"isA" and "asA" Relationships

In modeling the world, (object-oriented, entity-relationship, etc), the emphasis has been on distinguishing between "is-a" relationships and "has-a" relationships. (human isA mammal, human hasA head) There is another fundamental relationship that is under-emphasized in modeling; namely, the "as-a" relationship. This is the relationship between an entity and a "role" that that entity can take on. Many putative "entities" (e.g. customer, employee, etc) are not really entities at all, but are "roles" that the actual entity (e.g. a person) can take on. [see a case study here]

Roles are often implemented as classes, and multiple-inheritance is used [or worse, lots of glue code is written] to gain the lexical convenience of referencing joe.employeeID and joe.resign() versus joe.employeeRole.getID() and joe.employeeRole.resign(). Of course, "static" classes can be used to encapsulate the role details resulting in AsEmployee(joe).resign() references.