Relationships and events: towards a general theory of reification and truthmaking.

We propose a novel ontological analysis of relations and relationships based on a re-visitation of a classic problem in the practice of knowledge repre- sentation and conceptual modeling, namely relationship reification. Our idea is that a relation holds in virtue of a relationship's existence. Relationships are therefore truthmakers of relations. In this paper we present a general theory or reification and truthmaking, and discuss the interplay between events and rela- tionships, suggesting that relationships are the focus of events, which emerge from the context (the scene) they occur in

Incorporating Trust into Context-Aware Services

Enabling technologies concerning hardware, networking, and sensing have inspired the development of context-aware IT services. These adapt to the situation of the user, such that service provisioning is specific to his/her corresponding needs. We have seen successful applications of context-aware services in healthcare, well-being, and smart homes. It is, however, always a question what level of trust the users can place in the fulfillment of their needs by a certain IT-service. Trust has two major variants: policy-based, where a reputed institution provides guarantees about the service, and reputation-based, where other users of the service provide insight into the level of fulfillment of user needs. Services that are accessible to a small and known set of users typically use policy-based trust only. Services that have a wide community of users can use reputation-based trust, policy-based trust, or a combination. For both types of trust, however, context awareness poses a problem. Policy-based trust works within certain boundaries, outside of which no guarantees can be given about satisfying the user needs, and context awareness can push a service out of these boundaries. For reputation-based trust, the fact that users in a certain context were adequately served, does not mean that the same would happen when the service adapts to another user’s needs. In this paper we consider the incorporation of trust into context-aware services, by proposing an ontological conceptualization for user-system trust. Analyzing service usage data for context parameters combined with the ability to fulfill user needs can help in eliciting components for the ontology.</p

Domain ontology for digital marketplaces

Recently the sharing economy has emerged as a viable alternative to fulfilling a variety of consumer needs. As there is no consensus on the definition of ‘sharing economy’ we use the term ‘marketplace’ to refer more specifically to Internet/software-based sharing economy platforms connecting two different market segments. In the field of sharing economy and marketplaces we found a research gap concerning the (socio)technological aspects and the development of marketplaces. A marketplace ontology can help to have a clear account of marketplace concepts which will facilitate communication, consensus and alignment. In this paper we design this marketplace ontology in four steps. First the selection of UFO as foundation and UFO-S as core ontology. Second the search for a set of minimal conditions and properties common for marketplaces and the derivation into competency questions. Third, use the competency questions to identify fragmented sub-ontology pieces called Domain-Related Ontology Patterns (DROPs) and apply them informally by extending UFO-S concepts to design a marketplace domain ontology. This marketplace domain ontology is represented in OntoUML. The last step is the validation of the OntoUML model using expert knowledge

Describing Digital IT Consulting Services:The DITCOS Ontology Proposal and its Evaluation

The digital transformation of the consulting sector has recently gained momentum due to the Covid-19 pandemic. In particular, the areas of financial and insurance services are receiving strong attention from digitization researchers. However, the field of IT consulting itself evaded the attention of scientists. Moreover, despite the heavy use of digital technologies such as on-line conferencing and digital collaboration, the actual consulting process itself has hardly changed. This indicates the weaknesses of IT consulting as a field in establishing true digital business models and consulting service delivery processes. The present paper makes a twofold contribution to the domain of digitization of the IT consulting domain. First, it introduces the DITCOS-O ontology for semantic description of digital IT consulting services. Second, the DITCOS-DN description notation is derived from DITCOS-O, as a new approach to ontology-based definition of domain specific languages. Then, DITCOS-DN is used to describe different real-world services. The result is the analysis of the coverage of real-world service and the comprehensibility of their digitally described service model representations with the help of IT consulting practitioners.</p

Modeling the dynamics of contractual relations

Contracts usually have clauses that enable contracted parties to adjust their contractual positions in time, e.g., to relieve another party from duty or to grant new permission. This is especially important in long-running service relations, which require contracts to be adjusted to accommodate new or unforeseen circumstances. Despite that, the representation of dynamic aspects of contractual relations has not been given enough attention in the literature. In this study, we address this gap by employing the notions of legal power and legal subjection. We propose an ontological analysis of unilateral contractual changes based on a well-founded legal core ontology that adopts a relational perspective for legal positions. We present a case study to show the benefits of representing different types of contractual changes and how these changes can impact contractual dynamics. The case study is based on recent changes to WhatsApp terms of service.</p

The Design of a Core Value Ontology Using Ontology Patterns

The creation of value is an important concern in organizations. However, current Enterprise Modeling languages all interprete value differently, which has a negative impact on the semantic quality of the model instantiations. This issue need to be solved to increase the relevance of these instantiations for business stakeholders. Therefore, the goal of this paper is the development of a sound Core Value Ontology. In order to do that, we employ a pattern-based ontology engineering approach, which employs the Unified Foundational Ontology

Conceptualizing resources and claims in consensual economic exchanges

The Core Ontology for Financial Reporting Information Systems (COFRIS) is grounded on Unified Foundational Ontology (UFO). In this paper, we build on COFRIS and attempt to detail the concepts of Economic Resources and Claims found in accounting frameworks, and to extract their features which are common to accounting and reporting standards. Economic Resources (Claims) are conceptualized as extensions of Complex Social and Legal Relators of UFO, within the consensual transaction-centric model. The application of this conceptualization and COFRIS in general aims to assist with standard-setting and the development of information systems, to facilitate understandability and reuse. The conceptualization is illustrated by examples presented in an ontology-inspired Event Table and is used to analyze the revised IASB® Conceptual Framework for Financial Reporting

Comparing digital platform types in the platform economy

In the domain of the platform economy we identified two gaps in the current literature. First the lack of a shared conceptualization of digital platform types. We solve this issue with a taxonomy giving an overview of digital platform attributes, with attribute values expressing the possible variations between platforms depending on their type. These attributes and attribute values are then used in the typology giving a clear overview of all the digital platform types and how they are related to each other. The second gap is the lack of knowledge concerning the software functionalities of digital platforms. We contribute to this with a proposal of a reference ontology allowing for a better communication between developers and other stakeholders. Our envisioned ontology can be used as a common language that all platform stakeholders can understand to facilitate future research and support ontology-driven development of digital platforms