Organizations increasingly need to build an enterprise-wide capability to leverage technology that is distributed in different business units. Some organizations establish enterprise architecture (EA) standards to enable greater compatibility of IT components and integration of applications and data across the enterprise. Through a firm-level survey, we sought to answer two key questions about the use of EA standards: (1) How do different governance mechanisms affect the use of EA standards? and ( 2) To what extent does the use of EA standards help organizations to improve the sharing and integration of IT resources across the enterprise? We identified four key governance mechanisms for EA standards management and examined how each mechanism affected the use of EA standards. We also examined how the use of EA standards affects the management of IT infrastructure, applications, and data resources across business units. Our empirical results showed that the use of EA standards is effective in helping organizations to better manage their IT resources. Our study also provides detailed insights into how organizations can set up governance mechanisms to facilitate the use of EA standards in achieving enterprise-wide goals.

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The career paths less (or more) traveled : a sequence analysis of IT career histories, mobility patterns, and career success

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The knowledge-based view of the firm has led to greater theoretical interest in how organizations integrate their knowledge resources embedded in people's expertise. We examine the knowledge integration problem in geographically dispersed professional organizations in which experts work in project teams. From consideration of coordination costs and local ties, we argue that (1) the organization will develop specialized expertise within local sites, (2) managers will not cross geographic boundaries to staff a project unless bringing on a distant expert helps meet customer requirements, (3) cross-site connections help less needed members participate in dispersed projects, and (4) dispersed projects that have a better match of expertise generate higher net earnings. We tested these hypotheses using archival data and interviews in a geographically dispersed professional service organization. We examined how managers staffed 493 local and dispersed projects over a five-year period, and the financial outcomes of these projects. Managers created dispersed projects comparatively rarely; they did so when scarce expertise from other sites was needed to match customers' project requirements. Dispersed projects garnered higher net earnings than local projects when there was a better match of scarce expertise to project requirements. However, a curvilinear relationship was observed, such that a very high percentage of dispersed experts on a project increased coordination costs and reduced net earnings. Our study extends the knowledge-based view by showing how considerations of coordination costs and social ties affect knowledge integration in the geographically dispersed organization. The study also shows empirically the managerial tradeoffs that encourage or discourage dispersed collaboration.