Re: SUO: Organizations/Positions
Ian --
Several questions about these definitions:
(1) it appears that an organization cannot occupy a
"position". This seems to leave out subcontractors
and groups within the company. Would there be
another class such as "OrganizationRole" that
could be filled by a group (or "OrganizationUnit")?
(2) The comment for OrganizationUnit would be
clearer if it spcifically stated that an
OrganizationUnit coul dhave zero or one members,
unlike Organization.
(3) The "employs" relation relates a companny to an
individual person. Is there another relation that
relates a company to contractor, which may be
another company?
(4) the documentation of &%Organization says:
> The continued existence of an &%Organization is not dependent on any of
> its members, its location, or its particular facility.
This seems to be more appropriate for &%OrganizationUnit,
since an &%Organization must have at least two members
as a sublcass of Collection.
Pat Cassidy
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Ian Niles wrote:
>
> Hi All,
>
> I've been trying to formalize part of the exchange that we've had
> recently on the concepts of organization, postion within an organization,
> etc. The formal definitions for the new concepts and revised SUMO concepts
> is presented at the end of this message, but these definitions give
> essentially the following structure, which I think both Martin King and
> Chris Partridge accept:
>
> CognitiveAgent
> |
> |
> OrganizationUnit
> / \
> / \
> / \
> Organization Position
>
> Together with this structure is a set of predicates (also formally defined
> at the end of this message): 'occupiesPosition' (relates a person to the
> position they occupy within an organization), 'subOrganizations' (relates
> one organization to another of which it is a part), and 'employs' (relates a
> person to the organization of which he/she is a member).
>
> As you might recall, I tried in a previous email to extract various
> criteria for organizations from some of the traffic on this subject. These
> criteria are as follows:
>
> 1. An organization has agency, e.g. it exhibits intentionality, and
> it has rights, responsibilities, and obligations.
>
> 2. An organization may have members, but it is not required to have
> members. There are many examples of organizations, e.g. corporations and
> churches, that have assets, are liable for certain claims etc, even though
> they have no members.
>
> 3. An organization has temporal extent. It comes into being at a
> certain point in time, and it goes out of existence at another
> point.
>
> 4. An organization can have various sorts of members. Owners are
> members of organizations, and employees, directors, and other
> stakeholders may also be members of organizations (although perhaps in
> different senses). An organization may also have other organizations as
> members.
>
> I think that the structure and predicates presented informally above and
> formally below make significant headway in satisfying all of these criteria.
> Let's consider them in turn. As for 1 and 3, these are satisfied for the
> same reason that they were before. In the SUMO, 'Organization' is a
> subclass of 'Agent' (more specifically, 'CognitiveAgent' in the new
> proposal) and 'Agent' is a subclass of 'Object', so organizations are agents
> and they have a position in space-time.
>
> As for criteria 2 and 4, these were not completely satisfied by my earlier
> proposed function 'GroupAgentFn', but I think the concepts outlined above do
> satisfy them. Consider criterion 2. The sticking point here is the
> stipulation that organizations are not required to have members. In the
> structure above, we distinguish two senses of organization, viz.
> 'OrganizationUnit' and 'Organization'. The latter is required to have
> members (in fact, more than one member), because it is a subclass of
> 'Collection' (the details about this are presented in the formal section
> below). However, 'OrganizationUnit' is not a subclass of 'Collection',
> because it is meant to cover both organizations and positions, so there is
> no requirement that an 'OrganizationUnit' have any members. Accordingly, we
> now have a notion of organization that covers "empty" organizations. As for
> the fourth criterion, the new predicate 'occupiesPosition' allows us
> distinguish, via 'Position', all of the various member types of an
> organization. Another advantage of this predicate is that we can account
> for the important fact that the person who occupies a position may have
> different rights, responsibilities, etc. from the position itself. This is
> because, on the current proposal, the agent who fills the first slot of
> 'occupiesPosition' is potentially a different agent from the agent who fills
> the second slot of this predicate. In some cases, the two agents would be
> the same, but establishing this would require axioms specific to the
> position in question.
>
> =======================
> Formal SUMO Definitions
> =======================
>
> (subclass OrganizationUnit CognitiveAgent)
> (documentation OrganizationUnit "An &%Organization or a functional unit
> within an &%Organization, e.g. positions, divisions, and departments. For
> example, the Shell Corporation, the accounting department at Shell, the
> positions of CEO and mail room supervisor at Shell, etc. would all be
> instances of &%OrganizationUnit.")
>
> (subclass Organization OrganizationUnit)
> (subclass Organization GroupOfPeople)
> (documentation Organization "An &%Organization is a corporate or
> similar institution, distinguished from other &%Agents. The &%members
> of an &%Organization typically have a common purpose or function.
> The continued existence of an &%Organization is not dependent on any of
> its members, its location, or its particular facility. Note that parts
> of &%Organizations should not be included here, unless they are
> &%subOrganizations of an &%Organization.")
>
> (subclass Position OrganizationUnit)
> (relatedInternalConcept Position occupies)
> (documentation Position "A formal position of reponsibility within an
> &%Organization. Examples of &%Positions include president, laboratory
> director, senior researcher, sales representative, etc.")
>
> (instance occupiesPosition TernaryPredicate)
> (domain occupiesPosition 1 Human)
> (domain occupiesPosition 2 Position)
> (domain occupiesPosition 3 Organization)
> (documentation occupiesPosition "(&%occupiesPosition ?PERSON ?POSITION ?ORG)
> means that ?PERSON holds the &%Position ?POSITION at &%Organization ?ORG.
> For example, (&%occupiesPosition &%TomSmith &%ResearchDirector
> &%AcmeLaboratory) means that &%TomSmith is a research director at Acme
> Labs.")
>
> (=>
> (and
> (occupiesPosition ?PERSON1 ?POSITION ?ORG)
> (occupiesPosition ?PERSON2 ?POSITION ?ORG))
> (equal ?PERSON1 ?PERSON2))
>
> ;; The axiom above stipulates that no more than one person can occupy a
> given
> ;; position. Note that it follows from axioms already in the SUMO that an
> ;; Organization consists of more than one person, because 'Organization' is
> a
> ;; subclass of 'GroupOfPeople', which is a subclass of 'Group', which is a
> ;; subclass of 'Collection', and we have the following axiom:
>
> (=>
> (instance ?COLL Collection)
> (exists (?OBJ1 ?OBJ2)
> (and
> (member ?OBJ1 ?COLL)
> (member ?OBJ2 ?COLL)
> (not
> (equal ?OBJ1 ?OBJ2)))))
>
> (=>
> (occupiesPosition ?PERSON ?POSITION ?ORG)
> (employs ?ORG ?PERSON))
>
> (subrelation employs member)
> (domain employs 1 Organization)
> (domain employs 2 Human)
> (documentation employs "(&%employs ?ORG ?PERSON) means that ?ORG has
> hired ?PERSON and currently retains ?PERSON, on a salaried or
> contractual basis, to provide services in exchange for monetary
> compensation.")
>
> (subrelation subOrganizations subCollection)
> (domain subOrganizations 1 Organization)
> (domain subOrganizations 2 Organization)
> (documentation subOrganizations "(&%subOrganizations ?ORG1 ?ORG2) means
> that ?ORG1 is an &%Organization which is a proper part of the
> &%Organization ?ORG2.")
--
=============================================
Patrick Cassidy
MICRA, Inc. || (908) 561-3416
735 Belvidere Ave. || (908) 668-5252 (if no answer)
Plainfield, NJ 07062-2054 || (908) 668-5904 (fax)
internet: cassidy@micra.com
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