Proposing a Delphi-derived, inter-enterprise service-oriented architecture maturity model

Companies have long sought to integrate existing Information Systems (IS) in order to support existing and potentially new business processes spread throughout their “territories” and possibly to collaborating organizations. A variety of designs can be used to this end, ranging from rigid point-to-point electronic data interchange (EDI) interactions to “Web auctions”. By updating older technologies, such as “Internet-enabling” EDI-based systems, companies can make their IT systems available to internal or external customers; but the resulting systems have not proven to be flexible enough to meet business demands. A more flexible, standardized architecture is required to better support the connection of various applications and the sharing of data. Service- Oriented Architecture (SOA) is one such architecture. It unifies (“orchestrates”) business processes by structuring large applications as an ad-hoc collection of smaller modules called “Services”. These applications can be used by different groups of people both inside and outside the company, and new applications built from a mix of services (located in a global repository) exhibit greater agility and uniformity

When standards is not enough to secure interoperability and competitiveness for European exporters

What is the impact of a Service-oriented Architecture (SOA) on the efficiency and effectiveness of business process standardization (BPS)? The contribution of this paper is the development of a research model around the impact of SOA on BPS in terms of achieving fundamental efficiency and flexibility potentials while covering both the business layer and the IT layer of the firm. Drawing on an accepted and widespread enterprise architecture model, we derive propositions that explain why and how SOA’s characteristics help to standardize business processes and how the interplay between SOA and BPS leads to an increased overall business value. Additional moderator arguments, such as the level of service granularity, the centrality of SOA governance, or Business IT alignment, are added to the research model as critical success factors of achieving business value of SOA

Business intelligence and contribution of entrepreneurial information architecture

We are witnessing the need for a quick and intelligent reaction from organizations to the level and speed of change in business processes. The arising problems can be: from wrong lasting information; systems not fully used or explored; slow reaction to change; etc. This requires two main confluent action methods: people to synchronize their visions, ideas and strategies in the whole organization; and, in that context, select the information that strictly answers to the performance factors at the right moment. The proposed methodology turns to the potential of approach to the entrepreneurial architecture as well as to the potential of the information system in order to integrate the data and resources needed for that performance. The modeling of an information architecture of the company and its business helps in the identification of critical information, the one which is according to the mission, prospects and business success factors

A Literature Review of Business/IT Alignment Strategies

AbstractIn the last years, the alignment issue was addressed in several researches and numerous methods, techniques and tools were proposed. Indeed, the business and IT performance are tightly coupled, and enterprises cannot be competitive if their business and IT strategies are not aligned. This paper proposes a literature review useful for evaluating different alignment approaches, with the aim of discovering similarity, maturity, capability to measure, model, asses and evolve the alignment level existing among business and technological assets of an enterprise. The proposed framework is applied to analyse the alignment research published in the Information & Management journal and the Journal of Strategic Information Systems, that are the ones that more published on this topic. The achieved evaluation results are presented

Business alignment in the procurement domain: a study of antecedents and determinants of supply chain performance

With organizations now placing an increasing amount on attention on the management of their supply chain activities, the role of Information Technology (IT) in supporting these operations has been put in the spotlight. In spite of extensive research examining how IT can be employed in various activities of supply chain management, the majority of studies are limited in identifying enablers and inhibitors of adoption. Empirical studies examining post-adoption conditions that facilitate performance improvement still remain scarce. In this study we focus on procurement as part of the supply chain management activities. We apply the business-IT alignment perspective to the domain of procurement, and examine how certain organizational factors impact the attainment of this state. Additionally, we research the effect that procurement alignment has on supply chain management performance. In order to do so, we apply Partial Least Squares (PLS) analysis on a sample of 172 European companies. We find that firms that opt for a centralized governance structure, as well as larger firms, are more likely to attain a state of procurement alignment. Furthermore, our results empirically support the statement that procurement alignment is positively correlated with operational efficiency and competitive performance of the supply chain

The Mechanics of Enterprise Architecture Principles

Inspired by the city planning metaphor, enterprise architecture (EA) has gained considerable attention from academia and industry for systematically planning an IT landscape. Since EA is a relatively young discipline, a great deal of its work focuses on architecture representations (descriptive EA) that conceptualize the different architecture layers, their components, and relationships. Beside architecture representations, EA should comprise principles that guide architecture design and evolution toward predefined value and outcomes (prescriptive EA). However, research on EA principles is still very limited. Notwithstanding the increasing consensus regarding EA principles’ role and definition, the limited publications neither discuss what can be considered suitable principles, nor explain how they can be turned into effective means to achieve expected EA outcomes. This study seeks to strengthen EA’s extant theoretical core by investigating EA principles through a mixed methods research design comprising a literature review, an expert study, and three case studies. The first contribution of this study is that it sheds light on the ambiguous interpretation of EA principles in extant research by ontologically distinguishing between principles and nonprinciples, as well as deriving a set of suitable EA (meta-)principles. The second contribution connects the nascent academic discourse on EA principles to studies on EA value and outcomes. This study conceptualizes the “mechanics” of EA principles as a value-creation process, where EA principles shape the architecture design and guide its evolution and thereby realize EA outcomes. Consequently, this study brings EA’s underserved, prescriptive aspect to the fore and helps enrich its theoretical foundations

The Role of Green IS Governance: Climate Change Risk Identification and Carbon Disclosure Performance

Climate change is a global risk. Perception of this risk differs from business to business, influencing the variation in responses. Prior studies suggest that businesses need to prepare and respond to climate risk, while embedded within their institutional settings. Less is known about the role of information systems (IS) in this process. In this study, we explore the role of green IS in sustainability governance to influence firms’ carbon disclosure performance. We hypothesize that implementation of green IS and the verification against standards, moderate the effects of climate change risk-intensity perception on the carbon disclosure performance, either positive or negative, depending on the institutional environment in which the firm is situated. We use samples of firms from the United States and Europe to test and validate our hypotheses. The main contribution of this study is proposing and validating institutional variations of the green IS in the sustainability governance framework