Ontological Representation of Conceptual Frameworks in Business Management Research

Business management research and its conceptual framework in quantitative study rigorously explore behavioural and social constructs and their relationship. These conceptual 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. The resulting ontological representations help in identifying (i) relationships that have been tested in one context but have not yet been tested in others, (ii) gaps of the usage of variables and their relationships from one context to another, and (iii) developing link between existing datasets and enhance integration of business analytics with behavioural research through DL queries.