An Ontology for Formalizing and Automating the Strategic Planning Process

Abstract

From late 1980s and early twenty-first century, the environment where the organizations develop and act, has become increasingly uncertain and complex. Under these conditions, organizations have detected the need to move towards a more participatory model to address and reduce the complexity, based on information and knowledge as core assets to reduce environmental uncertainty and thereby ensure better decision-making. This new form of governance involves changes in the Strategic Planning process that are aligned with the characteristics of the new organizational model. Ontologies, as theories of content that allow the formalization of processes and knowledge, are a key element in this context. The aim of this paper is to formally define an ontology that could be defined in the future using the Web Ontology Language (OWL) that meets the standards approved by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) and that is used to formalize the process of SP, as well as the knowledge that is created and flows among the several participants in the process.