Managing the Actantial Model for Organizational Research

Actor-Network Theory (ANT) can be considered as an approach or assemblage of material-semiotic tools, definitions, and methods of investigation, that treat every phenomenon as a continuously generated effect of webs of relations between humans and non-human artifacts. As a material-semiotic approach, researchers can use ANT for describing the enactment of agglomerations of heterogeneous material and discursive artifacts, namely, actor-networks. Semiotic is one of its first sources of inspiration, together with structuralism, phenomenology and ethnomethodology. In ANT, a semiotic definition is used: an actant is the source of action. When studying both humanity and materiality, effects and genres might be different, but not the work of attributing, imputing, distributing actions, competences, performances and relations. Actions and trials define stability, continuity and isotopies of actors, which are not seen as to be static, but dynamic. Texts and discourses are recognized to be powerful to define contexts, their authors and readers. Networks are the products of organizing activities, where organizing represents the construction of connections between organizational actors. ANT extends semiotics and represents a method to deconstruct record and describe the generative path of narration against any a priori discount