A core ontology of organizational policies

Organizational decisions are usually constrained by policies and rules, sometimes up to the point of completely automated decision making. Policies exist on multiple levels within the organization and require organizational power to be created. They are typically expressed in a policy document that has multiple practical functions. Drawing on and extending the UFO-L core ontology of legal relations, we offer a critical analysis of the relationship between policy and policy document and examine the consequences of the dual nature of policies. We develop a core ontology of organizational policies in the form of four ontological patterns that we claim to be essential for organizations as social and economic phenomena: one for organizational coordination, one for policy documents, one for delegation, and one for community ruling. For validation, the patterns are applied to an example from the university domain and evaluated by means of a critical confrontation with the SBVR business rule standard.