Towards an Ontology of Value Ascription

Barbara Livieri12, Nicola Guarino2, Birger Andersson3, Paul Johannesson3

1 University of Salento, Lecce, Italybarbara.livieri@unisalento.it

2 ISTC-CNR Laboratory for Applied Ontology, Trento, Italynicola.guarino@loa.istc.cnr.it

3 University of Stockholm,Department of Computer and Systems Sciences, Sweden {pajo,ba}@dsv.su.se

Abstract. The analysis of value, value ascription mechanisms, and mo-tivating and influencing factors is useful for decision making processesof both customers and providers. In particular, enterprise modeling cangreatly benefit from a proper understanding of value-related notions.Nonetheless, existing value models mainly focus on the value exchangebetween subjects, disregarding the understanding of “what” value is andof “why” something is valuable. In order to exploit the benefits of valueanalysis, a precise and rigorous conceptualization, based on foundationalontologies, is needed. To this aim, we present and discuss here a prelim-inary value ascription ontology.

Keywords: Value modeling, ontology, value ascription, enterprise mod-eling

1 Introduction

The concept of value has always raised the interest of economists, philosophersand sociologists. Nonetheless, value remains perhaps the most ill-defined and elu-sive concept in service marketing and management [1, p. 2], becoming one of themost overused and misused concepts in the social sciences in general [2, p. 428].We believe that a proper analysis of value and value ascription mechanisms needsto take into account the perspective of both customers and providers, aiming ata broader understanding based on primitive, general notions that can groundthe meaning of the various value-related terms used in the business practice.This analysis is useful also for decision making purposes. Indeed, as stated byAnderson [3, p. 17], a theory of value should help us rationally guide our actions.In other words, a value theory should help us in the definition of which actionsare more appropriate to perform, i.e. it is the premise for a theory of rationalchoice.

Enterprise modeling can greatly benefit from a proper understanding of value-related notions. Enterprise modeling, which can be regarded as the constructionand use of conceptual models to describe, analyze, and (re-)design organizationalaction systems (e.g., business processes, organizational structure, resources) and

information systems (IS) [4]. However, the literature on value modelling is stillin its infancy, and we cant say nowadays that value modeling is well integratedwith more traditional enterprise modeling activities such as process modelingand organizational modeling.

In order to exploit the benefits of value analysis and avoid communicationproblems, a precise and rigorous conceptualization is needed. This is achievableby means of a foundational approach apt to the development of a core ontology.For the purposes of our research, we will base our core ontology on UFO (theUnified Foundational Ontology) [5].

The aim of this paper is to present and describe the ongoing work towardsan ontology of the value ascription process, motivating and influencing factors(i.e., the mechanisms and the various ways value is ascribed to a product or aservice) and to discuss the main modeling challenges that need to be addressed.

The remainder of the paper is structured as follows. In Sec. 2 we discuss therelated works and in Sec. 3 we analyze the phenomenology of value ascription.In Sec. 4 present and describe a draft of an ontology of value ascription. Finally,we analyze the core concepts (Sec. 5) and draw our conclusions (Sec. 6).

2 Related Work

2.1 Multiple axiologies of value

There exists a in the literature a number of axiologies, also called value classifi-cations or value theories. Such an axiology identifies a set of values and relatesthem to each other through a classification and/or taxonomy. One well-knownaxiology is the one proposed by Schwartz [6], which identifies ten top level values:universalism, benevolence, conformity, tradition, security, power, achievement,hedonism, stimulation and self-direction. These values are then organized basedon motivational similarities and dissimilarities. Other widely used axiologies arethose by Sheth et al. [7] and Holbrook [8]. As the mechanisms of value ascriptiondo not depend on the specific values being ascribed, it is for the purposes of thispaper possible to remain agnostic about the choice of axiology. In other words,the ontology proposed does not take a stance on which axiology to use. Theinstances of the class XXX will correspond to values in an axiology, and a userof the ontology can populate the class as preferred in order to adopt a certainaxiology.

2.2 Value modeling

Several approaches have been developed in value modeling literature, such as theResource, Event, Agent (REA) Ontology [9], e3value, POA and more recentlythe Value Delivery Modeling Language (VDML) [10].

The REA ontology describes economic transactions and internal processesby means of some basic constructs related to organizations, such as resource,event and agent, with the aim of developing Accounting Information Systems

(AIS). Although REA is concerned with business transactions, the value of theresources and exchanges is not accounted for.

e3-value is an ontology-based methodology for defining business models forbusiness networks [11], commonly used for the modeling value exchanges. Itadopts the economic value perspective by representing what is exchanged andby whom [12]. The e3value ontology is based on the principle of reciprocityemphasizing the dual character of business transactions. This give and takeapproach denotes that every actor offers something of value, such as money,goods, services, etc., and gets a value in return. However, e3-value focuses onthe exchanged value among actors, leaving out the analysis of why value isexchanged, thus stakeholders goals [13] or other aspects such as commitment,organizational structure, and so on. It defines in an abstract way value objects,without further analysis concerning their nature or the one of the actors thatexchange them.

The Value Delivery Modeling Language (VDML) aims at supporting the“recognition and understanding of problems and opportunities in the context ofmarket demand and enterprise optimization” [10], accounting for several view-points: value networks, value streams, REA, e3value and the Business ModelOntology. However, value is seen as a “measurable characteristic”. In general,“value models do not describe the why” [13, p. 2] and they do not help clarifyingwhat value is

3 The phenomenology of value ascription

According to Gloria Zuiga, value is “a significance attached to a good resultingfrom a conceptualization of the good in terms of a desired end. Such a con-ceptualization can be characterized as an interested evaluation, since the agentperceives a causal connection between the possession of the good and the fulfill-ment of an end” [14, p. 306].

We believe there is an implicit phenomenology of value ascription behind thisdefinition. First of all, value emerges in a relational context, involving at least anagent besides the good. We shall say that value is ascribed to the good. Second,value depends on the existence on a desired end in the agent’s mind, and on theway the good is conceptualized in the light of such a desire. Third, there is aperceived context, concerning in particular the current possession status of thegood, the actual possibility of acquiring possession of the good, and the actualcausal connections, in the perceived context, between the good and the desiredend.

By the way, Zuiga’s definition is clearly a definition oriented towards theso-called goods-dominant perspective []. One of the goals of this paper is tocharacterize the notion of value in a more general way, accounting as well forthe service-dominant perspective. For these reasons, we shall adopt the genericterm value object (already introduced by Weigand and colleagues [15]) to denoteanything we can ascribe a value, being it a good, a service, or possibly somethingelse (as we shall see).

Let us see now how we can describe in ontological terms the phenomenologyof value ascription. According to the BDI approach [16], the mental state of anagent is characterized by beliefs, desires, and intentions, which in turn dependon the broader physical and social context to which the agent belongs. Havinga certain perception of a value object in a particular context, the agent maybelieve that the object, thanks to some of its qualities, has the capability tofulfill a desire about the realization of a certain state of affairs. While believingso, we shall say that the agent ascribes to the value object a further quality,namely its value. Such a value is a relational quality inhering in the value object,which is existentially dependent on the agent and that comes into existencewhen a value ascription relationship is established. So, value is a doubly-relativenotion. On the one hand, it inheres in a particular value object; on the otherhand, it depends on:

– the agent’s desire;– how strong this desire is (possibly with respect to other desires);– how well (in the agent’s conceptualization) the value object is capable to

satisfy the desire;– the perceived need to use that particular object to satisfy the desire, by

taking possession or control of it.

Clearly it is important not to confuse the value ascription relationship withthe value itself. According to the UFO ontology, such a relationship may beconceptualized as a relator. The notion of relator has been recently revisitedby Guarino and Guizzardi [17], who established it is equivalent to the notionof relationship, understood as a bundle of qualities, which may vary in timewhile the relationship (being an endurant) maintains its identity. In our view,the object’s value emerges from the value ascription relationship, and inheresto the relationship itself. It is ascribed to the object, but it does not inhereto the object since it depends on how well the object complies with the agent’spreferences. More in detail, a value ascription relationship is a bundle of qualitiesincluding on the one hand those inhering in the value-ascribing agent, such aspreferences, desires, and the perception of the product’s characteristics, and onthe other hand those inhering in the value object, such as the relevant qualitiesable to satisfy the agent’s desires. Note that the relevant qualities are the resultof a selection process, which may be intentional or unintentional, and dependson the customer’s preferences (to be discussed below in more detail).

4 A preliminary model

In this section, we present a preliminary model of the Value Ascription Ontology,which was designed taking as basis the Unified Foundational Ontology (UFO)[18, 19]. UFO is a foundational ontology developed with an interdisciplinary ap-proach inspired by Formal Ontology, Philosophical Logic, Linguistics, and Cog-nitive Psychology. It is based on DOLCE [20], OntoClean [21], and GFO/GOL[22]. It consists of three main parts: UFO-A, an ontology of endurants (objects)

[18], UFO-B, an ontology of events (perdurants) [19], and UFO-C [19], an ontol-ogy of social entities built on the top of UFO-A and UFO-B.

The Value Ascription Ontology is based upon the usage of the OntoUML lan-guage [18], an ontological extension of UML that incorporates the foundationaldirections in UFO. More in detail, our ontology borrows a subset of stereotypesfrom OntoUML. Stereotypes indicate the ontological category to which a certainentity belongs, constraining in this way its semantics according to the founda-tional indications provided in UFO. Therefore, each concept defined in our mailservice ontology refers to an UFO stereotype (enclosed between � � symbols).

Without claiming to be exhaustive, we now introduce some of these stereo-types, while forwarding the interested readers to [18], [23] for a thorough descrip-tion. Each entity can assume a role depending on the context it belongs to andthe specific moment of its history. Other kinds of types can be highlighted, inaddition to the role type just mentioned before: phases represent possible stagesin the history of a substance sortal (e.g., alive and deceased are two possiblestages for a living thing). In the same way, modes are individuals existentiallydependent on other individuals (i.e., moments, in UFO), in the sense that theycan only exists within their bearer, and they can be conceptualized in terms ofmultiple separable quality dimensions (e.g., beliefs, desires, etc.).

We also have a set of basic concepts: agents (e.g., person, organization); phys-ical or social objects, defined as non-agentive substantial particulars. A crucialrole is played by relators, which can be seen as reified relationship. More exactly,relators, whose ontological nature and significance for the practice of conceptualmodelling has been recently revisited in [17] can be seen as aggregations of qual-ities (modes, in UFO) inhering in related entities, accounting for the way therelated entities are involved in the relationship.

We shall now discuss the preliminary ontology represented in Fig. 1. AValue subjects (e.g., a customer or a provider) is related to a value object

(e.g., a product) by means of an Atomic value ascription relationship.The atomic value relationship is a relator that results from the bundle of a valuesubject’s desire, her object preference towards the value object’s characteristicsand the location in which the evaluation happens. The value subject’s preferencesdepend on the social rules acknowledged by the value subject. The evaluationcan occur in different time frames; this can be expressed with the phase con-struct, i.e., there are different phases of the value ascription relationship. Therelator also includes the atomic value inhering the value object, which dependson the value subject. As we will discuss in Sec. 5, the atomic value related toa specific desire or characteristic can be aggregated in order to have an overallvalue for the value object (aggregated value). This aggregation is based onthe weight associated to the corresponding desire.

A value ascription or evaluation is typically motivated by the value subjectalthough this is not necessary. Motivated means that for example desires ofthe value subject when ascribing a value are explicit. There is however nothing

Fig. 1. A preliminary draft of the Value Ascription Ontology

stopping a value subject from ascribing a value or making a re-evaluation withoutbeing explicit about it (unconsciously, even) . A value object that has a motivatedvalue ascription is called valuable, in this technical sense.

5 The core concepts

In this section, we describe and motivate the core concepts used in the model.

Kinds and roles of value objects Value can be ascribed to different kindsof entity. A partial list includes goods, services, actions and social relationships(e.g., LinkedIn or Facebook contacts, hiring relationships, service commitments,. . . ). Value can also be assigned to states of affairs. For example, I assign value toa state of affairs in which I own a coat. Social relationships include the value anemployer assigns to the business relations of a salesman or the value a customerassigns to a product, that can be translated in customer loyalty. For instance,Apple ascribes value to the fact “Nicola likes his MacBook”.

With respect to actions, it is particularly relevant the preference theory de-veloped by Sen [24], which distinguishes between culmination outcomes, whereonly the final outcome of a certain process determines the value judgement, andcomprehensive outcomes, where the process that brings to the outcome is con-sidered as well. This distinction clearly emerges from the fruit choosing examplediscussed in [25]. The example shows how an individual that, in general, prefersmangoes to apples, in specific social conditions can choose to take an apple in-stead of a mango because, for instance, there is only one mango left. In thiscase, it is not the outcome per se that drives the choice of the individual, butrather a series of conditions affecting the decision process (e.g., the number offruits available, social circumstances). Nonetheless, the same individual wouldstill appreciate if somebody would give him the mango, without asking him: sothe value of an object (the mango) is clearly different from the value of a event(an action) involving such an object.

In other words, ascribing value to goods or services is different from ascribingit to the actions performed to obtain them. In the previous example, the mangohas the same value regardless of the external circumstances (who is choosing,how many mangoes there are, etc.), but the value of the action needed to ac-quire its possession and ability to use changes. The beneficiary’s action is morestrongly related to the context, and, as such, also to ethical concerns. The pre-vious example brings to light the need to discern who is performing the action,i.e., whether it is the beneficiary, the provider or a third person.

There are some distinctions on value ascription also for services and goods.For services, it is different to ascribe value to a service contract or to a serviceexecution. An analogous distinction can be made also for goods: ascribing valueto having the goods available is different from ascribing value to actually usingthe goods. For instance, let us consider a customer who has bought a fire ex-tinguisher. When the customer uses the fire extinguisher she gets value from it.But it may also have value for her before the use, or even if she never uses it.

Having it available gives her “peace of mind”, so it is a value related to a safetygoal and its the same goal that drives people to get insured.

Value objects, i.e., the entities to which it is possible to ascribe value, canplay different roles. For the purpose of our analysis, we shall account for thefollowing roles: (a) resource, meaning a good or a service that can be used by anorganization or a person in order to exploit its activities and processes (e.g., mailservices, consulting services, etc.), i.e., a resource is something that can play aninstrumental role (i.e., a function) in an action; (b) product, meaning a good or aservice that can be sold to the organization’s customers, regardless of whether itis sold to final customers or not; (c) complementary value objects, as defined in[13]. Let us consider a company that sells flour to a bakery. Flour is a tradableand transferable entity; thus, it is a good. From the manufacturing companyperspective, the flour is a product, since it is the outcome of the productionprocess from whose selling, earnings come. From the bakery perspective, it isa resource which will be employed in their production process in order to get,for instance, bread. The flour doesn’t stop to be as it was before just becauseit is sold to somebody else, but its identity stays the same, thus the fact thatin one case it is a product and in the other one is a resource is merely relatedto the played role. The choice is also coherent with [26], where resources arerepresented as roles of an entity.

Roles of value subjects In the model presented we have used the words’Customer’ and ’Product’ for the entities that are associated through a valueascription relationship. Furthermore, we say that both Customer and Productare roles (in the UFO ontology sense) as is indicated by the use of the stereotypes.The question is then: roles of what? In this paper we say that the customer is arole played by a value subject and on the other side of the relationship we saythat a product is a role played by the value object. A value subject is what holdsa relation to a value object. A value subject may play multiple roles related toa value object. For example, a value subject (’person’) has a relation with avalue object (’tool’) in two ways: in her role as an owner and in her role as acarpenter. She appreciates the tool as having two roles – one as an economicasset and one as a means for hammering a nail. In her role as an owner she holdsa value ascription relationship to the value object role asset and as a carpentershe holds the relationship with the hammer.

We believe it is important to account for several perspectives (i.e., customer,consumer, provider, producer), thus we consider as value subjects customers,consumers, providers and producers. A provider is the agent who commits tohave the service executed or provide the good, while the producer is the agentthat actually performs the core service actions or produce the good. These tworoles may be played by the same actor, but this is not always the case. Further-more, the customer is the one that requests the product and then negotiates forits customized delivery, while the consumer is its direct beneficiary. Customerand consumer may or may not coincide (reference paper Service Forum). In thecase of products, the provider and producer perspectives tend to be similar to

the customer/consumer ones, since when the provider/producer want to knowwhether the product is valuable, she is thinking about how the customers andconsumers will perceive that product.

Preferences The notion of preference seems to play a crucial role in any theoryof value, but still it is difficult to grasp. Clearly we use preference relations whencomparing different value objects, but there is also a notion of ’preference’ thatdoes not have a comparative nature, and it is used when we focus our attentionon a certain object in order to ascribe it value. In this sense, a preference is a kindof mental filter we impose on the perceived reality. For the sake of simplicity,we shall assume that such mental filters depend on the agent’s desires, althoughthis is not always the case since people may have global preferences (e.g., fora particular color) independently of the specific desires. So, for each desire andin each context, we shall assume that the agent maintains in her mind a list ofobject profiles, that are mental descriptions4 of the constraints a certain objecthas to comply with in order to contribute to the desire’s satisfaction. Each objectprofile can be split into a functional component and a non-functional component,similarly to what is customary, e.g., in requirements engineering [].

Let us see now in detail how the notion of preference introduced above playsa role in value ascription. First of all, in order for an object to be valuable froman agent’s point of view, there must exist an object profile, in the agent’s mind,such that the object satisfies the functional constraints of that profile. Then, theactual weight of the object’s value will depend on how well the object complieswith the non-functional constraints of that profile.

Atomic and aggregated values The preference-based mechanism outlinedabove anchors value ascription to a single agent’s desire. However, since agentshave multiple desires, different values may be ascribed to the same object by thesame agent. For instance, let us consider a person who bought a new laptop anduses it for both working at a caf and for watching videos at home. She may assignto the laptop a high status value in the caf and a high hedonistic value when athome. The reason for the different value ascriptions is that the laptop can fulfilldifferent desires in different use contexts. In many cases, multiple desires maycoexist in the same context, so that we need to take their mutual interactionsinto account. Considering another example, let us suppose this agent wants tobuy a new work bag, but she has to walk a lot to get to the closest train station.In the ex-ante context, the agent has multiple desires: the agent wants somethingthat is easy to carry around, that looks professional and, possibly, aestheticallypleasant.

The way we adopt to address these issues is to distinguish between atomicvalue and aggregated value. The weight of the aggregated value, i.e., the overallvalue an agent ascribes to an object, comes from the weighted sum of all the

4 From the ontological point of view, descriptions are considered as non-agentive socialobjects, as discussed in [27]

atomic values’s weights. Of course, the actual computation of such weighted sumis not an easy issue, as it depends on several factors, including the evaluation of adesire’s priority in a given context. On the basis of desires’ priority assignments,object’s profiles can be primary or secondary.

States Influencing Value Ascriptions States can influence value ascriptionrelationships as well as goals. An example is that a customer often ascribes alower value to a product if she already owns a similar product than if she does not.States can influence value ascription relationships with respect to possibility andintensity, and some authors including Dancy [28] and Orsi [29] have thus madea distinction between enabling states (or conditions) and intensifying states. Anenabling state is a state that enables a product to achieve its goal. For example,a customer can use a Windows piece of software only if she has access to aWindows PC. An intensifying state is a state that increases or decreases thevalue ascribed to a product. For example, the state of being close to winter mayincrease the value of a warm coat, while a state of already owning a warm coatmay decrease the value of the coat.

Context With context, on an abstract level, we mean “any information thatcan be used to characterize the situation of an entity. An entity is a person,place, or object that is considered relevant to the interaction between a user andan application, including the user and applications themselves” [30]. For whatconcerns value, we shall distinguish a general context (e.g., cultural background,social rules recognized by the agent), that affects a customer’s preferences, anda more situation specific context that affects value in the moment in which it isassigned (e.g., social situation).

In the notion of context we include different aspects, namely:

– social rules: social rules hold for a community of agents and affect the ex-ternal manifestation of personal preferences. We can distinguish:• contextual social rules: different sets of social rules may apply to the

same individual in different context, e.g., in the mango example, it isOK for the chooser to pick the mango, if more than one is available, butit is not accepted if there is only one left.

• cultural background, i.e., social rules that are embedded in the agentsand affect their behavior, regardless from the context;

– physical and mental conditions of the agent : e.g., other things being equal,a stressed or sick person could assign a lower value to a product, due to adifferent rating of the goals;

– location, e.g., if a person is in the desert, then the perceived value of wateris higher;

– environmental conditions, e.g., temperature, time of the day, season, . . . ;– product availability : we mean both the availability/scarcity of the product

on the market and whether the customer is already in possession of the (kindof) products to which he is ascribing value; and

– goals, i.e., intentional desires of agents.

It is worth noticing that the social context in which a person lives is notunidimensional. Each person belongs to different social contexts, thus creatingan intersection. For the purposes of this paper, we will disregard this interaction.

Value lifecycle A value ascription is a relationship between a role of a valuesubject and a role of a value object. As such it has life cycle – it is established,it is evaluated and re-evaluated, and it is finally dismantled. Being evaluatedmeans that the relationship is associated with a weight in a topological/metricalspace. Being re-evaluated means that the weight possibly can change at a pointin time. Dismantled means that the relationship no longer holds between thevalue subject (the holder) and the value object.

In order to account for the changes in value over time, we consider severalphases, namely (a) an ex ante phase, in which the agent may or may not havethe intention to purchase a product or to use a resource; (b) a transaction phase,in which the agent has a goal and decides to buy a product or to use a resource;(c) a use phase, in which the agent uses the product or resource in order toachieve her goals; (d) a post-use phase, concerning the experience the customerhas after the use of the product, i.e., the effects of the use. This is relevant, forinstance, in case of restaurants: the overall evaluation of a restaurant dependsnot only on how tasty the food is but also on potential (side) effects (e.g., foodpoisoning). The post-use value is also related to the complaints. In the ex anteand transaction phase, the value is potential. A provider creates potential valuewhen he brings a product to market. But the value is not actual until a customeractually uses the product (i.e., it becomes actual in the use phase).

We stipulate that the holding of a value ascription relationship can be trans-ferred from one role to another without the relationship being dismantled. Whenthis happens we say that the relationship has entered a new phase. The rela-tionship endures over this change of context and will continue to endure untilthe final role in the chain no longer appreciates the (role of the) value object.Each role that holds the relationship represents a phase in the life cycle of therelationship. For example, a customer may have the roles buyer, user, and sellervis-a-vis some product. The relationship is established when the user buys theproduct and is dismantled when the user sells it. In between the user has usedit. Some of these chains of phases have been standardized.

6 Concluding remarks

In this paper we have presented an initial proposal for a value ascription ontology.The ontology is about value ascription, i.e. what is necessary for conceptiual-izing someone ascribing value to something, and which are the motivating andinfluencing factors. The ontology is meant to be agnostic about the value systemand value as such. We note that there is a multitude of values systems but thatthe mechanism for making use of them seem generic.

In this work we focus on the life cycle of a relationship between a an agentand that which the agent finds valuable – the value object. For this we rely onGuizzardi’s and Guarino’s work on relators [17]. We propose that ascribing valueto something means that an agent may create a number of atomic relationshipseach associated with a value. The aggregation of those relationships is the basisfor the value ascribed by the agent on the value object.

The proposal has at this stage a number of open issues, e.g. what is thenature and definition of a context; did we identify the right concepts; how shallwe proceed when determining an aggregated value? We will for future researchconcentrate on resolving those issues.

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