What ‘good’ looks like:

Understanding records
ontologically in the context
of the global financial crisis

Victoria Lemieux
School of Library, Archival and Information Studies, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada

Lior Limonad
Sauder School of Business, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada

Abstract.
This paper explores the internal components (semantics) of financial electronic records. The authors adopt a
view of records as representations of perceptions about a specific domain that belong to classes of representa-
tions at the centre of which are archetypal ‘good’ records (records that most faithfully represent their
domains). The paper proposes a static modelling language that illustrates how the ontological concepts of
Bunge and Searle can be integrated to achieve a richer grammatical explanatory tool for use in modelling the
internal structure of archetypal records in the context of domains of financial crisis and contagion such as
the failure of Lehman Brothers.

Keywords: Bunge; conceptual modelling; domain-specific language; failure of Lehman Brothers;

global financial crisis; information systems; ontology; records; Searle; semantics; social ontology

1.  Introduction

When Lehman Brothers collapsed in September 2008, triggering what has come to be known as the
global financial crisis, records were, no doubt, the furthest things from most people’s minds. Yet,
research into the dynamics of the Lehman Brothers collapse indicates that records – or more accu-
rately, their absence and deficiencies – contributed to a build-up of risk in the global financial
system that eventually led to its collapse and global economic chaos.
Having identified a number of clear examples of records-related failures, our research team was
motivated to search for a means to identify the basic characteristics of ‘good’ records so that such

Correspondence to: Victoria Lemieux, Irving K Barber Learning Centre, 1961 East Mall, Vancouver, BC,
Canada, V6T 1Z1. Email: vlemieux@interchange.ubc.ca

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Victoria Lemieux and Lior Limonad

failures might be averted in the future. We recognize that this is only a first step in averting such
failures as, more often than not, weaknesses in the processes of record inscription, communication
and preservation lead to weaknesses in the record, so it will be necessary to further investigate what
it is about these processes that leads to records-related failures. That being said, without a clear idea
of what defines a good record, there is no objective measure against which to evaluate the content
of records and the effectiveness of records management processes.

2.   Research philosophy

In this paper, we draw our set of assumptions about the nature of records, in general, and
financial records, in particular, from Geoffrey Yeo’s two-part article on concepts of record [1, 2].
Yeo conceives of a record as:
A persistent representation of activities or other occurrents, created by participants or observers of those
occurrents or by their proxies; or sets of such representations representing particular occurrents [2].

Elsewhere, Yeo explains the use of the term ‘occurrent’ as a collective noun to encompass aggrega-
tions of functions, processes, activities, transactions and events. Yeo’s notion that records are
representations of occurrents marks a radical shift in the discourse on concepts of record in the
archival literature as, in recent times, the main focus from within the fields of archival science and
records management has been on records as by-products of business functions, processes, activities
and transactions. In the traditional view of the record, which remains the dominant view, records
exist primarily as outcomes. Through Yeo’s definition and its focus on the representational nature
of records, it is possible to understand records as particular types of information systems (indeed,
in his paper Yeo acknowledges an intellectual debt to the field of information systems (IS)), the
purpose of which is to represent a particular knowledge domain.
A record is a special type of information system because it is defined in the IS literature as an artefact
that pertains to three specific models: representational, state-tracking, and good-decomposition [3].
All three rely on a representation premise, according to which an IS is an artefactual representation
of concrete or conceived (i.e. in someone’s mind) real-world systems (namely, the domain-of-
discourse) as perceived by someone’s or some group’s view. In this work, we accept and focus on
the general representation premise. Once this leap of understanding about the record as a type of IS
is made, it is then possible to formally link records theory to IS theory. In particular, in this paper
we demonstrate the application of ontology theory as a means to establishing the idea of records as
representations and to further elucidate their internal structure, or semantics, as representations.

2.1.  Limitations of Yeo’s definition

Although we accept Yeo’s definition of a record, we note that it has several limitations in terms of
our purpose in this paper; namely Yeo’s definition is limited in that it mentions nothing about
human perception. Following Searle [4], our aim is to have a definition that is not restricted to a
certain philosophical stance (e.g. positivist versus post-modernist). We therefore need to acknowl-
edge human perception and understanding in the definition and, on this basis, propose a revision
to Yeo’s definition to include this idea as follows: A record is ‘a representation of a set of beliefs
about a set of occurrents.
Although Yeo discusses at length the idea of records as boundary objects in his two articles on
the concept of records [1, 2], he does not take account of this notion in his definition of records.
This concept has been developed in sociology [5], referring to an entity that is shared by different
communities of practice. Each community may interpret or use a boundary object in a different way,
making it an interface among these communities. We argue that, though this concept of records may
not be relevant for the purposes of developing an ontological definition of a record (i.e. one that is
stable across communities), it does come into play in discussing prototypes where epistemologies
are significant and have an impact (i.e. when we talk about the records’ social context, etc.). We

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Victoria Lemieux and Lior Limonad

therefore suggest that the concept need not be included in the definition of a record, but is signifi-
cant to achieve our aim of defining good records, a point to which we will return later in this paper.
We also note that Yeo’s definition is silent on the fact that activities and occurrents take place
within a certain domain of discourse. The idea is implicit in Yeo’s concept of a record, but not as
explicit as we think it needs to be in order to achieve a desirable isomorphism between records and
IS concepts. We therefore propose a further revision of Yeo’s definition to accommodate the notion
of domain specificity.
The resultant final definition at which we arrive, having expanded on what we perceive to be the
limitations of Yeo’s definition for our purposes, is as follows:
A record is a persistent representation of a set of beliefs about activities or other occurrents, taking place in
a certain domain of discourse, created by participants or observers of those occurrents, or by their proxies;
or sets of such representations representing particular occurrents.

To achieve our research objectives, we also need to introduce the concept of an archetypal record
which allows us to introduce qualitative characteristics to our discourse on the record as even the
revised definition is silent on the quality of the record. Here again, however, we can draw upon the
ideas presented in Yeo’s articles, particularly his discussion on prototypical records, which in turn
draws upon the ideas underlying Prototype Theory as developed by Eleanor Rosch [6, 7].
In his paper on ‘Concepts of record (2): prototypes and boundary objects’, Yeo draws on the psy-
chological theory of the prototype advanced by Rosch to account for the existence of a wide variety
of opinions on what a record is or is not [2]. As Yeo explains, prototype theory attempts to provide
an explanation of how concepts and categories are understood [2], the central tenet of which is that
most categories have prototypes. The Collins English Dictionary offers these definitions of the word
prototype: ‘(1) one of the first units manufactured of a product, (2) a person or thing that serves
as an example of a type and (3) the ancestral or primitive form of a species or other group; an
archetype’. We observe an overlap and intermingling between semantic usage of the words proto-
type and archetype, as suggested by the previous definition of prototype and the following Collins
definition of archetype: ‘(1) A perfect or typical specimen, (2) an original model or pattern; proto-
type...’. As our aim is to identify what constitutes a perfect specimen, we lean toward a definition
of prototype that is closely aligned with the semantic notion of archetype. However, we note that in
the IS literature, the semantic usage of prototype generally does not encompass the notion of arche-
type, but refers rather to the first instantiation of a system which, unlike an archetype, often contains
flaws. We therefore prefer to adapt Yeo’s ideas by substituting the word prototype with the word
archetype. In this way we can infer a certain ‘goodness’ of quality in the record that is most typical
or exemplary of its class (i.e. the class of records that represent the corresponding domain).
Another central tenet of prototype theory is that prototypes are culturally specific; that is, they
change according to the social context in which they are applied. Yeo’s examples of how ideas about
the prototypical record have changed over time (e.g. in the medieval age a parchment document
with a seal connoted a record while in recent times a word-processed document may be considered
more typical of the record), suggest that prototypes also have a temporal aspect. Further, Yeo notes
that prototype theory asserts that categories have graded memberships, graded in terms of their
similarity to the prototype [2]. Yeo then uses this theory as an explanation of why different groups
and individuals have different conceptualizations of the record: they have differences because ideas
about the prototypical record vary according to the social and temporal context of the individual or
group. We note that the further one moves from a particular individual’s or group’s prototype of the
record, the closer one moves toward what would be considered at the perimeter of that individual’s
or group’s conceptualization of the record.
From Yeo’s discussion of prototypical records and our elaborations of his ideas, we make the
following assertions:
• Records, as classes or categories representing things, have prototypes (i.e. records that are the
most typical of their class or category).
• Prototypes are context- and time-specific.

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Victoria Lemieux and Lior Limonad

• Prototypes are viewed as being at the centre of the class or category, such that:
ο Classes or categories will have records that are less typical and which may be viewed as being
more or less distant from the prototypical record, depending on how much they differ from
the prototype.
ο These prototypes may be viewed as having, at the same time, the features of archetypes; that
is, as members of a class that exhibit the most perfect features of that class.
Based on the above assertions, we conclude the following:
Corollary 1: Given that we define records in relation to their representational quality, an archetypal record is
by its nature that which represents the best, or the most exemplary (in this sense, faithful) representation of
a set of beliefs about occurrents.
Corollary 2: Records that are less typical or less central to a class or category also may be viewed as being
less perfect or less good in relation to what is considered to be exemplary for that class or category; that is,
they will be less faithful representations of what is believed about the occurrents, to which they refer.

Thus, borrowing from Yeo’s idea of a prototype, we introduce the notion of an archetypal record
as a good record, being an exemplary representation of occurrents, and define it as follows:
A persistent faithful representation of a set of beliefs about activities or other occurrents, taking place in a
certain domain of discourse, created by participants or observers of those occurrents, or by their proxies; or
sets of such representations representing particular occurrents.

Based on this definition, an ontological theory is suggested next to define the features of an arche-
typal record and to provide us with insight into what ‘good’ looks like for records.
We can now introduce our research roadmap to further scope our interests. The roadmap consists
of three complimentary research interests about financial records. Following IS literature [3], we
have adapted the following three viewpoints of records: the context of financial electronic records,
the internal structure, and the physical implementation. In this paper we study the internal nature
of a financial record, aiming at conceptualizing it. However, we are still missing a tool to assess
faithfulness even within the scope of the record’s internal structure. To resolve this problem, and
building on previous literature in IS, we introduce ontological theories, which are used in a similar
way to the treatment of the adequacy of the internal structure of information systems.
Our particular research objective here is to provide a tool to assess the faithfulness of a represen-
tation, or what makes a good record, ontologically speaking:
• as the financial domain of analysis concerns both the substantial and the social, we adopt ontol-
ogies that aim at handling both concerns;
• we find that there is no single ontology that has the capacity to represent both, as we discuss
further below;
• to represent the substantial domain, we adopt Bunge’s ontology [8,9], which has been the most
commonly used ontology in the IS literature;
• although commonly used, for reasons that are outside of the scope of this paper to explore, the
application of this ontology within IS has focused on the ‘real world’ within the IS literature
without further elaboration of how Bunge’s ideas can be applied to social domains of analysis;
• we therefore find it necessary to borrow from Searle [4, 10], whose social ontology gives us a
richer expressive grammar and set of underlying concepts with which to explain the social aspects
of our domain of analysis.

3.  Theoretical foundations

As discussed above, we are using two complementary ontological theories to provide a richer onto-
logical grammar for constructing a tool to evaluate the representational faithfulness of the internal
structure of records. The result is an extended ontological apparatus that can be used to assess not

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Victoria Lemieux and Lior Limonad

only the expressiveness of their content, but also any conceptual model that is intended to describe
cohesively parts of the world whenever the analysis target is a combination of substantial and social
aspects. To construct the extended grammar, we integrate the part of Bunge’s ontology [8, 9] that was
previously applied in the IS field for the assessment of IS designs as representations of the real
world [3, 11–14], and Searle’s ontology [4, 10]. The former ontology accounts for substantial con-
cerns and the latter enriches it with the capacity to deal with the aspects of social realities. A summary
of each ontological view is described below.
A core concept in Bunge’s ontology is the thing. According to the ontology, the world is made
of things. A thing is a substantial individual endowed with all its (substantial) properties, or intri­
nsic properties. Some properties, called mutual properties, are properties shared by two or more
things.
Every part of the world is considered to be a thing. However, a thing may be either a simple thing
or a composite. A composite thing is a thing that is composed of other things (i.e. namely its com-
ponents). Composition brings about hereditary and emergent properties. Hereditary properties are
properties that are possessed by component things as a result of the composition. Emergent proper-
ties are properties possessed by the whole, but are not possessed by any component of the whole.
In the context of this work, it is worth emphasizing that a substantial property is a feature that
some substantial individuals possess, even if we (i.e. humans) are ignorant of this fact. To cope
with that, according to the ontological view, human beings perceive and create representations of
properties through attributes that can be represented as predicates (i.e. attribute functions). The
correspondence between properties and attributes is not isomorphic because it is possible that
some attributes represent no substantial properties, while others represent several properties, and
some properties are represented by no attributes at all. The attribute concept in Bunge’s ontology
is equivalent to the notion of an observer-relative-feature in Searle’s ontology, and the attribution
of such features to substantial individuals is part of the assignment-of-function idea that is further
discussed in our summary of Searle’s ontology below.
Bunge’s ontology is not just about form and structure but rather also provides an explanation for
the dynamic aspects of the world. At the core of the dynamic view is the notion of state. A state of
a thing is manifested by the set of values of all of its property functions, or state variables, at any
point in time. When a thing changes one or more of its property function values, this is manifested
as a change in its state. This transformation is termed an event and is represented as a pair of states,
before and after the transition. The transition may happen either as the result of an interaction
among things or due to an internal transformation in things. Interaction between two (or more)
things means that at least one thing acts on the other. When different things can interact, they are
said to be coupled ontologically. An object that is composed of at least two different things that are
coupled is termed a concrete system. The set of things that are not in the composition of the system
but interact with things in the system is termed the environment.
There are two dichotomies underlying the states a thing may be in. A state may be either stable
or unstable and either lawful or unlawful. A thing in a stable state will change its state only if it
interacts with other things, whereas a thing in an unstable state will continue changing until it
reaches a stable state. Not all states are possible and not all transformations between states can occur
in the domain. States and transitions are governed by laws. Correspondingly, some events are lawful
and some are unlawful. Specifically, lawful states and lawful transformations that can exist in a
domain are defined by state laws and transition laws respectively. The former is any restriction on
the possible values of state variables in the corresponding domain and the latter is a restriction on
the possible transformations between lawful states.
Despite some of its relativistic features, there are two underlying presuppositions in Bunge’s
ontology that have driven our search for a complementary apparatus that is better equipped to deal
with social aspects of the world. Social aspects imply that the ‘whatness’ of the internal structure of
records should faithfully represent not only concrete objects, the existence of which is independent
of the perceptions of human beings (e.g. buildings, mountains, etc.), but also objects that are consti-
tuted by the mere existence of society. For example, objects such as money, mortgage loans and

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Victoria Lemieux and Lior Limonad

banks are in the core of our domain of representation. However, conceiving such objects as merely
substantial omits many, if not most, of the social properties assigned to them. A dollar bill, for
example, isn’t just about the (substantial) properties of the paper on which it is printed. Its market
power, the main feature it exposes to society, is a matter of a collective agreement that is indepen-
dent of its physical characteristics. In a world without the existence of people and markets, a piece
of paper that has the symbol ‘$1’ printed on it would not be substantially different from a piece of
paper that has the symbol ‘$100,000’ printed on it, but obviously in a world with people, such a
difference becomes crucial. The two dominating presuppositions in Bunge’s ontology that make it
hard to deal with social objects are the following:
• The association of substantial individuals with space and time, as stated in Bunge [8] – ‘Surely
the objects we are concerned with exist in space and time …’. In the context of social realities,
it is in many cases beneficial to suppress space- and time-related properties, in order to be able
to relate to objects that either lack these properties, or for which these properties do not matter
for the purpose of analysis. For example, money can be realized in different substantial forms
(e.g. cheque, credit card, wire transfer, etc.) for which the analyst who records a payment
representation is often indifferent regarding the spatial features that the concrete payment
possesses.
• According to Bunge’s ontology, the entire domain of discourse allows for objects of two
kinds: substantial or concrete entities, and constructs. The notion of a ‘construct’ does seem
to provide a good basis for establishing social realities. As stated in Bunge [8], ‘We feign that
there are constructs, i.e. creations of the human mind to be distinguished not only from
things but also from individual brain processes (only, we do not assume that constructs exist
independently of brain processes)’. However, Bunge’s ontology does not further elaborate
the ontological features that can explain the evolution of such constructs into collectively
recognized objects such as money; that is, objects whose existence presupposes social
understanding.
In light of the above, we combine Bunge’s ontological view with Searle’s ontological view that is
strictly designed for expressing socially related phenomena. Specifically, we suggest the former as
a reference framework for explaining observer-independent phenomena, and the latter as a comple-
mentary framework for explaining observer-relative phenomena. At its core, Searle’s ontology
includes three primitives to describe the basic structure of social realities: collective intentionality,
the assignment of function and constitutive rules. Collective intentionality is the intentionality that
is shared by different people, where intentionality means the capacity of the mind to represent
objects and states of affairs in the world other than itself. Individual (or subjective) intentionality
allows a distinction between objective entities and subjective entities. The former is equivalent to
the notion of ‘things’ in Bunge’s ontology. That is, objects in the universe whose mode of existence
is independent of any perceiver or any mental state (e.g. mountains). The latter are objects whose
mode of existence depends on being perceived by individuals (e.g. pains). When this mode of
existence is further acknowledged by a collective intentionality (i.e. by a certain social group), such
objects are further promoted to a level of social institutions (e.g. the USA). Through the assignment
of function, social institutions may be associated by people with certain features. Unlike substantial
properties, these features are never intrinsic to the physics of any phenomenon but are assigned
from outside by conscious observers (i.e. observer relative). The acknowledgement of such assign-
ments is achieved within any given society through the representation (in language) of constitutive
rules in the form of ‘X counts as Y in Z’. As an ontological entity, each social institution can be
associated with an underlying substantial object (e.g. money and a piece of paper) for which consti-
tutive rules can assign additional observer-relative features (e.g. a piece of paper (X) counts as $20
(Y) in the country Canada (Z)). However, collective intentionality also allows for the assignment of
function to social institutions for which there is no underlying physical object (e.g. money realized
with the use of debit cards). Furthermore, the establishment and acceptance of constitutive rules in
a society creates a deontic power. That is, the mode of existence and functions assigned to a social

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Victoria Lemieux and Lior Limonad

institution continue to exist after its initial creation and even after all the participants involved have
stopped thinking about its initial creation. In short, social realities introduce a new type of entity
termed social institutions. These entities can be associated with underlying substantial objects or
can be independent of any physical mode of existence. They may also be associated with features
that are independent of any intrinsic properties of any substantial phenomenon.

4.  Example: constructing a domain-specific language

In the following section we give an example of how the integrated/combined ontological founda-
tions can be used to clarify the meaning of concepts that describe the internal structure of finan-
cial records through the production of a designated modelling language for the creation of
financial scripts (i.e. visual diagrams). The extended ontology described above is then used to
provide clear and accurate semantics (i.e. meaning in the financial domain) to all modelling
constructs that are part of the language’s grammar to ensure that records are faithful representa-
tions of the financial domain. The methodological process that is pursued for the creation of the
modelling language is an iterative procedure of exploring the knowledge that exists in literature
(about the collapse of Lehman Brothers) in a progressive pattern. In each iteration, the knowledge
gained plays two roles:
1. A source from which new modelling constructs are identified.
2. A target according to which conceptual models that are produced using the modelling grammar
can be verified to validate the consistency of the language and its effectiveness.
In order to identify the modelling constructs to be included in the grammar, we deeply immersed
ourselves in both popular and technical literature on the subject of the Lehman Brothers collapse to
build a knowledge base about events identified in the literature as having contributed to the col-
lapse, economic conditions and a diverse range of factors implicated in the collapse (see www.
ciferresearch.org). Having assembled our knowledge base we conducted a textual analysis resulting
in a semi-structured chronological narrative of key events from which we extracted key concepts
and their relationships. To simplify this task, and in accordance with other modelling languages
(e.g. the UML), we decided to split the analysis effort into static and dynamic aspects of the financial
domain. In this paper we focus only on the former (the latter will form part of our future work). We
acknowledge that the transformation from semi-structured narrative into a formal modelling
grammar is not a straightforward challenge. To overcome it, we used ‘rich pictures’ as a technique
for transforming informal representations of the collapse, from which formal representations could
be more easily derived [15, 16]. Following construction of rich picture diagrams of our domain of
analysis, we set about to define our static modelling language. At this stage, we used the rich pic-
tures to identify the constructs and their inter-relationships necessary to complete our modelling
grammar (i.e. the abstract syntax of the language). To illustrate this abstract syntax, we developed a
meta-model, which communicates the grammars and semantics of a modelling language or ontology
and explains the constructs of the language and their relationships. For example, a meta-model for
a part of Bunge’s ontology has been constructed in Rosemann and Green [17]. The result is illus-
trated in Figure 1.
We then mapped each grammatical construct to those concepts in Bunge’s ontology that we iden-
tified as being most similar. Based on the relationships between the concepts in Bunge’s ontology
and the constructs in our modelling grammar, we further refined the meaning (i.e. ontological
semantics) given to each construct. Finally, we associated each construct and relationship in the
grammar with a corresponding graphical notation (i.e. concrete syntax). This resulted in a full
specification for a domain-specific language intended to describe the static substantial aspects of the
financial domain.
On completion of this work, we had all the grammatical elements needed to model the Lehman
Brothers collapse but we recognized, however, that it lacked the subtlety needed to express some

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Victoria Lemieux and Lior Limonad

owns

1..1 has 0..* 2..*  has

«abstract»
1..1

0..*
Role
Actor

0..1
-name : string
-name : string
0..* «abstract» 1..*
FinancialAsset
0..* FinancialInstrument
Non-financial relationship
-name : string
 securedBy

sub
Person Institution FinancialSystem
-MacroEconomics 0..*

Plain Tranche Derivative Collateralized

1..*
partOf 
1..*

Environment residesWithin restricts

1..1  derived from

0..*
1..*
0..*
Structured Product
«abstract»
Policy distinct elements

Legend
«abstract» Abstract Class : a unification of A Generalization (“IS-A”) : each
Class Name all its sub-class members . Each element in B (termed the “sub -
EventPolicy StatePolicy member must be a member of at class”) is also an element of A
least one sub -class. B (termed the “super -class”)

A Domain Specific Class : a set A Decomposition (“Part-of” ) :

Class Name
of elements that share common each element in A (termed the
-property1
properties . Each class has a “whole” ) is comprised of the
-property2 B
corresponding graphic notation . elements in B (termed the
A “parts”)
Relationship : each element in A is associated with elements in B . The cardinality
0..* constraints on each side determine the lower and upper bounds for the number of
1..1 elements that correspond with a single element on the other side of the
relationship .
B

Fig. 1.   Abstract syntax.

of the record-related problems identified in the literature as having contributed to the collapse.
We wondered, for example, how we could communicate such notions as monetary value associ-
ated with mortgages and related derivatives products, such as collateralized debt obligations and
credit default swaps, with our existing modelling language. It was at this point that we recognized
a need for an additional layer of expressiveness that captures social concepts. We identified
Searle’s ontology as providing us with the missing apparatus. To extend the ontological view
provided by Bunge with the necessary features to express socially related phenomena, we com-
bined it with Searle’s ontological view which, as noted above, is strictly designed for such purposes.
Specifically, we employed Searle’s ontology as a complementary framework for explaining
observer-relative phenomena. To achieve this, we extended the semantic interpretation of our
language by mapping the constructs in our modelling grammar to those provided by Searle. We
also linked our own and Searle’s concepts back to those in Bunge’s ontology to realize an inte-
grated ontological framework for our domain-specific modelling language. The results of this
work appear in Table 1.
A major challenge for us in mapping Searle’s ontological concepts to Bunge’s and our own con-
structs is that they are not as tightly or logically defined as Bunge’s. Searle does not provide clear
and exact definitions; in some places concepts seem to overlap or shift meaning, making it chal-
lenging to extrapolate meaning from his definitions. With extrapolation of clear definitions of
Searle’s constructs from his texts, we concluded that the combination of Bunge’s and Searle’s
ontologies provided us with a sufficiently expressive grammar to explain the static aspect of our
domain of analysis.

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Victoria Lemieux and Lior Limonad

Table 1
Ontological construct chart

Modelling Construct’s integrated Bunge’s

construct meaning concept Concept’s meaning Searle’s concept Concept’s meaning

Person A type of objective A thing The elementary concept An objective An object whose
entity (i.e. thing); a in the ontological model.  entity mode of existence is
participant in the The real world is made independent of any
financial system up of things (that possess perceiver or any
substantial properties) mental state
Institution A type of thing which A composite A thing in itself but that A subjective An object whose
is a composite of social thing is made up of other entity; a social mode of existence
and objective entities things (composite or institution depends on being
such as people, primitive) and that yields perceived by
machines and legal new (emergent) individuals;
entities properties acknowledged by
collective
intentionality; may
be assigned observer-
relative features
Financial A type of social entity A thing See ‘person’ A subjective See ‘institution’
asset owned by an actor in a entity; a social
financial system institution
Financial A type of social entity A composite See ‘institution’ A subjective See ‘institution’
instrument assigned to certain roles thing (also entity; a social
in a financial system see ‘Role’) institution
Plain A type of financial A thing See ‘person’ A subjective See ‘institution’
instrument instrument in its entity; a social
primitive form institution
Tranche A type of financial A composite See ‘institution’ A subjective See ‘institution’
instrument composed thing entity; a social
of more than one plain institution
instruments
Derivative A type of financial A thing See ‘person’ A subjective See ‘institution’
instrument instrument derived entity; a social
from more than one institution
plain instruments
Structured A type of derivative A composite See ‘institution’ A subjective See ‘institution’
instrument instrument that is thing entity; a social
structured to perform a institution
specific role by specific
actors in a financial
system
Collateralized A type of financial A thing See ‘institution’ A subjective See ‘institution’
instrument instrument secured by entity; a social
a financial asset institution
Macro- Observer-relative A property A feature that some An observer- Features assigned to
economic feature of the financial (of the substantial individual relative feature
entities that are
conditions system (e.g. GDP) financial possesses even if we are dependent on us for
system) ignorant of this fact their existence
(expressed using
constitutive rules)
Role An assignment of status A set of 1. Mutual property – a An agentive Agentive feature –
to an actor in the mutual property (see ‘Macro- assignment of the assignment
financial system with properties, economic conditions’) function requires continuous
regard to a certain acquired by that is meaningful (observer- intentionality on the
financial instrument some only in the context of relative features) part of the users for
(e.g. ‘buyer’) instances of a two or more things to an entity their maintenance
class when 2. Class – set of instances (e.g. the functionality
they engage that possess a set of of a screwdriver)
in interaction common properties
[18] 3. Interaction – one thing
acts on another thing
(i.e. changes its state)
(continued)

Journal of Information Science, 37 (1) 2011, pp. 29–39 © CILIP, DOI: 10.1177/0165551510391359 37
Victoria Lemieux and Lior Limonad

Table 1 (continued)

Modelling Construct’s integrated Bunge’s

construct meaning concept Concept’s meaning Searle’s concept Concept’s meaning

Policy A regulation or a A law (state 1. State law – restricts Regulative rules Rules that regulate
guideline that is law or event the possible values of certain activities (as
intended to constrain law) property functions of a opposed to
or encourage certain thing constitutive rules
behaviours of a person 2. Event law – restricts that create the very
or an institution within possible event possibility of certain
a financial system transformations activities, e.g. the
rules of chess)
Financial A type of system A system A set of things is a A social system All the objects that
system comprised of actors system if, for any (i.e. social are the result of
(persons and bi-partitioning of the set, reality) intentionality – i.e.
institutions), roles, couplings exist among the capacity of the
financial instruments, things in the two subsets mind to represent
financial assets, objects and states of
policies, and possibly affairs in the worlds
other financial systems other than itself
(i.e., also a composite
thing)
Environment Those things or sets of The 1. Immediate N/A N/A
things which exist immediate environment – the
outside of the financial and total environment of a thing
system environments x is the set of all
things, other than
those that are
components (i.e. part
of) x, that act on or are
acted upon the latter
(i.e. all things coupled
with components of
the system)
2. Total environment –
the set of all things
that are not parts
of the system

5.  Contributions and conclusions

We see our research as making three main contributions:
1. Confirming and extending Yeo’s definition of records as representations.
2. Extracting and expressing clear definitions for Searle’s ontological constructions from his main
texts.
3. Developing a static modelling language for a specific domain of analysis that illustrates how
Bunge’s and Searle’s ontological constructs can be integrated to achieve a richer grammatical
explanatory tool. This tool can be used to assess the expressiveness of any grammar that is
intended to describe similar domains.
Our integration of archival and records management theory and methods with IS theory and
methods contributes not only to innovation in the field of archives and records management as
discussed above but also presents an opportunity to innovate in the IS field. Specifically, the chal-
lenge of modelling information failures in the collapse of Lehman Brothers spurred us on to devel-
oping an original grammar with which to model our domain of analysis. In doing so, we came to
recognize limitations in the expressiveness of Bunge’s ontological application to IS for this purpose
and to identify and apply Searle’s social ontology as a tool to achieve a greater level of expressive-
ness in our modelling language. In order to apply Searle’s ontology, it was necessary for us to extract

Journal of Information Science, 37 (1) 2011, pp. 29–39 © CILIP, DOI: 10.1177/0165551510391359 38
Victoria Lemieux and Lior Limonad

from his main texts the key concepts of his ontological view of the world and to clarify the meaning
of his concepts where we identified certain ambiguities. We acknowledge that the construct meanings
presented in Table 1 represent our interpretation of Searle and that this interpretation may be
flawed; we welcome future discourse on the interpretation of Searle’s ontological concepts as a
means of validating and, as necessary, refining our definitions.
Our research has resulted in a unique mutually dependent and reinforcing-integration of Bunge’s
and Searle’s ontologies to achieve a modelling language specifically designed for use in expressing
crisis and contagion in financial markets. We accept that existing constructs and language could be
used to model this domain; however, we contend that this unique integration of basic grammatical
constructs produces more subtle and flexible models ultimately capable of expressing much greater
complexity than existing approaches might otherwise afford. Here again, we acknowledge another
limitation of our work; namely, that our modelling language and model has not yet been empirically
validated. Our hope is that peer discourse and review of our domain grammar will constitute one
form of validation. We also plan to expose our modelling language and resultant domain model to
experts in the collapse of Lehman Brothers (bankers, securities and bank regulators, and the bank-
ruptcy administrators) to obtain their feedback as a further mechanism for empirical validation of
our work.

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