2017

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Boundaries and Boundary Objects: An Evaluation Framework for Mixed Methods Research

While mixed methods research is increasingly established as a methodological approach, researchers still struggle with boundaries arising from commitments to different methods and paradigms, and from attention to social justice. Combining two lines of work—social learning theory and the Imagine Program at the University of Brighton—we present an evaluation framework that was used to integrate the perspectives of multiple stakeholders in the program’s social interventions. We explore how this value-creation framework acts as a boundary object across boundaries of practice, specifically across quantitative and qualitative methods, philosophical paradigms, and participant perspectives. We argue that the framework’s focus on cycles of value creation provided the Imagine Program with a shared language for negotiating interpretation and action across those boundaries.

Financial governance: accounting for social learning in a regional network in Africa

The value created by learning in communities of practice or networks is not always easy to articulate in ways that make sense to participants, sponsors, and stakeholders. Yet it is something that needs to be done, not only for monitoring and evaluation, but also for optimizing the learning of the community. We have developed a “value-creation framework” that focuses on how social learning makes a difference in the world via its effect on practice. The framework helps structure convincing accounts of the value of social learning by framing learning in terms of different cycles of value creation and loops between them. It integrates quantitative and qualitative data and can be used by professional evaluators as well as participants. In this paper we demonstrate the use of the framework in a project supported by the World Bank in Southern and Eastern Africa where it was used both for evaluation and for strategic renewal of a regional network of members of parliament and their clerks.

A Synthesis of Enterprise Architecture Effectiveness Constructs

Companies throughout the world use Enterprise Architecture (EA) because of benefits such as the alignment of business to Information Technology (IT), centralisation of decision making and cost reductions due to standardisation of business processes and business systems. Even though EA offers organisational benefits, EA projects are reported as being costly, time consuming and require tremendous effort. Companies therefore seek to ascertain ways to measure the effectiveness of EA implementation because of the money and time being spent on EA projects. EA Effectiveness refers to the degree in which EA helps to achieve the collective goals of the organisation and its measurement depends on a list of constructs that can be used to measure the effectiveness of EA implementation. Currently, there exist no comprehensive list of constructs that are suitable to measure the effectiveness of EA implementation. The paper reports on the results of a study that explored the development of a compreh ensive list of constructs suitable for measuring the effectiveness of EA implementation. The artefact developed in this research study is called Enterprise Architecture Effectiveness Constructs (EAEC). The EAEC consists of 6 constructs namely: – alignment

Generic EA Analysis Framework for the Definition and Automatic Execution of Analyses

Analysis is an essential part in the Enterprise Architecture Management lifecycle. An in-depth consideration of the architecture obtains its strengths and weaknesses. This provides a sound foundation for the future evolution of the architecture as well as for decision-making regarding new projects. Current literature provides a large number of different analysis approaches, targeting different goals and utilizing different techniques. To provide a common interface to analysis activities we studied the corresponding literature in previous research. Based on these results we develop a language for the definition of EA analyses as well as an execution environment for their evaluation. To cope with the high variety of meta models in the EA domain, the framework provides a uniform and tool independent access to analysis activities. Additionally it can be used to provide an EA analysis library, where the architect is able to select predefined analyses according to his specific requirements.

Enterprise Architecture beyond the Enterprise – Extended Enterprise Architecture Revisited

As the most enterprises are relying on relations to other enterprises, it is relevant to consider enterprise architecture for inter-organisational relations particularly those relations involving technology. This has been conceptualised as Extended Enterprise Architecture, and a systematic review of this discipline is the topic of this paper. This paper is taking a point of departure in general theories of business-to-business relationships along with inter-organisational information systems, interoperability and business ecosystems. The general theories are applied to the Extended Enterprise Architecture to emphasize paradoxes, problems and potentials in extending EA across organisational boundaries. The purpose of this paper is to review the concept of Extended Enterprise Architecture (EEA) theoretically and empirically to identify viability of Enterprise Architecture (EA) initiatives spanning across organisational boundaries. A case is presented of an enterprise engaging in technology-based business process integration that in turn is explicated as enterprise architecture initiatives with both more and less powerful partners. This paper underlines the necessity to be able to have EA spanning initiatives across multiple enterprises, but a range of problems is illuminated related to (lack of) precision, imbalance, heterogeneity, transformation, temporality, and (operational) maturity. The concept of EEA is seemingly vague, however this paper calls for a strengthen emphasis on redefining general architectural frameworks to embrace EEA in order to handle typical and modern forms of organisational designs relying on virtual and cross-company as cornerstones.

The Quest for Underpinning Theory of Enterprise Architecture – General Systems Theory

Enterprise architecture originates from the 1980’s. It emerged among ICT practitioners to solve complex problems related to information systems. Currently EA is also utilised to solve business problems, although the focus is still in ICT and its alignment with business. EA can be defined as a description of the current and future states of the enterprise, and as a change between these states to meet stakeholder’s goals. Despite its popularity and 30 years of age, the literature review conducted on top information and management science journals revealed that EA is still lacking the sound theoretical foundation. In this conceptual paper, we propose General Systems Theory (GST) for underpinning theory of EA. GST allows us to see enterprises as systems of systems consisting of, for instance, social organisations, humans, information systems and computers. This explains why EA can be used to describe the enterprise and its components, and how to control them to execute the managed change. Implications to science and practice, and some directions for future research are also provided.