This study addresses the theoretically neglected interplay between organizational information technology (IT) architecture and IT governance structure in shaping IT alignment. We theoretically develop the idea that IT architecture modularity helps sustain IT alignment by increasing IT agility, and that decentralization of IT governance strengthens this relationship. IT architecture therefore complements IT governance structure. Tests of the proposed mediated-moderation model using data from 223 organizations support these ideas. Implications for theory and practice are also discussed.
The emergence of software-based platforms is shifting competition toward platform-centric ecosystems, although this phenomenon has not received much attention in information systems research. Our premise is that the coevolution of the design, governance, and environmental dynamics of such ecosystems influences how they evolve. We present a framework for understanding platform-based ecosystems and discuss five broad research questions that present significant research opportunities for contributing homegrown theory about their evolutionary dynamics to the information systems discipline and distinctive information technology-artifact-centric contributions to the strategy, economics, and software engineering reference disciplines.
Process virtualization occurs when a process that relies upon physical interaction between people and/or objects is transitioned to a virtual environment. Process virtualization is having profound effects on society, as an increasing number of both business and nonbusiness processes such as those related to education, medicine, and dating are being migrated to virtual environments. There is a vast literature that relates to process virtualization topics, but it is fragmented across different domains. The purpose of this paper is to propose a research agenda to develop high-level theories and frameworks that inform the general process virtualization phenomenon. Developing these theories and frameworks will synthesize existing knowledge and provide a theoretical foundation upon which to add new knowledge as it is created. This will help policy makers maximize the substantial benefits of virtual processes while minimizing the risks. Given the background, interests, and skills of IS scholars, the IS discipline is well suited to lead in this endeavor.
Identification and evaluation of relevant trends and patterns are critical steps in an organization's business environment monitoring. Not surprisingly, the "experts" that perform this evaluation are seldom skilled in all the disciplines necessary to accomplish a thorough evaluation of the environmental indicators. While one expert may be skilled at recognizing the potential for political turmoil in a foreign nation, another at Motorola is skilled at recognizing how Japanese government deregulation is meant to complement the development of new products. Moreover, these experts often benefit from each other's skills and knowledge in assessing activity in the organization's environment. Often the interchange among variously skilled analysts becomes a distributed problem-solving activity that creates the high-quality, interdisciplinary analysis essential for an effective environmental monitoring activity. Problems in the environmental monitoring process often occur when a particular expertise, an agent in the problem-solving network, is unavailable, and knowledge from that domain does not play a role in the analysis. The focus of this paper is on the distribution of expertise and the sharing of knowledge in the critical process of environmental monitoring. A technical approach is adapted in this effort—an architecture and a prototype of "delegation technologies" are described that provide the capability of capturing, organizing, and distributing knowledge that may be used by experts in classifying patterns of qualitative indicators in the business environment. The redistribution of responsibilities through the delegation to, and coordination of, intelligent agents is examined.