Standardising the business vocabulary of standards

Abstract

In the area of standardisation for inter-organisational business processes, terminology confusion is slowly emerging. The meaning of the concept "standard" is not as clear as many people and organisations seem to assume. This paper looks into the various definitions of a standard and four similarly used concepts: specification, recommendation, framework and pattern. When examining the various definitions, four different definitions types were identified: the item itself; the process of creating the item; the document describing how to create the item; and the process of creating this particular document. Furthermore, the standardisation efforts described in this paper for the most cases do not define their business vocabulary, meaning that there is some risk for terminology confusion. The conclusion is that there is a need to perform thorough concepts definitions and conceptual modelling in this area.