The paradigm of service-oriented computing (SOC) has emerged as an approach to provide flexibility and agility, not just in systems development but also in business process management. This modular approach to defining business flows as technology independent services has gained unanimous popularity among end-users and technology vendors alike. Although there is a significant amount of ongoing research on the potential of service oriented architectures (SOAs), there is a paucity of research literature on the factors affecting the adoption of service-oriented computing in practice. This paper reviews the current state of the technology, identifies the factors influencing the decision to adopt service-oriented computing as an enterprise strategy and discusses the associated research literature, and concludes with a suggested research agenda and conceptual framework for investigating the use of service-oriented computing in practice.

The paradigm of service-oriented computing (SOC) has emerged as an architectural approach to flexibility and agility, not just in systems development but also in business process management. There is, however, a paucity of critical research assessing the strategic impact of SOA on the competitiveness of organizations. Some research literature in strategic management indicates that firms may gain a competitive advantage in rapidly changing market environments by concentrating on their dynamic capabilities-i.e., product flexibility and agility in organizational transformation in response to rapidly changing market conditions and customer requirements. The intent of this paper is to analyze the conduits through which service-oriented architectures (SOAs) may exert influence on dynamic capabilities within firms. The results could potentially assist in evaluating if and how the adoption of service-oriented architecture may help achieve key dynamic capabilities, giving the enterprise a competitive edge.

Abstract. The paradigm of service-oriented computing (SOC) has emerged as an approach to provide flexibility and agility, not just in systems development but also in business process management. This modular approach to defining business flows as technology independent services has gained unanimous popularity among end-users and technology vendors alike. Although there is a significant amount of research ongoing on the technology implementations of service oriented architectures (SOAs), there is a paucity of research literature on the factors affecting the adoption of service-oriented computing and the realization of business value in practice. This paper empirically examines the adoption of SOC as an enterprise strategy across fifteen firms, and discusses the organizational constraints that influence the enterprise adoption and implementation of SOA. In doing so, this paper fills a crucial gap in the academic literature about the practical use of SOA as an enterprise strategy for agility, and lays the groundwork for future work on SOA alignment with organizational strategy. The paper also provides practitioners with guidelines for the successful implementation of SOA to achieve business value.