SOCIAL ONTOLOGY

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We are interested in the ways social interaction is carried out in complex organizations and socio-technical systems (e.g. airports, coordination centres, emergency rooms, so-called ‘smart cities’) taking work, and technologically-mediated or aided work in particular, as a paradigmatic case. We pay particular attention to processes of techno-organizational change and innovation. At a more general level, we focus on the details of human action-in-interaction and human-machine interaction, with particular attention to nonverbal and affective aspects, and the role of tools and technologies.

Furthermore, we study the foundational properties – for instance identity, intentionality, persistence through time and change… – of collective and social entities, like roles, organizations, informal groups, norms, etc.

Keywords
social ontology, ontology of interaction, embodied communication, processes of techno-organizational change and innovation, ontology of organisations, socio-technical systems, workplace studies, ethnomethodology.

Main Publications

  • T. Brower, R. Ferrario, and D. Porello, Hybrid Collective Intentionality, Synthese, 199:3367-3403, 2021.
  • S. Borgo, An Ontological View of Components and Interactions in Behaviorally Adaptive Systems, in Journal of Integrated Design and Process Science, 23(1):17-35, 2019, DOI 10.3233/JID190013.
  • R. Ferrario, C. Masolo, and D. Porello, Organisations and variable embodiments, in Proceedings of the 10th International Conference on Formal Ontology in Information Systems, FOIS (S. Borgo, P. Hitzler, and O. Kutz, eds.), pp. 127–140, IOS Press, 2018.
  • C. Bassetti, Airport security contradictions: Interorganizational entanglements and changing work practices, Ethnography, 19(3), pp. 288–311, 2018.
  • T. P. Sales, F. Baião, G. Guizzardi, J. P. A. Almeida, N. Guarino, and J. Mylopoulos, The common ontology of value and risk, in Conceptual Modeling (ER 2018) (J.C. Trujillo, K.C. Davis, X. Du, Z. Li, T.W. Ling, G. Li, M.L. Lee, eds.), pp. 121–135, Springer, 2018.
  • A. Calafiore, G. Boella, S. Borgo, and N. Guarino, Urban Artefacts and Their Social Roles: Towards an Ontology of Social Practices, in 13th International Conference on Spatial Information Theory (COSIT 2017) (E. Clementini, M. Donnelly, M. Yuan, C. Kray, P. Fogliaroni, and A. Ballatore, eds.), vol. 86 of Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics, pp. 6:1–6:13, Schloss Dagstuhl–Leibniz-Zentrum fuer Informatik, 2017.
  • F. Setti, D. Conigliaro, P. Rota, C. Bassetti, N. Conci, N. Sebe, and M. Cristani, The S-HOCK dataset: A new benchmark for spectator crowd analysis, Computer Vision and Image Understanding, 159, pp. 47–58, 2017.
  • B. Andersson, N. Guarino, P. Johannesson, and B. Livieri, Towards an ontology of value ascription, in Proceedings of the 9th International Conference on Formal Ontology in Information Systems (FOIS 2016) (R. Ferrario and W. Kuhn, eds.), pp. 331–344, IOS Press, 2016.
  • D. Porello, E. Bottazzi, and R. Ferrario, Group conflict as social contradiction, in Conflict and Multimodal Communication (F. D’Errico, I. Poggi, A. Vinciarelli, and L. Vincze, eds.), pp. 33–52, Springer, 2015.
  • C. Bassetti and E. Bottazzi, Introduction. Rhythm in social interaction, Etnografia e ricerca qualitativa, Rivista quadrimestrale, 3, pp. 367–382, 2015.
  • Setti F, Russell C, Bassetti C, Cristani M, F-Formation Detection: Individuating Free-Standing Conversational Groups in Images, PLOS ONE, 10(5): e0123783, 2015.
  • J. C. Nardi, R. de Almeida Falbo, J. P. A. Almeida, G. Guizzardi, L. F. Pires, M. J. van Sinderen, N. Guarino, and C. Fonseca, A Commitment-Based reference ontology for services, Information systems, 54, pp. 263–288, 2015.
  • D. Porello, E. Bottazzi, and R. Ferrario, The ontology of group agency, in Proceedings of the 8th International Conference on Formal Ontology in Information Systems (FOIS 2014) (P. Garbacz and O. Kutz, eds.), pp. 183–196, IOS Press, 2014.
  • E. Bottazzi, R. Ferrario, Preliminaries to a DOLCE Ontology of Organizations, in C. Atkinson, E. Kendall, G. Wagner, G. Guizzardi, M. Spies (Eds.), International Journal of Business Process Integration and Management, Vol. 4, Nr. 4, pp. 225-238.