SUO: RE: Organizations/Positions
Hi Matthew,
See my comment below.
> -----Original Message-----
> From: West, Matthew R SITI-GREA-UK
> [mailto:Matthew.R.West@IS.shell.com]
> Sent: Monday, September 03, 2001 1:40 AM
> To: Ian Niles; Standard-Upper-Ontology (E-mail)
> Subject: RE: Organizations/Positions
>
>
> Dear Ian,
>
> > (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.
>
> MW: I disagree. More than one person can occupy a position:
> 1. Over time (more than one person has been the President of the
> United States)
> 2. At the same time (it is common for there to be a handover between
> incumbants when both occupy the position for some period of time).
This was something that Doug McDavid pointed out too, and I agree. I'll get
rid of the axiom.
>
>
> Matthew West
> Principal Consultant
> Shell Information Technology International Limited
> Shell Centre, London SE1 7NA, United Kingdom
>
> Tel: +44 20 7934 4490 Other Tel: +44 7796 336538
> Email: matthew.r.west@is.shell.com
> Internet: http://www.shell.com
>
>
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Ian Niles [mailto:iniles@teknowledge.com]
> > Sent: 31 August 2001 23:52
> > To: Standard-Upper-Ontology (E-mail)
> > Subject: SUO: Organizations/Positions
> >
> >
> >
> > 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.")
> >
>
>