Negotiating language barriers – a methodology for cross‐organisational conceptual modelling

In common scenarios conceptual modelling is a methodology that – using semi‐formal languages – has a high degree of freedom and is used to visualise certain aspects of a problem domain. However, especially in cross‐organisational or international scenarios this freedom leads to many inconsistencies and conflicts. Therefore the restriction of the freedom of modelling is often discussed in the literature to counter the missing standardisation and to enhance the comparability of models. However, to be able to express certain concepts embedded within some distinguished environment (purpose, culture, infrastructure, language, terminology) models have to be domain‐specific on the one hand, but comparable to models in other domains on the other hand. In this article a new approach is presented that offers a framework for restricted modelling without destroying the adaptability to certain different domains. The methodology includes an algorithm for comparing models in different domains and is therefore capable to not only dissolve certain standard comparability conflicts but also the domain conflict.