Information Architecture for Organizations: An Ontological Approach

Authors: Almeida, Pessanha & Barcelos
Publication: Ontologies in Information Science (InTech, 2017)

Core Framing

The paper asks: What kind of entity is a corporation? Using formal ontology (specifically BFO, Basic Formal Ontology) to answer this question reveals that organizations must be understood through two dimensions:

1. Descriptive dimension: The structure of units, subunits, and members
2. Normative dimension: The duties, obligations, and responsibilities that distinguish organizations from other aggregates

The key insight: Corporations differ from ant colonies because they have normative partitions (document acts that create and sustain social reality).

Key Theoretical Tools

• BFO (Basic Formal Ontology): Top-level ontology for categorizing entities
• Granular Partition Theory: Framework for understanding how cognition divides reality into units
• Document Acts Theory: Extension of speech act theory explaining how documents create social entities

Primary Contributions

1. Corporations are non-summative aggregates: they preserve identity despite member changes
2. Organizational units are fiat objects: they exist because of human demarcation, not natural boundaries
3. Documents don’t merely record social reality, they constitute it
4. Speech acts are ephemeral; document acts provide temporal extension for organizational commitments

Extracted Content

Atoms

• 06-atom—bona-fide-vs-fiat-objects
• 06-atom—document-acts-create-social-reality
• 06-atom—granular-partition-theory
• 06-atom—non-summative-aggregates
• 02-atom—descriptive-vs-normative-dimensions

Molecules

• 02-molecule—two-dimensional-organizational-analysis
• 06-molecule—document-acts-organizational-architecture

Relevance to heyMHK Domains

Knowledge Engineering: The bona fide/fiat distinction is fundamental for ontology design: knowing which entities exist independently vs. which exist by human convention.

Information Architecture: Granular Partition Theory provides a formal foundation for taxonomies and organizational structures.

Cross-domain: The document acts framework connects organizational design, knowledge management, and semantic web applications.