Ontology Construction - Enterprise Information Systems Design, Implementation and Management: Organizational Applications - page 61

Figure 1. The three production acts

be achieved if action modeling is taken into
consideration. Therefore, besides characterizing
the elements that are involved in the action, Dietz
also validates if the process activities are formally
correct. It is the first step of a process towards
implementation which, in the author's opinion,
represents a complete new issue on organization
design and engineering. The next chapter shows
an example.

without being concerned about its content” that
are translated in acts like “copying, storing, and
transmitting data” (in the case volley the act of
recording an application for membership in the
letter topic). Datalogical acts are associated with
datalogical typical coordination acts like “speak-
ing, listening, writing, and reading”
An infological 9 act, like deciding and judging,
always brings new original things and does not
concern about the form but “about the content of
information only” like inquiring, calculating and
reasoning (e.g. calculating the membership fee).
Infological acts also include formulating thoughts)
written or spoken sentences) and interpreting per-
ceived sentences (through listening or reading).
Langefors distinguished between two work
areas or problems in the development of infor-
mation systems: the infological problem and the
datalogical problem. The infological problem is
how to define the information to be provided by
the information system in order to satisfy user
needs. The datalogical problem is how to orga-
nize the set of data and the hardware in order to
implement the information system.
Dietz defines a circular transaction pattern
(where typical ontological acts are requesting and
promising) and draws a flower request example
(shown in Figure 2) where a bouquet is requested
by the requestor with a tacit promise by the vendor

dietz enterprise ontoLogY

In chapter two of his topic the Enterprise Ontology,
Dietz defines Enterprise Ontology 5 “as the realiza-
tion and implementation independent essence of
an enterprise, in short, as the deep structure behind
its observable surface structure” (Dietz, 2006).
In his analysis of the complexity of an ap-
parent simple case - the “Volley” case, he uses
a flow chart to show the sequence of actions
that are performed stating that, under the axiom
explained in his topic (chapter 12, see Figure
1), the actions can be classified as datalogical 6 ,
infological (both concepts as defined originally
by Langefors (1977)) or ontological 7 .
According to Dietz “a datalogical production 8
act is an act in which one manipulates the form
of information, commonly referred to as data, so