Pennings, A.J. (2026, Jun 09) Remediation and Spreadsheet Logic: Energetic Interpretants to Organizational Structures. apennings.com https://apennings.com/technologies-of-meaning/remediation-and-spreadsheet-logic-part-five-energetic-interpretants-to-organizational-structures/

Introduction

This essay positions Rose and Pennings (2022) as the bridge between Peirce’s semiosis and (my) Pennings’ theorization of operative mediation, showing how spreadsheet-generated energetic interpretants become institutionalized organizational structures.[1]

One of the challenges in extending media theory into organizational analysis is explaining how representations become actions. Marshall McLuhan’s work focused on how media extend human capabilities. Jay David Bolter and Richard Grusin (1999) showed how new media continually refashion older media through the dual logics of transparent immediacy and hypermediacy.[2] Stuart Hall (1980) demonstrated that meaning remains contested and negotiated rather than fixed. Yet these approaches leave a crucial question unanswered.

How do meanings generated within spreadsheet media systems become the decisions, routines, and institutional structures that govern organizational life?

My concept of operative mediation provides an important step toward answering this question. Operative mediation extends remediation by focusing on how media organize action. Rather than merely presenting reality, operative media structure pathways through which signs become decisions, interventions, transactions, and behaviors. However, to fully understand how operative mediation functions within organizations, it is useful to combine it with Charles Sanders Peirce’s theory of semiosis and the structuration framework developed by Rose and Pennings (2022).

Peirce’s theory begins with the idea that meaning is not contained within a sign itself. Meaning emerges through a triadic relationship among a sign, its object, and an interpretant. A sign stands for something in the world, but its significance is realized only when it generates an interpretant within an observer. Peirce argued that interpretants can take several forms. Some are emotional, producing feelings or impressions. Others are logical, generating habits or rules of thought. Most important for organizational analysis is the energetic interpretant, which produces effort, response, or action.

Consider a familiar organizational example. A dashboard reports that inventory levels have fallen below a predetermined threshold. The dashboard entry functions as a sign. The inventory shortage is the object to which the sign refers. A manager interprets the sign as indicating a supply-chain risk. The resulting energetic interpretant is a decision to place an emergency order. Meaning has become action.

From a Peircean perspective, the process could end there. The sign has generated an interpretant, and the interpretant has produced behavior. Yet organizations are not merely collections of isolated actions. They are systems of recurring practices, routines, and structures. This is where Rose and Pennings’ application of Anthony Giddens’ structuration theory becomes especially valuable.

Giddens (1984) argued that social structures are neither external forces imposed on individuals nor merely products of individual intention. Instead, structures are continually reproduced through human action. This is the crucial theme of the duality of structure, which points out that people draw upon existing rules and resources when they act, and that those actions simultaneously reproduce the very structures that guide them.

Rose and Pennings (2022) apply this insight to spreadsheets and organizational technologies. Their central argument is that spreadsheets should not be viewed as neutral information tools. Rather, they function as what Orlikowski in 1992 called structurational technologies. They contain embedded assumptions about categories, measurements, priorities, relationships, and decision rules. These assumptions shape organizational behavior, but they also become reinforced through repeated use.

Viewed through this lens, the energetic interpretant occupies a crucial position within the structuration process. Each time a spreadsheet-generated metric leads to a decision, that decision contributes to the reproduction of organizational structures. A budget variance triggers a cost-reduction initiative. A performance indicator triggers a personnel review. A forecast triggers an investment decision. Each action reinforces the categories, assumptions, and relationships embedded within the spreadsheet itself.

The sequence therefore, extends beyond Peirce’s original formulation:

Sign -> Interpretant -> Energetic Interpretant -> Action -> Routine -> Structure

This expanded sequence reveals how operative mediation functions within organizations. Operative mediation does not merely generate action; it generates recurring actions that become institutionalized. The spreadsheet organizes signs into pathways that repeatedly channel interpretation toward specific forms of behavior. Over time, these behaviors become routines, and routines become organizational structures.

This perspective also deepens Stuart Hall’s observations about meaning. Hall emphasized that meaning remains contested and negotiable. Organizations, however, cannot function if every interpretation remains permanently open. They require mechanisms that stabilize meaning sufficiently for coordinated action. Spreadsheet Logic provides such a mechanism. Categories, formulas, tables, and dashboards do not eliminate ambiguity, but they narrow interpretive possibilities. They establish preferred readings that are repeatedly reinforced through organizational practice.

A category such as “customer profitability” illustrates this process. Initially, it is simply one possible way of understanding customer relationships. Once embedded within a spreadsheet, however, it becomes a measurable variable. Managers begin making decisions based upon it. Reports incorporate it. Incentive systems reward it. Strategic plans reference it. Through repeated action, the category becomes institutionalized. What began as a sign becomes part of organizational reality.

The significance of this process increases when viewed through the broader framework of Substitution-Abstraction-Symbolic Computation-Telecom Synchronization (SACT). SACT emphasizes the role of telecommunications in synchronizing organizational activity across time and space. Spreadsheet Logic stabilizes meaning. Telecommunications synchronize meaning. Together, they enable distributed organizations to coordinate action across geographically dispersed networks.

When a dashboard updates simultaneously for managers in New York, Singapore, and London, each manager encounters the same signs at roughly the same time. Similar interpretants emerge. Similar actions follow. Structuration itself becomes synchronized across organizational space. The organization reproduces its structures not solely through local interaction but also through globally distributed systems of spreadsheet-mediated semiosis.

This perspective also extends Anthony Giddens’ concept of time-space distanciation and David Harvey’s concept of time-space compression. Modern organizations increasingly operate across global networks characterized by rapid information flows and compressed decision cycles. Under these conditions, the challenge is not simply transmitting information but converting information into coordinated action. Spreadsheet Logic and operative mediation solve this problem by compressing interpretation. Categories, formulas, and dashboards pre-structure meaning so that energetic interpretants can emerge rapidly and consistently across organizational networks.

The rise of artificial intelligence further intensifies these dynamics. Traditionally, organizational action followed a sequence in which signs generated human interpretants, which in turn led to human decisions. Increasingly, signs generate computational interpretants that trigger automated actions. Inventory thresholds initiate purchase orders. Risk scores trigger interventions. Predictive models allocate resources. The spreadsheet’s underlying logic persists, but energetic interpretants are increasingly delegated to algorithmic systems.

From this perspective, Rose and Pennings’ theory of spreadsheet structuration and Pennings’ concept of operative mediation are highly complementary. Operative mediation explains how representations become actions through the generation of energetic interpretants. Rose and Pennings explain how those actions become routines and how routines become organizational structures. Together, they reveal spreadsheets as socio-technical systems that do far more than represent reality. They organize semiosis, channel behavior, reproduce institutional arrangements, and increasingly coordinate action across globally synchronized networks.

The spreadsheet is therefore not merely a calculation tool, nor simply a medium of representation. It is a structurational infrastructure of meaning. Through operative mediation, it transforms signs into energetic interpretants. Through organizational practice, those interpretants become routines. Through structuration, those routines become enduring organizational realities. In this sense, modern organizations increasingly govern themselves through the recursive interaction of signs, calculations, actions, and technologies. This process lies at the heart of Spreadsheet Logic and the SACT framework.

References

Bolter, J. D., & Grusin, R. (1999). Remediation: Understanding New Media. MIT Press.
Giddens, A. (1983) A Contemporary Critique of Historical Materialism.
(Berkeley, CA: University of California Press). p 117.
Giddens, A. (1983) The Nation-State and Violence. (Berkeley, CA:
University of California Press).
Giddens, A. (1984). The Constitution of Society. University of California Press.
Hall, S. (1980). Encoding/decoding. In S. Hall, D. Hobson, A. Lowe, & P. Willis (Eds.), Culture, media, language (pp. 128–138). Hutchinson.
Harvey, D. (1989). The Condition of Postmodernity: An Enquiry into the Origins of Cultural Change. Blackwell.
Peirce, C. S. (1931–1958). Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce (C. Hartshorne, P. Weiss, & A. Burks, Eds.). Harvard University Press.
Pennings, A.J. (2025, Sep 03) Peirce and Derrida on the Logic and Power of Spreadsheets and Dashboards. apennings.com https://apennings.com/technologies-of-meaning/peirce-and-derrida-on-the-logic-and-power-of-spreadsheets-and-dashboards/
Rose, P. A., & Pennings, A. J. (2022). Knowledge, Decisions, and Norms: A Framework for Studying the Structuration of Spreadsheets in Social Organizations. Information, 13(2), 46. https://doi.org/10.3390/info13020046

Notes

[1] My first inquiry into Peircian semoitics came in research about Substitution and become a key component of the SACT analysis. Pennings, A.J. (2025, Sep 03) Peirce and Derrida on the Logic and Power of Spreadsheets and Dashboards. apennings.com https://apennings.com/technologies-of-meaning/peirce-and-derrida-on-the-logic-and-power-of-spreadsheets-and-dashboards/
[2] I remain eternally grateful for the research by Bolter, J. D., & Grusin, R. (1999). Remediation: Understanding New Media. MIT Press.
Prompt(s) Operative mediation extends Bolter and Grusin’s remediation by explaining how representations become actions. Drawing upon Peirce’s theory of semiosis, operative mediation organizes signs into pathways that generate energetic interpretants that trigger decisions, interventions, transactions, and behaviors. How does this fit into Rose and Pennings (2022) analysis of spreadsheets in organizations?

© ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

Not to be considered financial advice. AI is often used, and results are thoroughly interrogated. Links are used for some citations.

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Anthony J. Pennings, PhD is a Professor at the Department of Technology and Society, State University of New York, Korea and a Research Professor for Stony Brook University. He teaches AI and broadband policy. From 2002-2012 he taught digital economics and information systems management at New York University. He also taught in the Digital Media MBA at St. Edwards University in Austin, Texas, where he lives when not in Korea.

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Category: artificial intelligence, blockchain, characteristics of digital media, data analytics and meaning, democratic political economies, digital coordination, spreadsheet logic, technologies of meaning
Tags: Anthony Giddens > David Harvey > energetic interpretants > hypermediacy > Jay David Bolter > operative mediation > Richard Grusin > SACT (Substitution - Abstraction - Symbolic Computing - Telecommunications Synchronization) > time-space distanciation > Transparent Immediacy

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