Sharing and Checking Organisation Knowledge

Abstract

The approach of Multi-Perspective Enterprise Modelling is now more commonly accepted and used in practice as a way to manage organisational knowledge than ever before. However, the concept of applying multiple modelling languages to describe the same domain may still sound frightening to many. In addition to the cost, time and complexity involved, problems such as knowledge sharing between multiple models and achieving and maintaining integrity between them are also important. We argue that Multi-Perspective Enterprise Modelling is helpful and in some situations necessary. This paper gives examples of how formal methods, such as logical languages, can provide assistance in making such an approach more appealing and transparent. We suggest that the MPM approach is valuable in representing, understanding and analysing a complex domain, such organisational knowledge, but that much automated support is needed.¹

This paper reports a part of work carried out under AOEM project. The AOEM project is sponsored by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency darpa under the contract number N66001-99-D-8608. The u.s. Government and the University of Edinburgh are authorised to reproduce and distribute reprints for their purposes not with standing any copyright annotation hereon. The views and conclusions contained herein are those of the authors and should not be interpreted as necessarily representing official policies or endorsements, either express or implied, of darpa, the u.s. government or the University of Edinburgh.