Discovering and Assessing Enterprise Architecture Debts

The term Enterprise Architecture (EA) Debts has been coined to grasp the difference between the actual state of the EA and its hypothetical, optimal state. So far, different methods have been proposed to identify such EA Debts in organizations. However, these methods either are based on the transfer of known concepts from other domains to EA or are time and resource intensive. To overcome these shortcomings, we propose an approach that uses an interview format to identify EA Debts in enterprises and a method that allows a qualitative assessment of identified EA Debts. The proposed approach is supported by the designed framework that consists of an interview format and a process for determining thresholds of certain EA Smells

The law of corporate groups in Portugal

After the pioneering German “Aktiengesetz” of 1965 and the Brazilian “Lei das Sociedades Anónimas” of 1976, Portugal has become the third country in the world to enact a specific regulation on groups of companies. The Code of Commercial Companies (“Código das Sociedades Comerciais”, abbreviately hereinafter CSC), enacted in 1986, contains a unitary set of rules regulating the relationships between companies, in general, and the groups of companies, in particular (arts. 481° to 508°-E CSC). With this set of rules, the Portuguese legislator has dealt with one of the major topics of modern Company Law. While this branch of law is traditionally conceived as the law of the individual company, modern economic reality is characterized by the massive emergence of large-scale enterprise networks, where parts of a whole business are allocated and insulated in several legally independent companies submitted to an unified economic direction. As Tom HADDEN put it: “Company lawyers still write and talk as if the single independent company, with its shareholders, directors and employees, was the norm. In reality, the individual company ceased to be the most significant form of organization in the 1920s and 1930s. The commercial world is now dominated both nationally and internationally by complex groups of companies”. This trend, which is now observable in any of the largest economies in the world, holds also true for small markets such as Portugal. Although Portuguese economy is still dominated by small and medium-sized enterprises, the organizational structure of the group has always been extremely common. During the 70s, it was estimated that the seven largest groups of companies owned about 50% of the equity capital of all domestic enterprises and were alone responsible for 3/4 of the internal national product. Such a trend has continued and even highlighted in the next decades, surviving to different political and economic scenarios: during the 80s, due to the process of state nationalization of these groups, an enormous public group with more than one thousand controlled companies has been created (“IPE - Instituto de Participações do Estado”); and during the 90s until today, thanks to the reprivatisation movement and the opening of our national market, we assisted to the re-emergence of some large private groups, composed of several hundred subsidiaries each, some of which are listed in foreign stock exchange markets (e.g., in the banking sector, “BCP – Banco Comercial Português”, in the industrial area, “SONAE”, and in the media and communication area, “Portugal-Telecom”)

Factors Influencing Corporate Governance in post-Socialist Companies: an Analytical Framework

In explaining the corporate governance performance of post-socialist companies, this article identifies four factors of influence: (1) pressure from majority shareholders, (2) pressure from outside minority shareholders, (3) pressure resulting from internationalization/ globalization and (4) pressure exerted by the state in the form of legal regulation. If all four factors have an impact on corporate governance performance, their interaction has to be explained. On the basis of research conducted thus far, this article suggests an analytical framework for the examination of corporate governance performance of postsocialist companies. Case studies of oil and gas firms from Central and Eastern Europe illustrate how the above factors influence a companyís corporate governance performance.http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/64362/1/wp896.pd

Cognitive Capitalism as a Financial Economy of Production

The structural changes that occurred in the last 30 years have substantially modified the capitalistic organization of society, both at national and international level. In order to understand the evolution of social and economic systems it is necessary to focus on the relations of production, that is on those social relationships that explain the valorisation process. Since the economic crisis of the 1970's until the late 1990's the structure of production in the developed countries has been characterised by the development of highly flexible forms of production. The organizational revolution that occurred within production activity has been achieved through introducing new information technologies and restructuring of production within increasingly wider territories. A new regime of accumulation devoid of a stable mode of regulation and centred on financial valorisation of new socio-economic growth perspectives has been consolidating. Conditions imposed by financial markets in order to create the shareholder's value consisted of promoting downsizing, reengineering, outsourcing and Merger & Acquisitions processes. The flexibilization of labour force and precarization of existence has thus been the result of the established valorization norm. But why should the corporate restructuring sustain the enterprise value by creating income stock ? In order to answer this question it is necessary to analyse the importance of knowledge in the production process. For this purpose, we shall use some categories of the so called French Regulation School. The definition of a new regime of accumulation involves a research on the criteria of valorisation and the prevailing technological paradigm. The main changes of new capitalism concern mainly two spheres: the role played by knowledge in the new technological paradigm and valorisation process and the importance of finance. The dominant technological paradigm and the role played by knowledge within it are not enough to explain the evolution of the accumulation regime. It is needed to introduce further elements necessary to explain the expectations that sustain the investment choices made by capitalists; these are the conventions or collective beliefs. Then, after describing the main features of the accumulation paradigm that many scholars have named as Cognitive Capitalism , we shall attempt to provide a theoretical framework of it intended as a financial economy of production. We shall therefore proceed to the reformulation of the schemes of monetary circuit.Cognitive Capitalism; French Regulation School; Monetary Circuit; Knowledge; Crisis; Financial Convention.

Fighting Through Britain. The “Gift Dimension” of Keynes's Quest for a New Global Order

Dissatisfied with both Skidelsky's “Fighting for Britain” approach to Keynes's quest for a new global order and its specular competitor, the “Figthing despite Britain” view, we explore the possibility of a “Fighting through Britain” approach to the issue. We claim that though Keynes was fighting for the whole world rather than for Britain only, his (unsuccessful) fighting for Britain was a major component of his overall reform project and the true telltale sign of his defeat. As a consequence, the paper focuses in particular on the American Gift asked for by Keynes in 1945. The Gift is regarded as the last and a relevant episode of the economist's lifelong search for a global system efficiently coping with the dilemmas it necessarily gives life to. With the help of the anthropological and sociological literature on gift-giving, we move beyond the strategic dimension of Keynes's diplomacy to show that the request for an American Gift to revive multilateralism at the end of WWII embodies in full - and helps to understand - Keynes's attempt to construct a new system happily combining international discipline and national freedom to choose, the former being the instrument to promote the latter.Keynes, International economic relations, Gift-giving