EMPIRISCHE VALIDIERUNG VON INTEGRATIONSTYPEN AM BEISPIEL UNTERNEHMENSÜBERGREIFENDER INTEGRATION

Integration wird oft als das Ur- und Hauptthema der Wirtschaftsinformatik angesehen [23, 29]. Mergers & Acquisitions [15], Enterprise Application Integration (EAI) [13], Datenintegration [10], unternehmensübergreifende B2B-Prozessintegration [3] oder die Integration von fachlichen Strukturen und deren informationstechnische Unterstützung im Rahmen des Business/IT Alignment [19] sind nur einige Beispiele für die sehr unterschiedlichen Erscheinungsformen von Integrationsprojekten. In einer phänomenologischen Betrachtung lassen sich daraus beispielsweise Integrationsdimensionen wie Integrationsform (verschmelzende vs. verknüpfende Integration), Integrationsreichweite (bereichsweite, unternehmensweite vs. unternehmensübergreifende Integration), Integrationsobjekt (Daten-, Funktions- vs. Prozessintegration) oder Integrationsrichtung (vertikale vs. horizontale Integration) unterscheiden [11, 21]. Eine solche phänomenologische Betrachtung bleibt jedoch immer unvollständig und eignet sich darum nur unzureichend, eine handhabbare Anzahl fundamentaler Integrationstypen zu definieren und sie methodisch zu unterstützen. Die Identifikation von abgrenzbaren Integrationstypen ist jedoch von Bedeutung, da es auf Grund der Heterogenität von Integrationsprojekten keine „one-size-fits-all“-Methode gibt, sondern im Sinne des Situational Method Engineering [2, 9, 16, 28] jeweils geeigneter situativer Methoden bedarf. Die fundamentalen Integrationstypen können die Basis für Methodenfragmente bilden, aus welchen situative Methoden erstellt werden können. Winter [31] hat darum vorgeschlagen, Integrationstypen nicht phänomenologisch, sondern auf Basis abstrakter Zusammenhänge in Unternehmensarchitektur- Metamodellen zu definieren. Ziel dieses Beitrags ist es, anhand verschiedener Integrationsauf-gaben die vorgeschlagenen Integrationstypen am Beispiel der unternehmensübergreifenden Integration empirisch zu überprüfen. Im Folgenden werden dazu bestehende Arbeiten im Bereich Integration analysiert, um daraus die hier adressierte Forschungslücke abzuleiten und die von Winter vorgeschlagenen Integrationstypen vorzustellen (Abschnitt 2). Anschließend werden in Abschnitt 3 das Vorgehen sowie die Befunde der empirischen Untersuchung vorgestellt. Abschnitt 4 diskutiert die Ergebnisse der Untersuchung sowie die sich daraus ergebenden Implikationen. In Abschnitt 5 erfolgen eine Zusammenfassung sowie der Ausblick auf den weiteren Forschungsbedarf

A FRAMEWORK FOR THE STRATEGIC POSITIONING OF INTRA-COMPANY ICT RESEARCH ORGANIZATIONS

By the early twentieth century, Schumpeter had already stressed the importance of innovation for a sustainable development of enterprises. Innovation is especially important for information and com-munication technology (ICT) companies as their business model is based on rapidly changing tech-nology. They therefore often profit from innovation developed in intra-company research organiza-tions. However, ICT research organisations often face a special challenge: the integration of research results into existing ICT architectures. This challenge has neither been analysed in literature on in-formation systems nor on innovation management. In order to gain a deeper understanding of this challenge, we analysed case studies in four intra-company research organisations, among them one in-depth case study. Our research shows that an intra-company ICT research organisation can make a decision based on three important strategic parameters: (a) the desired degree of innovativeness, (b) the desired degree of integrability into existing architecture, and (c) the desired degree of orientation towards prospective users’ needs. Based on our case study analysis, we argue that these three strate-gic goals are concurrent, i.e. to achieve one of them makes it difficult to achieve the others. Adhering to contingency theory, we believe that there is not one best strategic position, but that the quality of a strategic position depends on environmental contingency factors. In addition to the development of the framework, we consider contingency theory and formulate two hypothetical propositions. They de-scribe stable strategic positions of intra-company ICT research organisations in our framework, de-pendent on contingency factors. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first research publication dealing with the special requirements of intra-company ICT research organizations and the challenge of integration. Nevertheless, our research is limited by its exploratory nature and by the relatively small number of case studies taken. For generating more hypotheses, further explorative research in the field has to be done. Moreover, in order to confirm the assumptions our framework is based upon and the hypothetical propositions generated, further confirmative research is necessary

An Exploration of Enterprise Architecture Research

Management of the enterprise architecture has become increasingly recognized as a crucial part of both business and IT management. Still, a common understanding and methodological consistency seems far from being developed. Acknowledging the significant role of research in moving the development process along, this article employs different bibliometric methods, complemented by an extensive qualitative interpretation of the research field, to provide a unique overview of the enterprise architecture literature. After answering our research questions about the collaboration via co-authorships, the intellectual structure of the research field and its most influential works, and the principal themes of research, we propose an agenda for future research based on the findings from the above analyses and their comparison to empirical insights from the literature. In particular, our study finds a considerable degree of co-authorship clustering and a positive impact of the extent of co-authorship on the diffusion of works on enterprise architecture. In addition, this article identifies three major research streams and shows that research to date has revolved around specific themes, while some of high practical relevance receive minor attention. Hence, the contribution of our study is manifold and offers support for researchers and practitioners alike