Ontology Construction - Enterprise Information Systems Design, Implementation and Management: Organizational Applications - page 59

• “ An Ontology is an explicit, partial speci-

fication of a conceptualization that is ex-
pressible as a meta-level viewpoint on a set
of possible domain theories for the purpose
of modular design, redesign and reuse of
knowledge-intensive system components .”
(Schreiber, Wielinga & Jansweijer, 1995,
pp. 161).

• Axioms , which represent true statements;
• Instances , used to represent domain
elements.

the enterprise ontoLogY

The motto ontologies are built to be reused
(Fernandez et al., 1997) conveys in an appro-
priate manner the ideas originally proposed by
Gruber (1993). Therefore, one of the steps taken
to achieve the proposed objective was to survey
existing information sources of the organization
(enterprise) domain and verify their adequacy.
Of these sources, some fall in the spectrum of
definitions, presented by (McGuinness 2003),
that details the concept of ontology introduced
by Gruber (1993).
Mintzberg (1983) provides an early (and in-
formal) analysis of organization structure distin-
guishing among five basic parts of an organization
(strategic apex, middle line, operational core,
techno-structure and logistics) and five distinct
organization configurations that are encountered
in practice (mutual adjustment, direct supervision,
standardization of work processes, standardization
of output, standardization of skills). This “ontol-
ogy” includes several mechanisms that together
achieve coordination, like goals, work processes,
authority, positions and communication. The vari-
ous parts of an organization are distinguished by
the specific roles they play in achieving coordina-
tion with the above means.
The “language/action perspective” (Winograd,
1987) on cooperative work in organizations
provides an ontology that emphasizes the social
activity by which “agents” generate the space of
cooperative actions in which they work, rather
than the mental state of individuals. The basic idea
is that social activity is carried out by language
and communication.
In the same vein, (Auramaki et al., 1988)
present a method for modeling offices as systems
of communicative action through which people
engage in actions by creating, modifying and

Gruber's definition was further extended by
Borst in 1997. In his work Construction of Engi-
neering Ontologies (Borst, 1997) he defines ontol-
ogy as: “ Ontologies are defined as a formal speci-
fication of a shared conceptualization ”. Studer,
Benjamins and Fensel (1998) further refined and
explained this definition in 1998. In their work,
the authors defined an ontology as: “ a formal,
explicit specification of a shared conceptualiza-
tion ” where: Formal : “refers to the fact that an
ontology should be machine-readable”; Explicit :
“means that the type of concepts used, and the
restrictions on their use are explicitly defined”.
Shared : “reflects the notion that the ontology
captures consensual knowledge, that is, it is not
the privilege of some individual, but accepted
by a group”; Conceptualization: refers to an
abstract model of some phenomenon in the world
by having identified the relevant concepts of that
phenomenon .
The several possibilities above prove that a
definition is an agreed issue, each having advan-
tages and disadvantages (Guarino, 1996).
Ontologies provide a formal specification of a
knowledge domain (Benjamins and Gómez-Pérez,
1999). Normally an ontology is composed of five
components (Gruber, 1993).

• Concepts , used to represent a domain en-
tity (tasks, functions, strategy, etc.);
• Relations , representing a interaction be-
tween the domain concepts with cardinal-
ity n:n;
• Functions , a special case of relations with
cardinality n:1;