This article aims to contribute to the special issue for the twentieth anniversary of the Organisational and Social Dynamics journal presenting a semiotic action-research method called emotional textual analysis (ETA). ETA, developed in Italy by the Studio of Psychosociology and the Chair of Clinical Psychology at Sapienza University of Rome, is an explorative abductive method that consents to analyse how the organisation symbolically interacts with its context. In ETA methodology the interdependence between the organisational system and the client system is considered as the product of socially shared emotional cultures. This article describes the theoretical and methodological foundation of the ETA method and presents the results of a recent action-research project carried out by the authors within a National Health System organisation. In the conclusion, the added value of using ETA to work with organisations facing contextual changes in the current historical period is discussed.