A compliance management ontology: developing shared understanding through models

Abstract

Managing regulatory compliance is increasingly challenging and costly for organizations world-wide. Due to the diversity of stakeholders in compliance management initiatives, any effort towards providing compliance management solutions demands a common understanding of compliance management concepts and practice. This paper reports on research undertaken to develop an ontology to create a shared conceptualization of the compliance management domain, namely CoMOn (Compliance Management Ontology). The ontology concepts are extracted from interviews and surveys of compliance management experts and practitioners, and refined through synthesis with leading academic literature related to compliance management. A semiotic framework was utilized to conduct a rigorous evaluation of CoMOn through a series of eight case studies spanning a number of industry sectors. The consensus achieved through the evaluation has positioned CoMOn as a comprehensive domain ontology for Compliance Management.