The role of organizational culture for grounding, management, guidance and effectiveness of enterprise architecture principles

Abstract

Enterprise architecture management (EAM) has become a widely acknowledged approach for guiding the continuous change of increasingly complex organizations. While methods and models for describing and analyzing enterprise architectures (EA) have been extensively discussed, principles guiding an EA's design and evolution are hardly covered in existing research. The paper at hand therefore analyzes the mechanisms of EA principles (EAP), that is EAP grounding, EAP management, and EAP guidance and their effects on EA consistency and EAM utility. Specifically we aim at understanding the role of organizational culture for the mechanisms and effects of EAP. Based on empirical data we find that all relations describing EAP mechanisms and their effects are significantly moderated by organizational culture. Based on our findings we give recommendations on how to deal with selected design decisions when introducing and developing EA principles in an organization.

Enterprise architecture implementation as interpersonal connection: Building support and commitment

“…Schniederjans and Yadav (2013) found that trust issues still persist between architects and business stakeholders, adversely affecting EAI outcomes. Researchers have sought to explain the "gap" in the architect and stakeholder relationship in terms of differences in the motivations and viewpoints of architects and stakeholders (Faller & De Kinderen, 2014), organizational incentives and rewards (Foorthuis et al, 2016), conflicting assumptions and expectations associated with EAI activities (Aier, 2014), and the inability of architects to coordinate EAI activities across different functional groups (Espinosa, Armour, & Boh, 2010). Sessions (2009) describes the gap between architects and their stakeholders in terms of sensemaking and argues that stakeholders may have difficulty engaging with the EAI and that architects must eliminate any barriers to stakeholder understanding: "sometimes there is an atmosphere of mystique around enterprise architecture that makes it unnecessarily complicated, resulting in lack of understanding by the people that need to understand it" (Sessions, 2009, p. 9).…”

“…Authors' prescriptions for improving relations with stakeholders are varied and include enhanced management training of architects (Donaldson et al, 2015), increased business exposure for architects (Ross et al, 2006), more vigorous and rigorous use of structured methods (Aier & Schelp, 2010), and a variety of mechanisms for facilitating closer interaction between architects and stakeholders, such as methods for understanding organizational culture and subcultures (Aier, 2014), governance processes (Mocker, Ross, & Hopkins, 2015), and interdisciplinary architecture teams and liaison positions (Aier, Riege, & Winter, 2008;Strano & Rehmani, 2007). Some researchers have proposed new methodologies specifically designed to facilitate more significant stakeholder involvement (Jahani, Reza Seyyed Javadein, & Abedi Jafari, 2010).…”

“…For over two decades, researchers and practitioners have acknowledged the importance of social factors to the outcomes of an EAI and have made important contributions to EAI practice in laying out the different types of social conditions associated with EAI failure and success. Spewak (1992) recommended that in the planning stage of an EAI, architects liaise with executive management to build awareness and support for the EAI, and Smolander and Rossi (2008), Aier (2014), and Faller and De Kinderen (2014) have examined the potentially negative effect of organizational politics and culture on EAI outcomes. Faller and De Kinderen (2014) examined the impact of cultural diversity on the effectiveness of architects, including their ability to communicate with their stakeholders.…”

A systems perspective on contact centers and customer service reliability modeling

“…The common goal shared by all its components is to provide the necessary and promised support for its customers. Therefore, having a contact center system design can be a valuable basis for the process guiding the evolution of an organization by providing adequate representation of the current and desired states of the enterprise …”

Enterprise Architects Should Follow the Money

“…Is it because of the skills and behaviors of the enterprise architects or is it because they have the ability to connect content with money? Although we are aware of the growing number of research on organizational culture and EA, more research is needed to get a better understanding of what determines successful involvement of EA in IT decision-making and what not [36], [37].…”