RETHINKING THE ROLE OF ENTERPRISE ARCHITECTURE DURING TIMES OF ECONOMIC DOWNTURN: A DYNAMIC CAPABILITIES APPROACH

The role of Enterprise Architecture (EA) has recently evolved from merely outlining IT architecture and facilitating regulatory IT compliance towards an invaluable source of business agility, alignment and business innovation. There has been so much talk about the benefits of EA, but often these claims did not provide theoretical underpinnings or explanations on how to achieve these benefits. In this paper, we revisit the role of EA in the midst of the current economic downturn. In particular, we focus on the question: How can EA help enterprises cope with the prevailing economic conundrum? To do so, this research views the role of EA through a Dynamic Capabilities (DC) lens. Based on this DC perspective, we synthesize earlier research contributions and present the EA Adaptation Framework (EAAF). The EAAF suggests that EA can enable organizations to be better positioned to cope with turbulent economic climates by enhancing their sensing, learning, integrative, innovative and alignment capabilities. The EAAF also articulates the mechanisms through which the business, application, data and technology domains of the EA can be orchestrated to support the adaptation process during times of economic recession. We discuss the implications of the proposed framework and provide suggestions for future studies.