Abstract:

Quantitative study of behavioural and social constructs and their relationships is an active area of business management research involving development and validation of conceptual frameworks.  However, the resulting frameworks and models have not yet been captured and integrated using knowledge management tools such as ontological representations defined in computer science, which are often used in the design and development of enterprise software, social networks, search engines, and even research repositories of medical sciences. This paper presents the results of developing an ontological representation of conceptual frameworks found in business management research literature, and enabling the integration of behavioural and social variables and their relationships that are available in isolated research papers, but have not yet been electronically captured and integrated. This research demonstrates that the ontological representations used in computer science can also be gainfully employed in the area of business management research by developing an integrated repository of conceptual frameworks that can aid in research through the development of datasets of variables, instruments and their relationships.