Preliminaries to a DOLCE ontology of organisations

Abstract

This paper presents a preliminary proposal of an ontology of organisations based on descriptive ontology for linguistic and cognitive engineering (DOLCE). An ontological analysis of organisations is the first, fundamental and ineliminable pillar on which to build a precise and rigorous enterprise modelling. An ontological analysis makes explicit the social structure that underlies every organisational settings. In particular, the paper tries to explain what are organisations, roles and norms, how they are interrelated, what it means for a norm to be valid in an organisation and what it means for an agent to be affiliated to an organisation.