The Connective Scheme between the Enterprise Architecture and Organisational Structure

Abstract

The demand for better services by customers and citizens keeps increasing at a rapid rate. Different methods and techniques are sought by various organizations to enable and support processes and activities to improve services, as well as to give the organization leverage towards competitive advantage. The enterprise architecture (EA) has merged as a possible solution for addressing organizational challenges and for competitive advantage. The EA deployment involves agents, which are both human and non-human. The agents, based on their interest, influence and determine how the EA is deployed. During the deployment of EA, agents transform themselves in accordance to their interest at the time and space. Understanding of agents’ interests is significant if the challenges that they pose are to be managed for successful deployment of EA. Based on this challenge, a theory, Structuration which focuses on human and non-human agents was selected to underpin the study. The study investigated the impact of agents on the deployment of EA in organizations, using the lens of structuration theory in the analysis of the data.