RE: SUO: Organizations/Positions
Hi Pat,
Thanks for your comments. Sorry it's taken so long for me to get
back to you - I was on vacation last week.
-Ian
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Patrick Cassidy [mailto:pcassidy@bellatlantic.net]
> Sent: Saturday, September 01, 2001 7:01 AM
> To: Ian Niles
> Cc: Standard-Upper-Ontology (E-mail)
> Subject: 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")?
Right, according to the definitions given, an 'Organization' can be a
'subOrganizations' of another 'Organization', but an 'Organization' cannot
occupy a position. Thus, we can, I think, model the appropriate relation
between an 'Organization' and its divisions. As for subcontractors, we
might just need to create a special predicate for this relation.
>
> (2) The comment for OrganizationUnit would be
> clearer if it spcifically stated that an
> OrganizationUnit coul dhave zero or one members,
> unlike Organization.
OK, thanks. I've added this to the documentation string.
>
>
> (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?
Well, the 'employs' predicate covers both the case of full-time employment
and contractual employment. We could, however, create two predicates
'employsPermanently' and 'employsTemporarily' (perhaps these aren't the best
names, but you get the idea) that are subrelations of 'employs'.
>
> (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.
I agree. Thanks for catching this. I'll make the changes to the
documentation strings.
>
> Pat Cassidy
>
> =============================================
>
>
> 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
> =============================================
>