6 research outputs found
Towards a Conceptualization of Sociomaterial Entanglement
In knowledge representation, socio-technical systems can be modeled
as multiagent systems in which the local knowledge of each individual agent can
be seen as a context. In this paper we propose formal ontologies as a means to
describe the assumptions driving the construction of contexts as local theories and
to enable interoperability among them. In particular, we present two alternative
conceptualizations of the notion of sociomateriality (and entanglement), which
is central in the recent debates on socio-technical systems in the social sciences,
namely critical and agential realism.
We thus start by providing a model of entanglement according to the critical realist
view, representing it as a property of objects that are essentially dependent on
different modules of an already given ontology. We refine then our treatment by
proposing a taxonomy of sociomaterial entanglements that distinguishes between
ontological and epistemological entanglement. In the final section, we discuss the
second perspective, which is more challenging form the point of view of knowledge
representation, and we show that the very distinction of information into
modules can be at least in principle built out of the assumption of an entangled
reality
Organisations and Variable Embodiments
How can organisations survive not only the substitution of members, but
also other dramatic changes, like that of the norms regulating their activities, the
goals they plan to achieve, or the system of roles that compose them? This paper
is as first step towards a well-founded ontological analysis of the persistence of
organisations through changes. Our analysis leverages Kit Fineâs notions of rigid
and variable embodiment and proposes to view the (history of the) decisions made
by the members of the organisation as the criterion to re-identify the organisation
through change
The Ontology of Group Agency
We present an ontological analysis of the notion of group agency developed
by Christian List and Philip Pettit. We focus on this notion as it allows us to
neatly distinguish groups, organizations, corporations â to which we may ascribe
agency â from mere aggregates of individuals. We develop a module for group
agency within a foundational ontology and we apply it to organizations