Using Ontologies and Soft Systems Methodology to Provide
Multi-user Support in Problem Structuring
Cedric Gaspoz Yair Wand
Sauder School of Business Sauder School of Business
The University of British Columbia The University of British Columbia
cedric.gaspoz@sauder.ubc.ca yair.wand@sauder.ubc.ca
Abstract
Decision support systems (DSS) are aimed at
helping decision makers in devising appropriate
solutions to business problems while negotiation
support systems (NSS) are aimed at assisting
stakeholders in reaching mutually satisfactory
decisions. The successful use of these systems involves
a combination of human ability and computer support.
An implicit assumption underlying their use is that the
business problems for which they are deployed have
been carefully defined by the stakeholders prior to
their use. This includes, in particular, understanding
of the problem variables and their possible impact on
the decision outcomes and knowing which information
is necessary for supporting it. However, this
assumption might not hold in the modern business
environment. This is due to the increasing complexity
and rate of change of the environment, the
geographical and temporal dispersion of modern
organizations, and the diversity and quantity of
information sources that is available. In this paper we
propose the idea of extending the scope of these
systems to include a step preceding the solution
process: problem framing. We claim that new
technologies such as Web 2.0 provide novel
opportunities to add this facility to DSS and NSS. To
achieve this, we propose a novel approach combining
domain and task ontologies. The task ontology we
propose employs concepts from soft systems
methodology. Specifically, we suggest that a
stakeholder can use the ontologies to understand the
problem, frame the issue, and identify the information
required for the task. The ontologies can support
accessing the information sources when the system is
being used by stakeholders.
1. Introduction
The value of IT-based systems for various decision
tasks in organizations has been recognized for a while.
This includes, in particular, decision support systems
(DSS) and negotiation support systems (NSS). The
application of such systems is based on certain
assumptions. These assumptions include, in particular,
that decision makers and stakeholders understand the
problem domain and agree on their views of these
domains and that stakeholders are aware of the
information resources available to them and needed to
support them in performing their tasks. However, often
these assumptions might not hold true, and their
validity is challenged by the increasing complexity of
the modern business environment, by the very fast rate
of changes in this environment, and by the wide
dispersion of modern organizations.
The rapid evolution of communication
technologies, and more particularly the broad adoption
of what is now called Web 2.0, inside and outside
organizations, provides an opportunity to rethink our
approaches to decision-making and negotiation
support. In particular, these new technologies can be
deployed to overcome the challenges mentioned above.
Moreover, as mentioned by French et al.
[14] “more and more management interactions in
organizations are being conducted via the web”,
mainly due to the fact that face-to-face meetings are
difficult and costly to arrange in organizations that are
more and more geographically and temporally
dispersed. Relevant information is also scattered and
shared through the whole environment (internal
datacenters, electronic marketplaces, global fulfillment
platforms, etc.). Thus, not only the technology is
already heavily intertwined in the processes underlying
decision making and negotiation but also information
was never so dispersed.
This led us to identify four kinds of issues
impacting stakeholders using these systems:
(1) domain understanding, (2) problem formulation,
(3) specification of issues and options and
(4) information identification. In this research-in-
progress, we propose to address these four areas using
an application ontology based on soft systems
methodology (SSM) and domain ontologies, which are
formal representations of concepts and their relations