A Survey on a Conceptual Model of Enterprise

Document Type : Original Article

Authors

1 Department of Computer Engeenering, Hazrat-e Masoumeh University, Qom, Iran Corresponding Author E-mail: z.rajabi@hmu.ac.ir

2 University of Tehran,Tehran, Iran E-mail: rahnamafard@alumni.ut.ac.ir

Abstract
Enterprise ontology serves as a foundational framework for semantically comprehending the nature of organizations and the essential components that uphold their integrity. The systematic and conceptual understanding of organizations has garnered significant attention from researchers due to its pivotal role in various domains, including business modeling, enterprise architecture, business process management, context-aware systems, application development, interoperability across diverse systems and platforms, knowledge management, organizational learning and innovation, and conflict resolution within organizations. Achieving a consensus on the concepts related to the fundamental elements that constitute an organization is therefore critical. This study aimed to conduct a comprehensive analysis and comparison of the existing conceptual models of enterprises as documented in scholarly articles published over the past decade. The comparison revealed significant variations in coverage, adaptability, and maturity across models, with many lacking completeness or alignment with comprehensive frameworks like Zachman’s framework. The strengths and weaknesses of each model were discussed and a robust framework for their evaluation was introduced. To facilitate this evaluation, we proposed several pertinent criteria derived from established methodologies for assessing the ontologies. Furthermore, we identified contemporary challenges and issues that have been overlooked in prior studies, offering insights and suggestions for future research directions in enterprise modeling. Ultimately, a roadmap for enhancing the systematic understanding of organizations through refined enterprise ontology frameworks was presented.

Keywords

Subjects

References
AbdEllatif, M., Farhan, M. S., & Shehata, N. S. (2018). Overcoming business process reengineering obstacles using ontology-based knowledge map methodology. Future Computing and Informatics Journal, 3(1), 7-28.
Abramowicz, W., Filipowska, A., Kaczmarek, M., Pedrinaci, C., Starzecka, M., & Walczak, A. (2008). Organization structure description for the needs of semantic business process management. Paper presented at the 3rd international Workshop on Semantic Business Process Management colocated with 5th European Semantic Web Conference.
Aguilar, J., Jerez, M., & Rodríguez, T. (2018). CAMeOnto: Context awareness meta ontology modeling. Applied computing and informatics, 14(2), 202-213.
Almeida, J. P. A., & Guizzardi, G. (2008). A semantic foundation for role-related concepts in enterprise modelling. Paper presented at the Enterprise Distributed Object Computing Conference, 2008. EDOC'08. 12th International IEEE.
Antunes, G., Bakhshandeh, M., Mayer, R., Borbinha, J. L., & Caetano, A. (2014). Using ontologies for enterprise architecture integration and analysis. CSIMQ, 1, 1-23.
Aue, A., & Gamon, M. (2005). Customizing sentiment classifiers to new domains: A case study. Paper presented at the Proceedings of recent advances in natural language processing (RANLP).
Awadallah, R. (2013). Methods for constructing an opinion network for politically controversial topics.
Brank, J., Grobelnik, M., & Mladenić, D. (2005). A survey of ontology evaluation techniques. In Proceedings of the conference on data mining and data warehouses (SiKDD 2005) (pp. 166-170).
Burke, W. W., & Litwin, G. H. (1992). A causal model of organizational performance and change. Journal of management, 18(3), 523-545.
Caetano, A., Pereira, C., & Sousa, P. (2012). Generation of business process model views. Procedia Technology, 5, 378-387.
Carvalho, V. A., & Almeida, J. P. A. (2015). A semantic foundation for organizational structures: a multi-level approach. Paper presented at the 2015 IEEE 19th International Enterprise Distributed Object Computing Conference.
Chen, D., Doumeingts, G., & Vernadat, F. (2008). Architectures for enterprise integration and interoperability: Past, present and future. Computers in industry, 59(7), 647-659.
Ciocoiu, M., Nau, D. S., & Gruninger, M. (2001). Ontologies for integrating engineering applications. Journal of Computing and Information Science in Engineering, 1(1), 12-22.
Daft, R. L. (2020). Organization theory & design: Cengage learning.
Dietz, J. L. (2006). What is Enterprise Ontology? : Springer.
DoDAF PLUGIN user guide. (2010). Version 16.9.
Fadel, F. G., Fox, M. S., & Gruninger, M. (1994). A generic enterprise resource ontology. Paper presented at the Enabling Technologies: Infrastructure for Collaborative Enterprises, 1994. Proceedings., Third Workshop on.
Feilmayr, C., & Wöß, W. (2016). An analysis of ontologies and their success factors for application to business. Data & Knowledge Engineering, 101, 1-23.
Fernández-López, M., Gómez-Pérez, A., & Juristo, N. (1997). Methontology: from ontological art towards ontological engineering.
Fox, M. S., Barbuceanu, M., & Gruninger, M. (1995). An organisation ontology for enterprise modelling: preliminary concepts for linking structure and behaviour. Paper presented at the Enabling Technologies: Infrastructure for Collaborative Enterprises, 1995., Proceedings of the Fourth Workshop on.
Fox, M. S., & Gruninger, M. (1998). Enterprise modeling. AI magazine, 19(3), 109.
Gassen, J. B., Mendling, J., Bouzeghoub, A., Thom, L. H., & de Oliveira, J. P. M. (2017). An experiment on an ontology-based support approach for process modeling. Information and Software Technology, 83, 94-115.
Gómez-Pérez, A. (1996). Towards a framework to verify knowledge sharing technology. Expert Systems with applications, 11(4), 519-529.
Gordijn, J., Osterwalder, A., & Pigneur, Y. (2005). Comparing two business model ontologies for designing e-business models and value constellations. BLED 2005 Proceedings, 15.
Gruber, T. R. (1995). Toward principles for the design of ontologies used for knowledge sharing? International journal of human-computer studies, 43(5-6), 907-928.
Gruninger, M., & Fox, M. S. (1994). An activity ontology for enterprise modelling. Submitted to AAAI-94, Dept. of Industrial Engineering, University of Toronto, 321.
Hinkelmann, K., Gerber, A., Karagiannis, D., Thoenssen, B., Van der Merwe, A., & Woitsch, R. (2016). A new paradigm for the continuous alignment of business and IT: Combining enterprise architecture modelling and enterprise ontology. Computers in Industry, 79, 77-86.
Hlomani, H., & Stacey, D. (2014). Approaches, methods, metrics, measures, and subjectivity in ontology evaluation: A survey. Semantic Web Journal, 1(5), 1-11.
Janićijević, N. (2010). Business processes in organizational diagnosis. Management: journal of contemporary management issues, 15(2), 85-106.
Jasper, R., & Uschold, M. (1999). A framework for understanding and classifying ontology applications. Paper presented at the Proceedings 12th Int. Workshop on Knowledge Acquisition, Modelling, and Management KAW.
Jung, J. J. (2009). Semantic business process integration based on ontology alignment. Expert Systems with Applications, 36(8), 11013-11020.
Kang, D., Lee, J., Choi, S., & Kim, K. (2010). An ontology-based enterprise architecture. Expert Systems with Applications, 37(2), 1456-1464.
Kindrick, J. (2009). Enterprise architecture based on design primitives and patterns business transformation agency. Availaible on: http://www. bta. mil.
Leppänen, M. (2007). A context-based enterprise ontology. Paper presented at the International Conference on Business Information Systems.
Levitt, H. J. (1965). Applied organizational change in industry: Structural, technological, and humanistic approach. Handbook of Organizations, 1144, 1170.
McDaniel, M., Storey, V. C., & Sugumaran, V. (2018). Assessing the quality of domain ontologies: Metrics and an automated ranking system. Data & Knowledge Engineering, 115, 32-47.
Mingers, J. (2006). Realising systems thinking: knowledge and action in management science: Springer Science & Business Media.
Model, M. The DoDAF Architecture Framework Version 2.02.
Nadler, D. A., & Tushman, M. L. (1995). Types of organizational change: From incremental improvement to discontinuous transformation. Discontinuous change: Leading organizational transformation, 15-34.
Officer, C. I. (2009). DoDAF Architecture Framework Version 2.02 - DoD CIO.
O'Leary, D. E. (2010). Enterprise ontologies: Review and an activity theory approach. International Journal of Accounting Information Systems, 11(4), 336-352.
OMG. (2008). Date-Time Foundation Vocabulary Request For Proposal. Retrieved from???
OMG. (2009). Organization Structure Metamodel(OSM). Retrieved from ?????
OMG. (2015). Business Motivation Model (BMM). Retrieved from http://www.omg.org/spec/BMM/1.3//.
OMG. (2017a). Unified Architecture Framework (UAF) The Domain Metamodel Version 1.0 - Appendix A. Retrieved from http://www.omg.org/spec/UAF/1.0.
OMG. (2017b). Unified Architecture Framework Profile (UAFP). Retrieved from http://www.omg.org/spec/UAF/1.0/.
Pateli, A. (2003). A framework for understanding and analysing ebusiness models. BLED 2003 Proceedings, 4.
Pereira, D. C. (2015). Representing organizational structures in enterprise architecture: An ontology-based approach. Universidade Federal do Espírito Santo.  
Pereira, D. C., & Almeida, J. P. A. (2014). Representing organizational structures in an enterprise architecture language. Paper presented at the FOMI@ FOIS.
Poels, G., Garcia, F., Ruiz, F., & Piattini, M. (2018). Conceptualizing business process maps. arXiv e-prints. Retrieved from https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2018arXiv181205395P.
Porras, J. I., & Robertson, P. J. (1986). Organization development theory: A typology and evaluation: Graduate School of Business, Stanford University.
Rajabi, Z., & Abade, M. N. (2012). Data-centric enterprise architecture. International Journal of Information Engineering and Electronic Business, 4(4), 53.
Rajabi, Z., Minaei, B., & Seyyedi, M. A. (2013). Enterprise architecture development based on enterprise ontology. Journal of theoretical and applied electronic commerce research, 8(2), 85-95.
Rao, L., Mansingh, G., & Osei-Bryson, K.-M. (2012). Building ontology based knowledge maps to assist business process re-engineering. Decision Support Systems, 52(3), 577-589.
Robbins, S. P. (1990). Organization Theory: Structures, Designs, And Applications, 3/e: Pearson Education India.
Rosing, M. v. (2015). Overview of the Business Ontology Research & Analysis.
Saleem, A., & Ghani, U. (2013). Application of Weisbord’s organizational diagnosis model: a case of Pakistan banking industry. Business & Economic Review5(1), 1-11.
Santos Jr, P. S., Almeida, J. P. A., & Guizzardi, G. (2010). An ontology-based semantic foundation for ARIS EPCs. Paper presented at the Proceedings of the 2010 ACM Symposium on Applied Computing.
Santos Jr, P. S., Almeida, J. P. A., & Guizzardi, G. (2013). An ontology-based analysis and semantics for organizational structure modeling in the ARIS method. Information Systems, 38(5), 690-708.
Senge, P. M. (1990). The art and practice of the learning organization: New York: Doubleday.
Silva, C., & Belo, O. (2018). A core ontology for Brazilian higher education institutions. Paper presented at the CSEDU (2).
Sowa, J. F., & Zachman, J. A. (1992). Extending and formalizing the framework for information systems architecture. IBM systems journal, 31(3), 590-616.
Stacey, R. D., Griffin, D., & Shaw, P. (2000). Complexity and management: Fad or radical challenge to systems thinking? : Psychology Press.
Thakor, P., & Sasi, S. (2015). Ontology-based sentiment analysis process for social media content. Procedia Computer Science, 53, 199-207.
Tham, K. D., Fox, M. S., & Gruninger, M. (1994). A cost ontology for enterprise modelling. Paper presented at the Proceedings of 3rd IEEE Workshop on Enabling Technologies: Infrastructure for Collaborative Enterprises.
Uschold, M., King, M., Moralee, S., & Zorgios, Y. (1998). The enterprise ontology. The knowledge engineering review, 13(1), 31-89.
Villela, K., Santos, G., Schnaider, L., Rocha, A. R., & Travassos, G. H. (2005). The use of an enterprise ontology to support knowledge management in software development environments. Journal of the Brazilian Computer Society, 11(2), 45-59.
Waterman Jr, R. H., Peters, T. J., & Phillips, J. R. (1980). Structure is not organization. Business horizons, 23(3), 14-26.
Weisbord, M. R. (1976). Organizational diagnosis: Six places to look for trouble with or without a theory. Group & Organization Studies, 1(4), 430-447.
Weisman, R. (2011). An Overview of TOGAF®Version 9.1. Retrieved from????????
Wierda, G. (2017). Mastering ArchiMate Edition III: A serious introduction to the ArchiMate enterprise architecture modeling language: R&A.
Zachman, J. A. (1987). A framework for information systems architecture. IBM systems journal, 26(3), 276-292.
Zur Muehlen, M. (2009). Enterprise architecture based on design primitives and patterns-guide for the design and development of event-trace descriptions (DoDAF OV-6c) using BPMN. Business Transformation Agency of United States Department of Defense, Version, 1.