Class Purpose

• Defined in ontology: Enterprise-v0.1

Notes for Purpose:

• Purpose may be effectively decomposed into more detailed Purposes via the Help-Achieve Relationship.
• A Responsibility may be viewed as a special kind of Purpose. Being responsible for implies the Purpose is Delegated by another Actor. This contrasts with the more general case where an Actor wants or intends a Purpose of their own volition as in the Hold-Purpose Relationship.
• A Purpose is characterised by one or more of the following: 1. Measurability: extent to which it is possible to objectively determine whether Achievement has occurred. 2. Time Horizon: e.g. short, medium, or long term 3. Specificity: how detailed the Purpose is; related to measurability in that very detailed Purposes will tend to be measurable. 4. Relative Priority: degree of desirability with respect to some Actor
• We introduce four different kinds or levels of Purpose: Vision Mission, Goal and Objective. We define Objective, but not the other three because they are used in many different ways. It is up to the Ontology user to specify what these may mean in a given situation.
• Vision, Mission, and Goal may or may not be Objectives
• Some ways that these terms may be specialised are: 1. Insofar as the Help-Achieve Relationship orders Purposes, the order will tend to be (from lowest-level): Objective, Goal, Mission, Vision. 2. With respect to measurability, the order will tend to be (from most measurable): Objective, Goal, Mission, Vision. 3. With respect to to time horizon, the the order will tend to be (from shortest time horizon): Objective, Goal, Mission, Vision.
  
• This is a special Role-Class.
• We could have defined this class as the superclass of two sub-classes corresponding to the Intended-Purpose and Hold-Purpose relationships; however, this was not deemed useful or necessary at this point.

Slots on class Purpose:

Arity: 1

Documentation:

a State-Of-Affairs that is either 1) the Intended-Purpose of some Plan, or 2) in a Hold-Purpose relationship with some Actor

Instance-Of: Class, Relation, Set

Subclass-Of: Qua-Entity, State-Of-Affairs, Eo-Entity, Individual-Thing, Thing ...

Superclass-Of: Critical-Success-Factor, Goal, Mission, Strategic-Purpose, Vision ...

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Slots on instances of Purpose:

Implication Axioms for Purpose:

(=> (Purpose ?Purpose)
    (Or (Exists (?Plan) (Intended-Purpose ?Plan ?Purpose))
        (Exists (?Actor) (Hold-Purpose ?Actor ?Purpose))))

Equivalence Axioms for Purpose:

(<=> (Purpose ?Purpose)
     (And (State-Of-Affairs ?Purpose)
          (Qua-Entity ?Purpose)
          (Or (Exists (?Plan) (Intended-Purpose ?Plan ?Purpose))
              (Exists (?Actor) (Hold-Purpose ?Actor ?Purpose)))))

Other Related Implication Axioms for Purpose:

(=> (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)))))