Ontology-driven conceptual modeling (ODCM) utilizes foundational ontology (UFO) to improve the theory and practice of conceptual modeling and building ontologies. ODCM is supported by the language OntoUML. Although OntoUML is widely adopted nowadays and has grown into a de facto standard, its use is not without problems, such as the philosophical terminology of UFO that is hard to grasp for non-experts as well as the size and complexity of the models in complex institutional settings. We argue that OntoUML can become more manageable by separation of concerns. On the basis of an analysis of the aims of ontology-driven conceptual modeling we suggest a distinction between conceptual modeling on the one hand and ontological analysis on the other. We propose a conceptual model view for the first part and three ontological views, focusing on three different ontological dependencies, for the second.

Numerical identity is the relation that an individual thing bears to itself and only itself, which is not dependent on any other object. However, in the discourse of identity management, identity is often something else: an identifier that an organization has assigned to some entity, here called social identity. These two notions of identity are closely related, as social identities are designed to mirror numerical identities from an organisational point of view. But this mirroring can easily break down or be misaligned. This paper offers an ontological analysis of the relationships between numerical and social identity, with a focus on identifying different forms of their misalignments and potential causes for these. For the analysis we rely on the Unified Foundational Ontology (UFO), and for the conceptual modelling we use OntoUML. The result of the ontological analysis takes the form of a conceptual model. We envisage that this model can not only clarify theoretical concepts related to identity, but also have practical applications in addressing issues of rights and agency in digital identity management.

There has in recent times been an increased interest in the ontology of trust and money, and how to model those [1, 2, 11]. Still, we believe that there are a few puzzling existence and identity aspects of money that seem hard to reconcile. Money, it is said, is debt [8]. But how then can it be that one can burn a bank note and lose its worth forever? Do we burn the debt by setting fire to the note? Do we really lose money in the fire? Or can it be recreated somehow? The purpose of this discussion paper is to highlight some properties of money and ask ourselves what consequences those properties have for conceptual modelling. Amaral et al [2] identify three commonly used criteria that anything called money must fulfil. Money is:

From a design science perspective, information systems and their components are viewed as artefacts. Building on our ontology of artefacts (in progress), we want to address the question: what are the major kinds of artefacts in the IS field and how are they ontologically related? In this short paper we want to raise two questions: (1) how can an artefact ontology support business ontology? (2) how can an artefact ontology analyze the concepts of algorithm and some other objects in the IT domain?

Enterprise modelling aims at representing and describing organisations through the use of models. As organisations can be viewed from many perspectives, there now exists a plethora of different kin ...

There exist several forms of the value of notion in the literature, including use value, economic value, exchange value, and market value. In this paper, we discuss how exchange value is related to use value by proposing a definition that defines exchange value in terms of compensations of use values.

The notion of value has been thoroughly investigated in philosophy, economics, sociology and other social sciences. However, the notion of value remains highly ill-defined and elusive, as it is subjective as well as context dependent. This paper proposes an ontology for conceptualizing the notion of value ascription that is founded on an analysis of context notions, showing how value of objects can be explained in terms of value of states of affairs.

The concept of cocreation of value has been widely accepted in the management literature and service science. Value modeling approaches such as e3value focus on the exchange of value rather than cocreation. In this paper, a new value modeling approach is proposed that builds on e3value but highlights the notion of a “value encounter.” Value encounters are defined as interaction spaces where a group of actors meet and derive value by each one bringing in some of its own resources. The paper provides a formal value encounter ontology. It is shown that this ontology captures the concept of value cocreation and offers a useful instrument for open innovation projects. A case study is provided in which the approach has been applied in the development of a “green” hospital.

The analysis of value, value ascription mechanisms, and their motivating and influencing factors is useful for decision making processes of both customers and providers. In particular, enterprise modeling can greatly benefit from a proper understanding of value-related notions. Nonetheless, existing value models mainly focus on the value exchange between subjects, disregarding the understanding of "what" value is and of "why" something is valuable. In order to exploit the benefits of value analysis, a precise and rigorous conceptualization, based on foundational ontologies, is needed. To this aim, we present and discuss here a preliminary core ontology of value ascription and we discuss the main issues.

Current auditing procedures struggle with the incorporation of new data-driven techniques such as Process Mining. Although Process Mining has been applied experimentally on micro-level workflow pro ...

In this paper, we adopt a Petri Net specification of REA for ontology-based process analysis. The focus is on the representation of the responsibility relationship. The Petri Net specification makes it possible to express more than the traditional static specification.

Collective Awareness Platforms (CAP) have been promoted as an enabler of social innovation. A CAP supports the collection of data (quantitative and qualitative, and using all the technical possibil ...

The term service is today defined and used in a multitude of ways, which are often ambiguous and contradictory. The absence of a commonly agreed-upon definition of the term makes it difficult to distinguish, describe and classify services. In order to address these issues, this chapter proposes a model of services that helps in analysing the concept. The model encompasses three perspectives: service as a means for cocreation of value, service as a means for abstraction and service as a means for distributing rights. The model does not suggest a definition of the term service but shows how the service concept can be analysed using a number of related concepts, like service resource, service process and service offering. The model has its theoretical foundation in the Resource-Event-Agent (REA) ontology and Hohfeld's classification of rights.

The paper describes a project in the domain of business process modeling that concerns loosely-structured business processes, i.e. processes for which it is difficult to establish an order of activities.The process in focus is the lobbying process, i.e. a process aimed at influencing decisions of others, e.g.politicians.The project was carried out at a non-profit interest organization, and the paper describes the project's motivation, structure, methodology, results, and how the results were exploited, including a short description of an IT system built to support the lobbying process.As the commonly spread workflow technique is not particularly suitable for loosely-structured business processes, the project exploited an original state-flow technique for developing a model of the lobbying process.The state-flow technique is based on the state-oriented view on business processes that has been used as a foundation for building the support system.The paper reports a number of problems encountered during the introduction of the system into operational practice.These problems led to the needs of reducing the level of details initially introduced into the system; they will be reintroduced at the later stage when the users become more accustomed to work in the process-oriented manner.In the conclusion, the paper discusses success factors important for modeling projects, and pros and cons of the modeling method used, as well as a broader research context of which the work presented in the paper is a part.

Compliance has become a strategic concern for many companies and organizations. To prove actual compliance, the organization must disclose itself (be auditable). A plethora of advanced tools has been developed to support compliance management and auditing processes. However, not all organizations are the same. To apply these tools effectively and efficiently, the organization itself and the maturity of its management control should be considered as well. The goal of this exploratory paper is to define auditability on a general conceptual level. We introduce four levels of auditability, where each level adds to the self-knowledge and being-in-control of the organization.

Currently there exists a multitude of views of service creating problems for designers and users of models with respect to reasoning, description and classification of services. The diversity of conflicting views and definitions suggest that a multi-perspective approach is required to explicate the notion of service. The purpose of this paper is to introduce an integrated view of the service notion based on a literature survey. Our approach is to start with an analysis of service-as-a-resource and argue that this view will benefit from being complemented with a service-as-a-process view. These views are then integrated and represented in a conceptual model.

In the future vision of an Internet of Services, users take an active role in service selection and composition. In this context, web services are mostly interfaces to real services and can be classified as coordination services with respect to the latter. To enable users to perform service composition, the effect of the coordination services must be described in such a way that users are not only able to discover services but also to detect and prevent possible conflicts in their composition. To meet these requirements, a service description language for coordination services is proposed based on the REA business ontology.