Collaboration Knowledge Ontologies to Support Knowledge Management and Sharing in Virtual Organisations

Abstract

This paper focuses on representing collaboration knowledge in the context of a Virtual Organisation (VO). Knowledge representation embodies the characteristics of a VO from its incubation, formation, operation and termination. It is necessary to scope and identify all the collaboration knowledge utilised in a VO’s life cycle. The classification of collaboration knowledge or knowledge repositories is described in terms of 3 different types of organisations: individual enterprises, collaboration pools and VOs. Therefore collaboration knowledge falls into three main categories: enterprise knowledge, collaboration pool knowledge and VO knowledge. Later they are elucidated in ontology. The terms and concepts are defined and considered to be consistent with each other.