2015

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The Ethics of Information

This book deals with the subject of Information Ethics (IE), the philosophical area of research that investigates the ethical impact of ICTs on human life and society.

How Does Enterprise Architecture Support Innovation?

Innovation is becoming increasingly important for Enterprise Architecture (EA) teams. Consequently, it is crucial that tools be developed to assist Enterprise Architecture teams when evaluating how (and how well) they are supporting innovation within the context of their enterprise. To date very little research has been completed that focuses on both EA and innovation. This paper presents an assessment tool to help EA teams evaluate and improve how they support innovation. The tool has been tested in a case study with a hi-tech firm and initial results are presented. In 2015 International Conference on Enterprise Systems (ES).

Evaluating the capabilities of Enterprise Architecture modeling tools for Visual Analysis

By: . In model analysis activities, it is critical to make early statements and diagnosis from a high level of abstraction. Currently, these tasks are difficult to perform, and they require both the involvement of experts and the elaboration of specialized artifacts. Furthermore, the complexity of the tasks increases as models become bigger and more detailed. In other contexts, it has been noticed that total / holistic / unfiltered visualizations may give insight about the models, providing analysts a starting point for exploration and general pattern discovery. In this paper, we evaluate the support that six different Enterprise Architecture (EA) modeling tools offer to EA analysis activities, and assess the strengths and weaknesses of six visualization frameworks, in order to extend the analysis of enterprise models by Visual Analysis. The evaluation is based on a set of 14 requirements which are either visualization-related or specific to EA analysis, and its results were harvested from a) observed characteristics of the diagrams of these tools, and b) visualizations from an enterprise model, generated with the aforementioned visualization frameworks. These results point to several actionable subjects and research opportunities for the field of EA Modeling and Analysis.

Ambidextrous Enterprise Architecting: Betting on the Future and Hacking Path-dependencies

Much existing research on IS and enterprise architecture focuses on suggesting different representa-tions describing a ‘target architecture’ for processes, information and information systems at different levels across the organization. Less emphasis has been put on the actual evolution of the current en-terprise architecture towards this envisioned ‘target architecture’. In this paper we look at enterprise architecture from a process perspective and explore how actual practices of architecting enfold and how they are mutually shaped by context. In doing so, we offer two contributions. First, we contribute empirically showing how enterprise architecting in practice is an ambidextrous activity focusing on both fixing the limitations of historically entrenched architectures and establishing new architecture by betting on what needs are going to give the most flexibility and value in the future. Secondly, we contribute by conceptualizing how enterprise architecture evolves over time, and propose the concepts of ‘architectural path-dependency’ and ‘enterprise architecting’. Architectural path-dependencies is the effect of existing architectures that become economically, technically and organizationally hard to change – at least in a radical manner. Enterprise architecting, on the other hand, is the intentional acts to circumvent path-dependencies and evolve towards an envisioned architecture. Henceforth, we argue that enterprise architecture transition is shaped by multiple architectural path-dependencies as well as various acts of enterprise architecting to establish new paths. The paper discusses theses con-cepts in relation to existing literature on software and enterprise architecture.