The Role of Ontologies for Designing Accounting Information Systems

The accounting ontologies were conceptualized as a framework for building accounting information systems in a shared data environment, within enterprises or between different enterprises. The model’s base feature was an object pattern consisting of two mirror-image that represented conceptual the input and output components of a business process. The REA acronym derives from that pattern’s structure, which consisted of economic resources, economic events, and economic agents. The REA model was proposed as a means for an organization to capture the signification of economic exchanges between two business partners. The REA ontology provides an alternative for modelling an enterprise’s economic resources, economic events, economic agents, and their relationships. Resources are considerate organization assets that are able to generate revenue for implicated parties. Events provide a source of detailed data in this approach. Agents participate in events and can affect some resources. They can be an individual or organization inside or outside the organization that is capable of controlling economic resources and interacting with other agents. The objective of this work is to offer an understandable of this framework and to explain how this model can help us via the identification of the afferent concepts.REA ontology, accounting information systems, business process, economic exchange

Resources-Events-Agents Design Theory: A Revolutionary Approach to Enterprise System Design

Enterprise systems typically include constructs such as ledgers and journals with debit and credit entries as central pillars of the systems’ architecture due in part to accountants and auditors who demand those constructs. At best, structuring systems with such constructs as base objects results in the storing the same data at multiple levels of aggregation, which creates inefficiencies in the database. At worst, basing systems on such constructs destroys details that are unnecessary for accounting but that may facilitate decision making by other enterprise functional areas. McCarthy (1982) proposed the resources-events-agents (REA) framework as an alternative structure for a shared data environment more than thirty years ago, and scholars have further developed it such that it is now a robust design theory. Despite this legacy, the broad IS community has not widely researched REA. In this paper, we discuss REA’s genesis and primary constructs, provide a history of REA research, discuss REA’s impact on practice, and speculate as to what the future may hold for REA-based enterprise systems. We invite IS researchers to consider integrating REA constructs with other theories and various emerging technologies to help advance the future of information systems and business research

Some Ontological Issues of the REA Framework in Relation to Enterprise Business Process

The aim of the paper is to describe using REA framework to model enterprise planning not only at the operational level but also at the policy level. Using policy level enlarges the possibility of the models on the base of the REA framework because the policy level in this way represents metalevel of the model. The policy level of the REA framework itself is comprised both of the entities related by typification, grouping and policy relationships and of the Commitment entity with the fulfillment relationship. This entity may be viewed as either a sublayer or a middle layer of the REA framework. The Commitment entity belongs to the fundamental entities of the policy level but has some specifications that are expressed by the fulfillment relationship. This many-to-many relationship forms the link to the operational level. In the paper we discuss the problem and suggest some solution that moves the Commitment entity closer to the typification and grouping semantic abstractions.REA ontology; enterprise business process; semantic abstractions

SOME ONTOLOGICAL ISSUES OF THE REA FRAMEWORK IN RELATION TO ENTERPRISE BUSINESS PROCESS

The aim of the paper is to describe using REA framework to model enterprise planning not only at the operational level but also at the policy level. Using policy level enlarges the possibility of the models on the base of the REA framework because the policy level in this way represents metalevel of the model. The policy level of the REA framework itself is comprised both of the entities related by typification, grouping and policy relationships and of the Commitment entity with the fulfilment relationship. This entity may be viewed as either a sub layer or a middle layer of the REA framework. The Commitment entity belongs to the fundamental entities of the policy level but has some specifications that are expressed by the fulfilment relationship. This many-to-many relationship forms the link to the operational level. In the paper we discuss the problem and suggest some solution that moves the Commitment entity closer to the typification and grouping semantic abstractions.REA ontology, enterprise business process, semantic abstractions

Enterprise planning model using REA ontology

The aim of the paper is to describe using REA framework to model enterprise planning not only at the operational level but also at the policy level. Using policy level enlarges the possibility of the models on the base of the REA framework because the policy level in this way represents metalevel of the model. The policy level of the REA framework itself is comprised of both the typification and grouping semantic abstractions and the Commitment entity. This entity may be viewed as either a sublayer or a middle layer of the REA framework. The Commitment entity belongs to the fundamental entities of the policy level but has some specifications that are expressed by the fulfillment relationship. This many-to-many relationship forms the link to the operational level. The paper thinks over the problem and suggests some solution that gets the Commitment entity closer to the typification semantic abstraction.REA framework; policy level; production planning model; typification; grouping; cardinality

A conceptual model of service exchange in service-dominant logic

The service system is the basic abstraction of Service Science. This paper proposes the Resource-Service-System model as a conceptual model of service systems interacting in service exchanges, assuming a service-dominant logic economic worldview. The paper explains how the model was developed starting from the Resource-Event-Agent business model ontology, taking into account insights gained from studying Service Science literature and existing service ontologies. The paper also explains how different model views can contribute to study various aspects of service systems and exchanges