No abstract

The circular economy is central to the agenda of responsible production and consumption with propositions for the conservation of natural resources and a broader understanding of the obligations of enterprises and product developers. The circular economy is challenging traditional operating models of enterprises due to the need to manage larger parts of the product life cycle and value chains. A linear economy will normally address a smaller part of the life cycle. The operating models of companies are supported with respect to information and technology with an enterprise architecture model. This article examines the necessary steps for analysing and designing the enterprise architecture model, aiming to facilitate the transformation of an enterprise from operating in a linear to operating in a circular economy model. The fundamentals and requirements of the circular economy enterprise are extracted to isolate the design requirements for the operating model, entailing cross-enterprise collaboration, traceability, and a broader value chain understanding. Furthermore, it conceptualizes enterprise architecture and its role and importance in connecting business strategies and operating technologies. This article develops an enterprise architecture framework, named the Circular Economy Enterprise Architecture Framework (CEEAF), which can form and support the effort of transitioning companies or be embedded into existing enterprise architecture frameworks. The CEEAF differs from traditional enterprise architecture frameworks by addressing the broader responsibility of the enterprise, the extended enterprise, the elimination of end-of-life perspectives and mind-sets, and the capabilities of the individual enterprise and its design activities.

This paper is presenting a discussion of feral information systems (FIS) in relationship to enterprise architecture (EA) thereby aiming to better qualify the architectural understanding of information systems not in line with corporate IT/IS strategy and policies. A qualitative and case-based approach is used as empirical foundation of this paper. With users developing own IS, classical strategy-based EA approaches are challenged. Identifying FIS can strongly improve insight into organizational processes and shortcomings official EA. A functional and temporal perspective is proposed to guide EA processes to embrace unofficial, user-driven systems. As FIS tend not to follow any rules of corporate IS, EA embrace of FIS is more complex. Using a meta-model for the social and operational character of FIS this complexity can be managed along with the improve business insight. The recognition of FIS in EA both opens up for insight in local adaptations of business processes, but can also create room for low-cost innovation and rapid response to changes in business conditions. Several forecasts are suggesting corporate IT/IS to be more user-driven and with reduced control from IT/IS professionals. This paper is opening a discussion on EA practice when centralized control is assumed to decline. EA has a tendency to be developed "top-down" emphasizing strategic alignment. In this contributed it is suggested to include social and operational alignment in EA practice.

Feral systems have largely been regarded as the users' response to discrepancies between official IT software systems and actual business processes. Inadequacies, discrepancies, and absence of systems support to work processes might lead to users initiating systems development themselves: systems involving any combination of software and manual processes. Feral systems are unofficial and exhibit a conflict between formal and actual operational implementation. In this chapter, the use and implementation of feral systems in Denmark are analysed and discussed. It is found interesting to aim for an understanding of feral systems in a small, relatively agile economy with traditionally positive to rapid adoption of information technology in enterprises. The method being used is qualitative case studies in selected companies representing various complexities of their respective business models and industries. The case studies address both issues of organisational and technological nature of the feral systems typically with an offset in the companies' overall information systems architecture. Among findings are (1) feral systems as a known choice when reflecting business processes with open and non-routinised character, (2) a general acceptance not related to the size or industry, (3) feral systems have received attention as implementations of innovation, (4) feral systems start as opposed to formal and official systems, but during their lifetime they can drift towards a more official status, and (5) feral systems are accepted as low-cost solutions to fill gaps in business process support where ERP systems come short.