This thesis consists of four papers about the intersection between semigroup theory, category theory and representation theory. We say that a representation of a semigroup by a matrix semigroup is effective if it is injective and define the effective dimension of a semigroup S as the minimal n such that S has an effective representation by square matrices of size n. A multisemigroup is a generalization of a semigroup where the multiplication is set-valued, but still associative. A 2-category consists of objects, 1-morphisms and 2-morphisms. A finitary 2-category has finite dimensional vector spaces as objects and linear maps as morphisms. This setting permits the notion of indecomposable 1-morphisms, which turn out to form a multisemigroup. Paper I computes the effective dimension Hecke-Kiselman monoids of type A. Hecke-Kiselman monoids are defined by generators and relations, where the generators are vertices and the relations depend on arrows in a given quiver. Paper II computes the effective dimension of path semigroups and truncated path semigroups. A path semigroup is defined as the set of all paths in a quiver, with concatenation as multiplication. It is said to be truncated if we introduce the relation that all paths of length N are zero. Paper III defines the notion of a multisemigroup with multiplicities and discusses how it better captures the structure of a 2-category, compared to a multisemigroup (without multiplicities). Paper IV gives an example of a family of 2-categories in which the multisemigroup with multiplicities is not a semigroup, but where the multiplicities are either 0 or 1. We describe these multisemigroups combinatorially.