Institutional Perspectives on the Process of Enterprise Architecture Adoption
- PDF / 476,102 Bytes
- 13 Pages / 595.276 x 790.866 pts Page_size
- 0 Downloads / 184 Views
Institutional Perspectives on the Process of Enterprise Architecture Adoption Duong Dang 1
&
Samuli Pekkola 2
# The Author(s) 2019
Abstract Organizations often adopt enterprise architecture (EA) when planning how best to develop their information technology (IT) or businesses, for strategic management, or generally for managing change initiatives. This variety of different uses affects many stakeholders within and between organizations. Because stakeholders have dissimilar backgrounds, positions, assumptions, and activities, they respond differently to changes and the potential problems that emerge from those changes. This situation creates contradictions and conflicts between stakeholders that may further influence project activities and ultimately determine how EA is adopted. In this paper, we examine how institutional pressures influence EA adoption. Based on a qualitative case study of two cases, we show how regulative, normative, and cognitive pressures influence stakeholders’ activities and behaviors during the process of EA adoption. Our contribution thus lies in identifying roles of institutional pressures in different phases during the process of EA adoption and how it changes overtime. The results provide insights into EA adoption and the process of institutionalization, which help to explain emergent challenges in EA adoption. Keywords Enterprise architecture . EA adoption . Institutional theory . Institutionalization process
1 Introduction Enterprise architecture (EA) attempts to improve alignment between business and information technology (IT) management and support IT planning and decision-making (Magoulas et al. 2012; Ross 2009; Simon et al. 2014;). EA is of interest to both private- and public-sector organizations. For example, the United States and Finland, where a large number of such projects have been implemented, have enacted laws that oblige state agencies to use EA, such as the Clinger-Cohen Act 1996 and the E-Government Act 2002. Because multiple actors participate in or are affected by such projects (Jonkers et al. 2006; Shah and Kourdi
* Duong Dang [email protected] Samuli Pekkola [email protected] 1
School of Technology and Innovations, University of Vaasa, Vaasa, Finland
2
Faculty of Management and Business, Tampere University, Tampere, Finland
2007), understanding all stakeholders’ perspectives is crucial for successful adoption (Dang and Pekkola 2016). EA adoption refers to how organizations actually use EA, or how EA works there (Dang and Pekkola, 2017). EA is adopted through EA projects or EA programs consisting of several projects. EA adoption process is a process where EA becomes a mundane practice of an organization (Iyamu 2009; Weiss et al. 2013). Although the process includes many phases, there are different views (c.f., Armour and Kaisler 2001; Armour et al. 1999; Banaeianjahromi and Smolander 2017). For example, Banaeianjahromi and Smolander (2017) identified three phases: pre-development, development, and post-development, while Armour and colleagues (Armour
Data Loading...
