. But just the iteration of these operators characterizes our time and so, instead to get inf about something, we get inf about...inf.

In contrast with matter and energy, located in some sciences of nature, inf challenges the segmentation of knowledge in disciplines and the science/ humanities opposition. It emerged concomitantly from thermodynamics (its quantitative version), assoociated with entropy, and from Darwinian biology (its qualitative version), associated with form, which is another self-referential operator, it is meaningful to refer to „the form of form”.  Inf comes from the Latin informatio. while the verb informare means „to give a form”. Plato, with his Theory of Forms, George Boole, with his algebras and C. S. Peirce, with his signs should be placed in this order of ideas. So, inf as form is much older than inf as a measure of order. A third itinerary of inf refers to telegraphic, engineering comm; a fourth itinerary is concerned with direct human comm; a fifth itinerary, the algorithmic information theory, refers to the algorithmic complexity, which is local, in contrast with Shannon’s theory, which is global; a sixth itinerary is concerned with inf in the infinitely small universe, be it the quantum universe (see the extraordinary adventure of quantum information theory) or the universe of the biological cell, where classical inf theory fails; a seventh itinerary refers to social inf and comm, particularly  to the theory of social indicators, showing striking similarities with the contemporary theory of signs; eight itinerary: inf and comm in non-verbal arts, i.e., visual arts, music, dance, where selective (i.e., non-semantic) inf may be relevant and inf in literature, theater, film; ninth itinerary; inf and comm on Internet; tenth: philosophy, etc. Moreover, all of them are interacting.

So, in a world in which, against history, the bureaucracy of segmentation in disciplines and of science/ humanities opposition is still strong, the whole development of the inf paradigm challenged the disciplinary borders and, to a large extent, ignored them. But, in its dominant trend, the world of researchers was not prepared to cope adequately with this novelty. So, we can understand why researchers in the field of biological cell or of inf and comm, were not trained to face the today situation of explosion from all directions of the literature related to their problems of interest. Instead to challenge the complexity of the new situation they reduced it to the dimensions of their disciplinary vision.

There is a tension between inf and sign, between inf and meaning, between qualitative and quantitative inf, this tension cannot be completely cancelled, but it can be attenuated; at a first glance, each of them seems to reject the other, like it happened with other conflictual pairs such as <position, momentum>, <consistency, completeness>, <rigor, meaning>, <sensibility, clarity> in well-known specific contexts. However, in logic, linguistics, mathematics, computer science the past century promoted the meaning generated by syntactic means, by contextual behavior, where rigor is at home. On the other hand, inf and comm are often under the action of what G. Bateson called the double bind constraint. One cannot improve at once both the emotional and the coding capacity of a communication process. Sometimes, Grice’s conversational principle does not work; you cannot be short and at the same time avoid ambiguity. The school life, the social life in general often create double bind situations. To the extent to which we learn more and more, we increase our chance to keep under control inf and comm; but to some extent, larger for some of us, smaller for others, we remain slaves of inf and comm, manipulated  by them.

A major obstacle in coping with inf comes from the genuine limits of human semiosis, blocked as soon as we want to understand what happens beyond the macroscopic world.

Interdisciplinary virtual multicultural teamwork project as an alternative to classroom teaching- Example of a pilot project funded by the EU

Neena Gupta-Biener, Nuno Filipe Escudeiro², Florian Gunacker³

¹ Institute of International Management, FH JOANNEUM Gesellschaft mbH, 8020 Graz, Eggenberger Allee 11, Austria, Tel.: +43 (0)3165453-6824.

² Computer Science Department, Engineering Institute, Polytechnic Institute of Porto,Rua Dr António Bernardino de Almeida 431, P–4200–072 Porto, Portugal

³ Institute of International Management, FH JOANNEUM Gesellschaft mbH, 8020 Graz, Eggenberger Allee 11, Austria.

E-Mails: neena.guptabiener@fh-joanneum.at; nfe@isep.ipp.pt; Florian.Gunacker@edu.fh-joanneum.at

Accepted:  

Introduction

Technological and social developments in the last couple of years have caused significant changes in the way how people live and work. Internet, for example, has introduced a whole new variety of ways how people can collaborate in virtual teams across geographical and cultural borders (Odlyzko, 2003). The implications of technological progress have the potential to shape our environment significantly. Frauenhofer Institute, for example, has termed this as the “Working Environment 4.0” based on a forecast of 100 experts (Fraunhofer IAO, 2014). This scenario describes the work and living environment of office and knowledge workers in the year 2025. It shows that in the knowledge intensive society of today, the capacity to be efficient, innovative and creative at the same time is a crucial factor for success. Experts agree that the importance of these skills will increase due to the new era of industry 4.0 (Fraunhofer IAO, 2014). An increasing number of people are facing highly flexible and multi-local forms of work in their daily life. Synergetic demands of individuals and organizations support this development (Guichard, 2001; Crites 1974).

A segment which is particularly affected by rapid technological progress and growing requirements concerning constant self-development and flexibility are the students from the IT sector (Karsenti, 1999). In 2010, the Association for Computing Machinery and the Association for Information Systems presented a revised model curriculum for undergraduate degrees in information systems (ACM, 2010). This model identifies leadership, collaboration and communication as the foundation of knowledge and skills required in information systems graduates. Modern economies are highly dependent on technology, requiring engineers to excel in collaboration and communication skills in international settings (Wieman, 2008). However, these competencies are not usually addressed in engineering and information science courses. One of the basic problems is how to create an environment in universities and colleges offering technical courses which helps in the development of such skills.

Method

The Multinational Undergraduate Teamwork Project (MUTW) is one such attempt to find a solution to the existing problem in technical and engineering institutions. Funded as a pilot project by the EU, its main purpose was to test new pedagogical instruments to encourage the development of interdisciplinary and intercultural competencies of the students. In the Multinational Undergraduate Teamwork course, students conduct a major project as members of an international team coming from different technical, management and art disciplines and from different institutions and countries. Except for the kick-off and final meeting, students work in virtual teams and scrum environment. Team members are geographically spread to ensure that the teams are heterogeneous so as to promote international cooperation. The collaboration which lasts a full semester has the aim to develop and present a solution to a given problem. (Escudeiro & Escudeiro 2012). Beside the possibility of developing soft skills, the MUTW project 2015, for example, applies the innovative scrum project management methodology. Scrum is a term that originally refers to a move in Rugby in which a team packs together and they all act together to get the ball from one end of the field to another end. The idea behind scrum is it to create a streamlined project management process that produces a quality end product that is applicable to complex and simple projects. The agile characteristic of this procedure allows dividing projects in smaller chunks that need to be completed. In a scrum environment, self-organizing and iterative techniques are used to achieve success (Moe & Dingsoyr & Dyba, 2010).

Results and Discussion

Quantitative analysis of the results of the pilot project from 2009- 2011 has shown that this program has promoted soft skills without much change in the curricula of the normal teaching (Escudeiro & Escudeiro 2012). The students are required to interact and cooperate across disciplinary borders in a way to find a solution for a given task on their own. This cooperative learning paradigm guides students to work in teams to accomplish a common goal. Several skills are developed as a result of this cooperative virtual team work. Positive interdependency and individual accountability is needed to be able to work in a team efficiently. Another pillar which is crucial for the successful collaboration is the interaction either virtual or face-to-face. Students need to communicate across cultural and geographical borders which help them to develop these competencies during the course of the project. These collaborative skills include practicing the development of trust, leadership, decision-making, communication and conflict management skills. Progress of the project is caused by a group processing which anticipates a functioning in team collaboration (Tapscott & Williams, 2008).

In this paper, beside the quantitative analysis of the results of the past years, present implementation of the project would be explained and analyzed with the help of social constructivist theory.

Conclusions

The European Association for Education in Electrical and Information Engineering network has pointed out that students complain that there is a large gap between what they would like to know and what is taught in academia with regard to the ability to work in an international context (EAEEIE, 2008). Projects which are carried out on an international level have the potential to help students in acquiring the necessary skills that the labor market demands from them with regard to the arising work environment 4.0.(Bandura & Schunk, 1981). The MUTW project is a good example of how interdisciplinary virtual multicultural teamwork can be structured in a beneficial way for students, which differs from normal classroom teaching. By introducing new innovative project management methodologies like the scrum approach, the program tries to stay on the edge of latest academic findings. As it is proven by research in the case of the MUTW project, such programs can have a huge positive impact on the education of young professionals and deserve therefore more attention regarding resources and attention of the decision makers in the educational system. 

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank all the past and present participants of MUTW project. Also, we would like to acknowledge the efforts of our colleagues who have been part of this project in the last few years namely Hille Christof, DavyDe Winne, IngwiobD'Hespeel, KristienVanAssche
asqualin Ligia, Daniel Müller and Henry Wolf.

References and Notes

1. ACM (2010). Model curriculum for undergraduate degrees in information systems. Retrieved 17.05 2015 from http://www.acm.org/education/curricula/IS%202010%20ACM%20final.pdf
2. Bandura A. & Schunk D.H. (1981). Cultivating competence, self efficiacy and intrinsic interest through proximal self-motivation. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. Vol.41 (3). pp. 586-598
3. Crites J. (1974). Psicologia Vocacional, Biblioteca de Psicologia y Sociologia aplicadas. Editorial Paldos, Buenos Aires.
4. EAEEIE (2008). European Association for Education in Electrical and Information Engineering. Retrieved 17.05 from eaeeie.org
5. European Union (2015). EU funding. Retrieved 17.05.2015 from http://europa.eu/about-eu/funding-grants/index_en.htm
6. Escudeiro F. N. & Escudeiro P. M. (2012). The Multinational Undergraduate Teamwork project. An effective way to improve students´soft skills. Industry & Higher Education. Vol.26 (4). pp. 279-290
7. Fraunhofer IAO (2014). Innovation Campaign Office 21 Research Period 2012-2014. Retrieved 17.03.2015 from http://www.office21.de/content/dam/office21/en/documents/innovation_campaign_office21_project_description_tcm1061-78842.pdf
8. Giuchard J. (2001). Psychologie de l´Orientation. Paris.
9. Karsenti T. (1999). Student motivation and distance education on the web: love at first sight. Proceedings of NAWeb 99 International Conference on Web-Based Learning. Univeristy of New Brunswick.
10. Lotman, Yuri. M., Universe of the Mind. A Semiotic Theory of Culture, B. Tauris & Co. Ltd.: London, 1990
11. Moe N. B. & Dingsoyr T. & Dyba T. (2010). A teamwork model for understanding an agile team. A case study of a scrum project. Information and Software Technology. Vol. 52(5). pp. 480-491
12. Odlyzko (2003). Internet traffic growth: sources and implications. Retrieved 17.03.2015 from http://proceedings.spiedigitallibrary.org/proceeding.aspx?articleid=831584
13. Sewell, W H Jr., A theory of structure: duality, agency, and transformation. J. Sociol.98:1–29, 1999
14. Sewell, W H Jr., The Concepts of Culture, In : Beyond the Cultural Turn: New Dimensions in the Study of Society and Culture, Ed. by Bonnell E. V. and Hunt, Lynn, (1-35), 1999
15. Tapscott D. & Williams A.D. (2008). Wikinomics – How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything. Atlantic Books.
16. Terenzini P.T. & Pascarella E.T. & Blimling L. (1996). Student’s out-of-class experiences and their influence on learning and cognitive development: a literature review. Journal of College Student Development. Vol. 37. pp. 149-162
17. Wieman C. (2008). New university education model needed. Post on LiveScience. Retrieved 17.03 from http://www.livescience.com/7528-university-education-model-needed.html

© 2015 by the authors; licensee MDPI and ISIS. This abstract is distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution license.

Introduction

One of the most difficult methodological challenges in cross-cultural comparisons, especially in the field of intercultural communication, is the difficulty of interpreting and translating knowledge transmitted between cultures. New forms of participation and empowerment in the information society can only take place when the information transmitted by using codes of one culture is successfully interpreted and converted as knowledge in another culture.

Different schools of thought have used different methodologies and research paradigms in the field of cross-cultural comparisons. For example, defining culture as a latent variable (Smircirch, 1983) external to the organisation and based on national difference has been expostulated in comparative management literature by ‘Hofstedians’ (Magala, 2009) like Geert Hofstede (1984), Hall (1984), Trompenaars (1996): variable internal to the organization by system theorists in terms of system-structural view (Van de Ven and Astley, 1981) or social-factist paradigm (Ritzer, 1975). However, one of the main weaknesses in all these paradigms of culture is the simplification and reduction of culture as a variable thereby ignoring the complexity, context dependency and dynamism of the cultural processes within organizations and cultural processes that influence the organization in different nation-states. Also, reducing it to the level of a uniform national culture that remains constant over time is oversimplification of the term ‘culture’. Treating culture in this way has been also been criticized for its racial myopic tendency (Gupta-Biener, 2005), ignoring fragmentations and inconsistencies across groups as depicted in the work of many scholars (Martin, 1992). In the past two decades, another school of thought has emerged as a result of development in the field of sociology and psychology. Here, culture is no more considered as a ‘bounded world of beliefs and practices’ (Sewell, 1999) which is learnt in childhood and passed on from one generation to another but is rather considered as a ‘tool kit’ (DiMaggio, 1997) or ‘culture as practice’ (Sewell, 1999) which is used by the actors in contextual and opportunistic way as for example, in cross-cultural boundary spanning (Author, 2009). However, even this concept has its critics. One of the main criticisms is that if culture is such a conscious act, then intercultural conflicts would not exist (Magala, 2009).

Methodology

In this paper, I suggest a new transdisciplinary methodology and research paradigm based on semiotics to analyze culture and to frame communication in a language which can be translated in the language of another culture. This translation is necessary as the actors within the sphere of a particular institution can only interpret the signs using the cognitive cultural translation tools available in the institutional culture. I have used the basic concept of Biosphere and Lotman's concept of Semiosphere to develop new ontological concepts which can be used in transdisciplinary research projects dealing with cross-cultural comparisons.

In my work, I assume culture in terms of epistemic communities sharing certain common knowledge categories, which are implicit. Here knowledge categories imply the unwritten rules, norms, taken-for-granted assumptions which determine the interaction and information dissemination between the actors. If we now assume that these knowledge categories are conveyed in terms of signs which can be represented in a language, then we can use semiotics to analyse these knowledge categories. In organisational literature, researchers have used symbols like stories, myths, rituals and artefacts to analyse organisational culture. For example Barley (1983) has used semiotics to analyse the culture of funeral homes and recently Gupta & Mishra (2007) have used it to analyse the culture of an Indian organisation. However, until now, one of the main weaknesses of using semiotic was that one tried to interpret individual symbols and signs and the entire semiotic phenomenon was considered a succession of signs (Lotman, 1990). Hence, one has to ontologically look for an approach which would include epistemic communities which are ignored in the study of individual signs. As Lotman (1990) has pointed out, analysing only the signs would be ‘heuristic expediency’. We have to analyse and translate the signs with reference to the system in which they are embedded. Therefore, we would be using the concept of Semiosphere borrowed from Yuri Lotman to analyse the societal and organisational culture. Based on the concept of biosphere, culture and cultural processes can be imagined encapsulated in a semiosphere consisting of all possible signs which reflect the culture. According to Winner (1984), semiosphere can be defined as “dynamically related systems of information, conveyed by sign systems in all possible modalities and organized by underlying psychobiological and related cultural perceptions of time and space as well as by central metaphors (or fundamental symbols), and values, all of which participate in the construction of world-views”. One of the advantages of using the concept of semiosphere is that it allows for heterogeneity with all its irregularities and dynamism in culture. Moreover, translation and deciphering of signs becomes easier as one uses the semiosphere as a base for understanding the meaning of signs. Like the description of Biosphere, Semiosphere is a closed system with its own self-regulating mechanism. The semiotic space within a semiosphere consists of different layers and levels of other semiospheres. For example, organisations are one of semiospheres existing within the large semiopsphere. The inner dynamic is a result of the movement of signs and symbols from the centre to the periphery and vice versa. The signs and symbols on the periphery are responsible for filtering the information to the world outside the semiosphere and vice versa. This filtering process is necessary so that the stability within the Semisophere is not disturbed which is a natural homeostatic process.

One of these semiospheres is the semiosphere of the organisation. To analyse the semiosphere of the organisation, we would be analysing the group culture where I would like to introduce new ontological categories namely that of ‘sociosphere’ (J. Assmann, 2013) and the individual actors within an organisation in terms of ‘idiosphere’ (Author, 2009). Sociosphere, can be defined as “common elements of culture (knowledge categories along with their meaning) shared by members of a group”. Idiosphere, can be defined in terms of “a collection of symbols, along with their meaning called knowledge categories in the mental sphere of an actor“. One of the advantages of these ontological categories is that it covers the cognitive, symbolic, structural, and psychodynamic perspectives on organization and culture. Interaction of Semiosphere, Idiosphere and Sociosphere can be analysed as follows:

If Semiosphere is represented as Se, Sociosphere as So and Idiosphere as I, then the relationship can be represented in the following equations:

So= I₁∩ I₂

(where I₁ and I₂ represent the Idiospheres of two different person)

Se= I₁ +I₂ +I₃+---+I_n+∑X_n+1

(Semiosphere is a sum of all Idiospheres and other symbols /signs represented by the sum of X_n+1 which may not belong to any Idiosphere and maybe floating around freely in the Semiosphere)

and

I_n = s1+s2+s3+---sn

(where s1, s2—represent the signs existing within the Idiosphere)

It should be noted that Idiosphere can have signs belonging to two or more Semiopsheres as seen in bicultural personalities (Morris et.al, 2000) or immigrants who are integrated in their new culture. 

Application of the methodology

One of the studies in which this methodology was applied was conducted for the Integration Ministry of the state of Baden-Wurttemberg (Germany). The purpose of the research was to find out the reasons why those immigrants who are integrated in the German society do not participate in voluntary civic activities in their German community (Gupta-Biener, 2013).Using qualitative techniques of research, including focus group interviews, narratives of immigrants were transcribed and analyzed. Since culture is implicit and is context dependent, context was created to evoke responses from the respondents. These transcribed responses were understood as signs which had to be translated.

Results and Discussion

Using the idiosphere of the immigrants against the larger semiosphere as the base, it was concluded that, for example, most of the immigrants had had a ‘traumatic experience’ in relation to the German culture either as children or as adults. This trauma was then expressed in the word (here considered as symbol) ‘cold’. The word ‘cold’ became a sign for this group of immigrants as it was related to their painful experiences which marked the boundary of their sociosphere. To understand Semiosphere, we used the ‘collective memory’ (A. Assmann) to demarcate the boundary of the Semiosphere. Demarcation of boundaries was necessary so as to make sociosphere, and semiosphere apparent. One of the suggestions which emerged as a result of this study was that German institutions have to make efforts towards creating positive experiences with verbal and non-verbal communication (especially for second generation immigrants). Also, an open public discussion about the traumatic experiences would help that signs within the boundary of the ‘sociosphere’ gain positive meaning thus motivating the immigrants to participate actively in the German civic community.

Conclusion:

This paper shows with an example of a research project, how the concepts of semiosphere, sociosphere and idiosphere and the related methodology could be used for deciphering tacit knowledge in intercultural field. Also, like with Biosphere, it is possible with the concept of ‘Sociosphere’ and ‘Idiosphere’ to work with different fields of social sciences and information together in cross-cultural research.  

Literature List: 

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