Institutional perspectives on the process of enterprise architecture adoption

Abstract

Organizations often adopt enterprise architecture (EA) when planning how best to develop their information technology (IT) or businesses, for strategic management, or generally for managing change initiatives. This variety of different uses affects many stakeholders within and between organizations. Because stakeholders have dissimilar backgrounds, positions, assumptions, and activities, they respond differently to changes and the potential problems that emerge from those changes. This situation creates contradictions and conflicts between stakeholders that may further influence project activities and ultimately determine how EA is adopted. In this paper, we examine how institutional pressures influence EA adoption. Based on a qualitative case study of two cases, we show how regulative, normative, and cognitive pressures influence stakeholders’ activities and behaviors during the process of EA adoption. Our contribution thus lies in identifying roles of institutional pressures in different phases during the process of EA adoption and how it changes overtime. The results provide insights into EA adoption and the process of institutionalization, which help to explain emergent challenges in EA adoption.