Ontologies in knowledge management support: A case study

Information and knowledge are true assets in modern organizations. In order to cope with the need to manage these assets, corporations have invested in a set of practices that are conventionally called knowledge management. This article presents a case study on the development and the evaluation of ontologies that was conducted within the scope of a knowledge management project undertaken by the second largest Brazilian energy utility. Ontologies have different applications and can be used in knowledge management, in information retrieval, and in information systems, to mention but a few. Within the information systems realm, ontologies are generally used as system models, but their usage has not been restricted to software development. We advocate that, once assessed as to its content, an ontology may provide benefits to corporate communication and, therefore, provide support to knowledge management initiatives. We expect to further contribute by describing possibilities for the application of ontologies within organizational environments.