What makes organizations so similar? We contend that the engine of rationalization and bureaucratization has moved from the competitive marketplace to the state and the professions. Once a set of organizations emerges as a field, a paradox arises: rational actors make their organizations increasingly similar as they try to change them. We describe three isomorphic processes-coercive, mimetic, and normative—leading to this outcome. We then specify hypotheses about the impact of resource centralization and dependency, goal ambiguity and technical uncertainty, and professionalization and structuration on isomorphic change. Finally, we suggest implications for theories of organizations and social change.

The iron cage revisited: Institutional isomorphism and collective rationality in organizational fields (Chinese Translation)

The Long Tail: How Technology is turning mass markets into millions of niches. (p. 15). This passage from The Long Tail, pretty much sums it all up. The Long Tail by Chris Anderson is a good and worthwhile read for information scientists, computer scientists, ecommerce researchers, and others interested in all areas of Web research. The central premise of the book is that the combination of (1) the Pareto or Zipf distribution (i.e., power law probability distribution) that is characteristic of Web traffic and (2) the direct access to consumers via Web technology has opened up new business opportunities in the ''long tail''. Producers and advertisers no longer have to target ''the big hits'' at the head of the distribution. Instead, they can target the small, niche communities or even individuals in the tail of the distribution. The long tail is has been studied by Web researchers and has been noted in term usage on search engines, access times to servers, and popularity of Web sites. Andersen points out that the long tail also applies to products sold on the Web. He recounts that a sizeable percentage of Amazon sales come from books that only sell a few copies, a large number of songs from Rhapsody get downloaded only once in a month, and a significant number of movies from Netflix only get ordered occasionally. However, since the storage is in digital form for the songs and music (and Amazon out sources the storage of books) there is little additional inventory cost of these items. This phenomenon across all Web companies has led to a broadening of participation by both producers and consumers that would not have happened without the Web. The idea of the long tail is well known, of course. What Anderson has done is present it in an interesting manner and in a Web ecommerce setting. He applies it to Web businesses and then relates the multitude of other factors ongoing that permit the actual implementation of the long tail effect. Anderson also expands on prior work on the long tail by introducing an element of time, given the distribution a three dimensional effect. All in all, it is a nifty idea. The book is comprised of 14 chapters, plus an Introduction. Chapter 1 presents an overview of what the long tail is. Chapter 2 discusses the ''head'', which is the top of the tail where the …

The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business is Selling Less of More

The corporation of the 1990s: Information technology and organizational transformation

Strategic Change and the Management Process

Data governance: A conceptual framework, structured review, and research agenda

Digital transformation requires an altogether new institutional logic and effective response at a requisite organizational level. Sensing and seizing fleeting market opportunities and reconfiguring the business in line with the shifting value proposition requires increasingly specialized resources, more dynamic capabilities, and in-built resilience in the face of change. While Enterprise Architecture (EA) has been suggested to facilitate enterprise transformation, the focus has traditionally been on process standardization and integration rather than on continuous adaptation to the changing business and technological landscape. For EA to have a desired impact, more adaptive conceptualizations of EA that address the requirements of the new digital environment are called for. In this conceptual paper, we explore the implications of digital transformation on enterprise architecture. In particular, we note that existing approaches to EA address integration and coherence within a single organization but typically fall short in the face of complexities pertaining to digital ecosystems. We suggest a vertical typology of organizational capabilities and postulate that today's digital environment increasingly requires adaptive capabilities that transcend the traditional notion of dynamic capabilities. We then investigate how EA can help build flexibility and resilience in the organization.

https://www.computer.org/csdl/pds/api/csdl/proceedings/download-article/12OmNzzfToK/pdf

Enterprise Architecture for Digital Transformation

IT Leadership in Transition - The Impact of Digitalization on Finnish Organizations

In some conventional definitions, Enterprise Architecture (EA) is conceived as a descriptive overview of the enterprise, while in other views EA is seen as a prescriptive framework of principles and models that helps translate business strategy to enterprise change. The conceptualizations of EA also vary in scope. There is an increasing recognition of EA as a systemic, enterprise-wide capability encompassing all relevant facets of the organization, transcending the traditional IT-centric view. However, we argue that none of the conventional conceptualizations of EA are adaptive in the face of today's complex environment. We view that an adaptive EA must go beyond a single organization and fully appreciate enterprise-in-environment ecosystemic perspective. Drawing on the heritage of Open Socio-Technical Systems Design and adopting the "three schools of thought" as a meta-paradigmatic backdrop, the paper features four different views of long-time scholar-practitioners, who discuss what an adaptive enterprise architecture would entail. Integration of these views paints a radically reconceptualized picture of enterprise architecture for the future. With this paper, we want to lay a foundation for a debate on the need for alternative conceptualizations, manifestations and research agenda for enterprise architecture.

Adaptive Enterprise Architecture for the Future: Towards a Reconceptualization of EA

Enterprise Architecture is increasingly seen as transcending enterprise-wide IT architecture. In its exalted conceptualization, EA provides the link between strategy and execution and is driven by strategic considerations such as business transformation and business agility. However, academic research on the topic is still relatively incipient. In particular, there is a gap in the literature as to what is EA's scope in terms of the organizational structure. In this paper, we define EA as strategic capability: it pertains to the strategic application of competencies to organize and utilize the organization-specific resources towards desired ends. Its "area of value ownership" is at the organizing level, linking between strategy and execution, and guiding the evolution of the operational core. Anything "lower" is mere design, while anything "higher" goes beyond a single organization's scope. This platform of competencies is essentially socio-technical and calls for enterprise engineering perspective with qualitatively different kind of disciplinary premises than information systems perspective, in which EA has its roots. Furthermore, we posit that EA as capability is required to properly govern business-driven, value-oriented enterprise transformation.

Enterprise Architecture as Capability: Strategic Application of Competencies to Govern Enterprise Transformation

Enterprise Engineering (EE) is about purposeful design of enterprises and their transformative activities. It is an interdisciplinary domain, which draws largely on information systems and organizational science. Not unlike these fields, EE would benefit from a variety of research approaches to study the engineering of socio-technical systems. To analyze the prevalence of different research paradigms and the composition of research topics in the EE field, we examined 115 research papers in the field as presented in four pertinent conferences in 2009-2013: the Practice-Driven Research on Enterprise Transformation (PRET), Enterprise Engineering Working Conference (EEWC) as well as relevant tracks in the Mediterranean Conference on Information Systems (MCIS) and in the European Conference on Information Systems (ECIS). As per this analysis, the social aspect seems to be under-investigated and the interpretive paradigm under-represented in the EE research, while there seems to be a bias towards technical focus and the functionalist paradigm. The analysis ascertained the need for further evolvement of the EE discipline through more attention to social aspects and a more balanced variety of research approaches. We view that this will balance the course of advancing EE theories with the integration of gathered insights. With this paper, we want to instill a debate on the need for alternative research paradigms and for research on social aspects in the field of EE.

Janne J. Korhonen

Papers

Enterprise Architecture for Digital Transformation

IT Leadership in Transition - The Impact of Digitalization on Finnish Organizations

Adaptive Enterprise Architecture for the Future: Towards a Reconceptualization of EA

Enterprise Architecture as Capability: Strategic Application of Competencies to Govern Enterprise Transformation

Research paradigms and topics in Enterprise Engineering analysis of recent conferences and workshops