Enterprise Architecture Practices to Achieve Business Value

Abstract

Enterprise Architecture (EA) is viewed as a source of business value and competitiveness due to various beneficial outcomes. This research focuses on the connection between the EA maturity of an organisation and the business value associated with it in the South African financial services environment. The resource based view of the firm is used as the underlying theoretical framework to structure this research, by examining EA as an intangible resource and the maturity as a source of heterogeneity. The critical realism philosophy, which states that mechanisms generate events, shapes this research by accenting the underlying EA mechanisms that lead to business value, as well as insights into the opportunities and challenges organisations experienced as they progress to higher levels of maturity. This study identifies the practices of business units at evolving levels of maturity, and the forms of business value attainable at those levels. Further, this study demonstrates that EA is a source of both tangible and intangible forms of value.