Abstract
To properly understand organizational adaptation and innovation, it is critical to understand the emergence phenomenon, i.e., how the capabilities of a system emerge after changes. However, for this, we should be able to explain systems, their structure, behavior, and capabilities. In pursuit of an understanding of the emergence phenomenon and the nature of those new kinds of systems in organizations, we propose a well-founded system core ontology based on the Unified Foundational Ontology. The ontology is also grounded in system science definitions and disposition theories. For a more integrated explanation of emergence, the proposed ontology considers distinct perspectives of a system, such as its composition, structure, properties, and functions. In the end, we discuss the applications and implications of the proposed ontology on the enterprise architecture area and emergence modeling.