A framework to integrate the enterprise domain ontology and organizational change application domain

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to provide a generalized framework that illustrates the potential for the resources, events and agents (REA) model to integrate business strategy and information systems planning. The essential point of connection, the business process, enables the REA to form a complementary platform to integrate strategic change information to support change strategies. Design/methodology/approach – The paper uses a case study to illustrate application of the framework. Findings – The framework illustrates how the expanding ontology and semantic granularity and scalability features of the REA enterprise domain ontology, support mapping a range of change strategies structured using Venkataraman's change framework. Research limitations/implications – This paper is exploratory in nature. The method uses existing case information, but the nature of the work does not lend itself to the traditional descriptive approach. Practical implications – Integration of business strategy and information systems planning is critical for organizational success. Poor integration between change initiatives and systems poses a challenge in implementing change strategies. Conceptual models that support change initiatives provide users an effective medium to use domain knowledge to support change strategies. Originality/value – The paper integrates existing concepts in the REA model (with some modification to the process view of the REA to adapt to multiple change initiatives). To the authors’ knowledge, there are no other papers that have offered a generalized framework for conceptualizing change initiatives of different levels.