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

Opportunity or Threat: A Complementors’ Perspective on Platform Owner’s Acquisitions

Acquisition of complementors is a prevailing mechanism available to platform owners to leverage digital platforms’ multidimensional growth. Notwithstanding platform owners’ propensity to acquire complementors, little is known about the potential effects of such acquisitions on the non-acquired complementors. While a group of complementors may benefit from an acquisition, others may perceive an acquisition as the platform owner entering into competition with its own complementors. To address this gap, we examine the acquisition of complementors’ effects on the other complementors in the context of a B2B innovation platform whose evolution is considerably influenced by a plethora of acquisitions. As part of an ongoing research project, in this paper we link academic discourses on acquisitions and platform owners’ market entry to derive a set of hypotheses, which we plan to test in the respective B2B innovation platform ecosystem

A Value Co-creation Perspective on Information Systems Analysis and Design

Information systems analysis and design (ISAD) ensures the design of information systems (IS) in line with the requirements of a business environment. Since ISAD approaches follow the currently dominant logic of busi- ness, the rise of a new and thriving business logic may require revisiting and advancing extant ISAD approaches and techniques. One of the prevailing debates in marketing research is the paradigmatic shift from a goods-dominant (G-D) to a service-dominant (S-D) logic of business. The cornerstone of this reorientation is the concept of value co- creation emphasizing joint value creation among a variety of actors within a business network. With the aim of introducing value co-creation as a new discourse to ISAD research, this research note argues that (1) the lens of S-D logic with its core concept of value co-creation provides a novel perspective to ISAD. The authors also assert that (2) value co-creation-informed IS design realizes the paradig- matic shift from G-D to S-D logic. Building on this mutual relationship between value co-creation and ISAD, they propose a research agenda and discuss the ISAD artifacts that prospective research may target

Design Dimensions for Enterprise-Wide Data Management: A Chief Data Officer’s Journey

To unlock additional business value, most enterprises are intensifying their enterprise-wide data management. In the case of the globally operating bank, we base this article on, a Chief Data Officer (CDO) organization is established for providing data governance and, in a second step, pushing data driven innovation forward. As many employees of the bank were not yet familiar with (or did not acknowledge) the need for enterprise-wide data management, this evolution exhibits characteristics of an organizational learning process. CDOs may want to actively steer this learning process by purposefully designing and adjusting their data management approach over time. Based on the major controversies the CDO has been confronted with, we propose four design dimensions for enterprise-wide data management and discuss the considerations for their configuration: (I) objective, (II) governance, (III) organization of data analytics, and (IV) expertise

Simulation-Based Research in Information Systems - Epistemic Implications and a Review of the Status Quo

Simulations provide a useful methodological approach for studying the behavior of complex socio- technical information systems (IS), in which humans and IT artifacts interact to process information. However, the use of simulations is relatively new in IS research and the current presence and impact of simulation-based studies is still limited. Furthermore, simulation-based research is quite different from other approaches, making it difficult to position and evaluate it adequately. Therefore, this paper first analyses the epistemic particularities of simulation- based IS research. Based on this analysis, a structured lit- erature review of the status quo of simulation-based IS research was conducted, to understand how IS scholars currently employ simulation. A comparison of the epis- temic particularities of simulation-based research with its status quo in IS literature allows to critically examine epistemic inferences in the respective research process. The results provide guidance for prospective simulation-based IS research through discussing the theory-based derivation of simulation models, as well as different simulation techniques, validation techniques, and simulation uses

Taxonomy of Digital Platforms: A Platform Architecture Perspective

Digital platforms—technical core artefacts augmented by peripheral third-party derivatives—afford organizations to integrate resources in networked business ecosystems. Although digital platforms widely differ in their configurations, digital platforms’ dimensions and characteristics to disentangle different digital platform configurations are under-researched. To bridge this void, we employ Nickerson et al.’s method for taxonomy development to systematically derive a taxonomy of digital platforms. Specifically, we embrace a platform architecture perspective to capture the configuration of digital platform’s components. The resultant taxonomy facilitates a more pronounced understanding and grouping of digital platforms as configurations of certain dimensions and characteristics. Our findings suggest that digital platforms exhibit characteristics on at least four dimensions—namely, infrastructure, core, ecosystem, and service dimensions. Second, through instantiating the taxonomy, we find that digital platforms that exhibit similar characteristics share identical architectural profiles and, therefore, belong to one of three digital platform archetypes—namely, orchestration, amalgamation, and innovation platforms

Taxonomy of Digital Platforms: A Business Model Perspective

Digital platforms (DPs) – technical core artifacts augmented by peripheral third-party complementary resources – facilitate the interaction and collaboration of different actors through highly-efficient resource matching. As DPs differ significantly in their configurations and applications, it is important from both a descriptive and a design perspective to define classes of DPs. As an intentionally designed artifact, every classification pursues a certain purpose. In this research, the purpose is to classify DPs from a business model perspective, i.e. to identify DP clusters that each share a similar business model type. We follow Nickerson et al.’s (2013) method for taxonomy development. By validating the conceptually derived design dimensions with ten DP cases, we identify platform structure and platform participants as the major clustering constituent characteristics. Building on the proposed taxonomy, we derive four DP archetypes that follow distinct design configurations, namely business innovation platforms, consumer innovation platforms, business exchange platforms and consumer exchange platforms

Governance Mechanisms in Digital Platform Ecosystems: Addressing the Generativity-Control Tension

Digital platform owners repeatedly face paradoxical design decisions with regard to their platforms’ generativity and control, requiring them to facilitate co-innovation whilst simultaneously retaining control over third-party complementors. To address this challenge, platform owners deploy a variety of governance mechanisms. However, researchers and practitioners currently lack a coherent understanding of what major governance mechanisms platform owners rely on to simultaneously foster generativity and control. Conducting a structured literature review, we connect the fragmented academic discourse on governance mechanisms with each aspect of the generativity-control tension. Next to providing avenues for prospective digital platform research, we elaborate on the double-sidedness of governance mechanisms in fostering both generativity and control

Governance Mechanisms in Digital Platform Ecosystems: Addressing the Generativity-Control Tension

Digital platform owners repeatedly face paradoxical design decisions with regard to their platforms’ generativity and control, requiring them to facilitate co-innovation whilst simultaneously retaining control over third-party complementors. To address this challenge, platform owners deploy a variety of governance mechanisms. However, researchers and practitioners currently lack a coherent understanding of what major governance mechanisms platform owners rely on to simultaneously foster generativity and control. Conducting a structured literature review, we connect the fragmented academic discourse on governance mechanisms with each aspect of the generativity-control tension. Next to providing avenues for prospective digital platform research, we elaborate on the double-sidedness of governance mechanisms in fostering both generativity and control

DRIVERS AND EFFECTS OF INFORMATION SYSTEMS ARCHITECTURE COMPLEXITY: A MIXED-METHODS STUDY

Today’s organizations deal with a significant complexity of their information systems (IS) architec-ture—a complex cobweb of heterogeneous IS with tight, mutual interrelations. With the constantly in-creasing number of IS along with the inherent complexity of the organizational context in which IS are embedded, organizations lose control of their IS architecture’s evolution. Through employing a se-quential mixed-methods research design, this study investigates the drivers and effects of IS architec-ture complexity. Based on the extant literature and on focus groups data, at the outset we develop a research model and derive its constitutive hypotheses. We subsequently test the research model follow-ing a partial least squares (PLS) approach to structural equation modelling (SEM) with survey re-sponses from 249 IT managers and architects. While differentiating structural and dynamic complexi-ty, this study confirms a high degree of integration, large size, high diversity, strong dynamics, and, in particular, inadequate planning as the main drivers of IS architecture complexity. Further, this study affirms the negative effect of IS architecture complexity on the efficiency, agility, comprehensibility, and predictability of the IS