Configurational Approach to uncovering the effect of Enterprise Architecture Design on Organizational Performance

Despite this growing adoption of enterprise architecture (EA), there has been little research that provides compelling empirical evidence of the EA impact on organizational performance. We argue that the lack of strong empirical evidence is due to the complexity of EA configurations and the limitations of the traditional correlation-based methods for uncovering the complex relationships. This research intends to examine how EA elements are combined with organizational and environmental elements to produce high or low organizational performance. We identify four EA design factors including centralization, modularity, standardization, and open platforms. Then, we analyze empirical field data, using fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA), an emerging set-theoretic configurational methodology. We seek to explain that the way of configuring EA design factors matters for the EA impact on organizational performance and the multifaceted role of each factor over the equifinal configurations. We present our preliminary result and discuss its implications for EA design.