Class Organisational-Unit

• Defined in ontology: Enterprise-v0.1

Notes for Organisational-Unit:

• 1. The term OU is deliberately defined with no constraint on its size or place within an organisation. Furthermore, no special terms for OUs of any particular size are defined (e.g. division, department). This is because no consistent use of such terms can be found across different enterprises, or even within a single enterprise over time. Therefore the existence of a very small and simple unit, even corresponding with a single person, or a very large and complex structure (e.g. a multi-national Corporation) can equally be represented as an OU. The structure of an OU is represented by the set of as many other OUs and Manages Relationships (see below) as required.
• 2. The Manages relationship leads to the concept of higher-level and lower-level OUs depending on which Manage and which are Managed-By.
• 3. The terms `enterprise' and `organisation' are not defined in the Enterprise-Ontology, but a user of the Ontology may wish to define one or other of them as a high-level OU, perhaps corresponding with highest OU in the scope of interest.
• 4. An individual Person may correspond to, or belong to, more than one OU, one for each different role or function.
• 5. An essential Purpose of most OUs is to maximise performance against financial and other organisational Objectives.

Slots on class Organisational-Unit:

Arity: 1

Documentation:

An Entity with a defined identity for Managing the performance of Activities to Achieve one or more Purposes. An OU may be characterised by: * the nature of its Purpose(s); * one or more Person(s) working for the OU; * Resource(s) allocated to the OU; * other OUs that Manage or are Managed-By the OU; * its Assets; * its Stakeholders; * being Legally Owned; * its Market (if it is a Vendor).

Domain-Of: Manages

Instance-Of: Class, Relation, Set

Range-Of: Holds-Stake-In, Manages, Works-For-Ou

Subclass-Of: Potential-Actor, Eo-Entity, Individual, Individual-Thing, Thing ...

---

Slots on instances of Organisational-Unit:

Other Related Implication Axioms for Organisational-Unit:

(=> (Holds-Stake-In ?Stakeholder ?Organisational-Unit)
    (And (Or (Legal-Entity ?Stakeholder)
             (Organisational-Unit ?Stakeholder))
         (Exists (?Purpose)
                 (And (Purpose ?Purpose)
                      (Hold-Purpose ?Organisational-Unit ?Purpose)
                      (In-Scope-Of-Interest ?Stakeholder ?Purpose)))))

Other Related Equivalence Axioms for Organisational-Unit:

(<=> (Stakeholder ?Stakeholder)
     (And (Actor ?Stakeholder)
          (Or (Legal-Entity ?Stakeholder)
              (Organisational-Unit ?Stakeholder))
          (Exists (?Organisational-Unit)
                  (And (Organisational-Unit ?Organisational-Unit)
                       (Holds-Stake-In ?Stakeholder
                                       ?Organisational-Unit)))))