Towards an Ontology of Task Dependence in Organizations

Mena Rizk, Mark Fox, Daniela Rosu

2023

Abstract

In the face of an increasingly dynamic, complex, and uncertain task environment, effective coordination is crucial for organizational success. Based on a real-world case study investigating the nature of coordination challenges in a municipal infrastructure project, we identified shortcomings in the representational frameworks offered by organization studies and enterprise modelling that limit their ability to effectively model task dependence and assist in improving coordination. Starting from existing organizational research literature and domain expertise, we conducted an ontological analysis of task-related concepts, formulated representational requirements, and proposed a formalization. Our approach defines task dependence in terms of the constraints one task imposes on another, underpinned by novel constructs that define how and why a task is constrained. These constructs support the inference of dependencies between tasks, facilitating the discovery of potentially hidden, latent dependencies. We formalized our conceptualization in an ontology, detailed herein using first-order logic. Consistency-verified implementations in Prover9 and OWL are provided. We validated our approach by modelling and solving real-life scenarios provided by our domain-expert collaborators. Our approach lays the groundwork for future extensions that will tackle the modelling of different forms of dependence between agents within an organization.

Paper Citation

in Harvard Style

Rizk M., Fox M. and Rosu D. (2023). Towards an Ontology of Task Dependence in Organizations. In Proceedings of the 15th International Joint Conference on Knowledge Discovery, Knowledge Engineering and Knowledge Management - Volume 2: KEOD; ISBN 978-989-758-671-2, SciTePress, pages 96-107. DOI: 10.5220/0012238300003598

in Bibtex Style

@conference{keod23,
author={Mena Rizk and Mark Fox and Daniela Rosu},
title={Towards an Ontology of Task Dependence in Organizations},
booktitle={Proceedings of the 15th International Joint Conference on Knowledge Discovery, Knowledge Engineering and Knowledge Management - Volume 2: KEOD},
year={2023},
pages={96-107},
publisher={SciTePress},
organization={INSTICC},
doi={10.5220/0012238300003598},
isbn={978-989-758-671-2},
}

in EndNote Style

TY - CONF

JO - Proceedings of the 15th International Joint Conference on Knowledge Discovery, Knowledge Engineering and Knowledge Management - Volume 2: KEOD
TI - Towards an Ontology of Task Dependence in Organizations
SN - 978-989-758-671-2
AU - Rizk M.
AU - Fox M.
AU - Rosu D.
PY - 2023
SP - 96
EP - 107
DO - 10.5220/0012238300003598
PB - SciTePress