Strategic capabilities for business model digitalization.
| Autor | Menchini, Fernando |
Introduction
Digitalization was initially described as the conversion of analog processes into digital (Negroponte, 1995); however, with the extreme reduction of data processing, storage and transmission costs over decades, through increasingly sophisticated software, it has proven to be much more than that. It has modified countless forms of human work and strongly influenced the traditional foundations of the economy, with the emergence of new business models (Loebbecke & Picot, 2015). Some researchers considerit responsible for the emergence and disappearance of companies, with direct impacts on business competitiveness (Bleicher & Stanley, 2019; Valenduc & Vendramin, 2017).
Executives also question how firms can achieve or keep a competitive advantage through digitalization, as traditional models, focused on static or dynamic resources, were built with assumptions that are not valid in today's digital environments (Loebbecke & Picot, 2015).
The range and social impacts of digitalization of business models can be understood by Katz and Koutroumpis's description (2013, p. 314), that it "encapsulates the social transformation triggered by mass adoption of digital technologies that generate, process, and transfer information". However, we cannot disregard the need for differentiated competencies for it to occur. Such competencies are strategic resources responsible for building and keeping competitive advantage (Porter, 1989), in the process of changing a conventional (or analog) business model into a digital one (Loebbecke & Picot, 2015; Ritter & Pedersen, 2020).
Digitalization in organizations, through digital business models, demands skills associated with individuals, processes and structure (Ritter & Pedersen, 2020). To achieve it, change agents need to be informed, know and understand the key requirements and principles of both models, the current and the future (intended by the company); this is not simple, as these characteristics often express immaterial dimensions (Goerzig & Bauernhansl, 2018).
Among the different technologies that contribute to the analysis and implementation of organizational strategies, enterprise architecture (EA) stands out, especially in digitalization, for translating the strategic business vision into business changes, through the creation, communication and improvement of key requirements, principles and company's models (Zaidan, 2015; Gartner, 2013). It comprises, among other definitions, a coherent set of principles, methods and models that are used in the design of the organizational structure, including business processes, information systems (IS) and infrastructure (Lankhorst, 2012). It brings a holistic view of the organization, allowing managers to act proactively toward the intended results (Gartner, 2013).
For Valenduc & Vendramin (2016), ignoring the existence or effectiveness of approaches such as EA can lead to business models' obsolescence or hinder their change, affecting organizations, especially those that compete with disruptive models in their sectors.
There are other views on EAs usefulness and reach, which stem from its various definitions (Saint-Louis, Morency & Lapalme, 2019). Nandico (2016) and Goerzig & Bauernhansl (2018) confirm Valenduc & Vendramin's (2016) observations, as they also show that it can contribute to creating sustainable competitive advantage, when used in the process of organizational modeling, by determining the logical components to use in applications, with their respective services, according to the established scope.
Research on EAs range, as a differentiated resource capable of creating sustainable advantage and not just an operational or tactical instrument (Venkatesh, Mathew & Singhal, 2019), fills a gap in the literature, besides helping organizations digitalize their business models accordingly.
Based on this context, the research guiding question emerged: What are the associations between the capacity for using EA and the effectiveness of business model digitalization in companies?
For operationalizing the research and ensuring its consistency and feasibility, we used the conceptual framework of sociomateriality as a basis, which helps understanding how the material part (a computer, a tool, any artifact), the people (the users of the material part) and the social context, in its time-space dimension, where different dimensions are present, intertwine for enabling the emergence of a technology (Leonardi, 2012; Orlikowski, 1992; Orlikowski & Scott, 2008).
To make the association of the variables "capacity to use EA" and "effectiveness of digitalizing business models" operational, we built a theoretical and measurement model that used the measures arising from the maturity of EAs use and digital maturity, which we present in the methodological procedures (Section 3).
In order to empirically assess the elements mentioned above, wecarried out a surveyin the financial services sector, with 92 experts in the use of EA and digitalization of business models, from a population of 1,300 identified professionals. Results were treated through multivariate analysis (ANACOR). Later, in order to deepen the opinions, we held a focus group with six executives from the chosen companies, whose content was recorded, transcribed and evaluated by content analysis (Bardin, 2011). We present and discuss the results in Section 4, followed by conclusions and final remarks.
Theoretical background
Sociomateriality
Sociomateriality was originally conceived for the area of IS, within an information technology (IT) context, and stands out for enabling to subtly express how the intertwining between the social and the technical in building technologies and their roles occurs, in the social contexts where they operate; thus, it has been increasingly used, as the world has become more and more digital (Cecez-Kecmanovic, Galliers, Henfridsson, Newell & Vidgen, 2014).
Sociomateriality defines the interaction between human agency (intentionality) and material agency (materiality, or agency of things) in organizational life. It considers materiality intrinsic to daily practice and assumes that organizations and technology only exist through "their temporally emergent constitutive entanglement" (Orlikowski & Scott, 2008, p. 455). The sociomaterial perspective is opposite to the ontological separation between people and technology as essentially autonomous entities that influence each other (Slife, 2004).
Material agency and human agency saturate each other because limits previously taken for granted are dissolved (Orlikowski & Scott, 2008). Based on the concept of performativity (Barad, 2003), materiality consists of executed relationships and not as preformed matter. Therefore, material agency emerges through impure dynamics that are "situated within a space of human purposes, goals, and plans" (Pickering, 1993, p. 577).
A key challenge in digital innovation is understanding how to act to introduce a new form of materiality into an established deployment of sociomateriality. Digital innovation emerges from the agency's extended dialectical dance, defined by resistance and accommodation between two distinct forms - material agency and human agency (Pickering, 1995, p. 22).
Enterprise architecture
EA is understood in several ways: for some, it is the IT unit's contribution to the successful execution of a company's dominant logic (Smith, Watson & Sullivan, 2012); for others, it is a comprehensive description of all key elements and relationships that make up an organization (Kang, Lee, Choi & Kim, 2010); or, still, a systematic and structured instrument to guide the development of the ICT scenario and provide a holistic view of the organization (Janssen, Klievink & Chun, 2012).
Gartner Consulting Firm (2013) defines EA as the process of translating the business vision and strategy into effective business changes, by creating, communicating and improving the main requirements, principles and models that describe the future state of the company and allow its evolution. It establishes a technological context that contributes to the organization's strategic positioning, by determining a digital apparatus capable of providing better answers to the needs of companies that undergo continuous changes in the business environment (Open Group, 2018).
In summary, EA defines concepts of digital value creation, contributing to a holistic view of the process, which allow us to make the most of digital opportunities, since through it we can build models and assess methods and tools (Goerzig & Bauernhansl, 2018).
From a practical standpoint, the use of EA aims to optimize, throughout the organization, the legacy of processes, often fragmented (manual and automated), in an integrated environment that responds to changes and supports business strategy (Open Group, 2018). Executives are driven by the optimization/maximization of value delivery in organizations, and the effective use of information and business transformation from conventional into digital processes are key factors for their success and are increasingly perceived as indispensable means to achieve competitive advantage.
To enable the adoption of EA, The Open Group Architecture Framework (TOGAF), one of the standards used, was developed through the collaborative efforts of the entire Open Group community, composed of several consulting and technology firms. The usage of TOGAF standard leads to a consistent EA that reflects stakeholders' needs, uses the best practices and considers both current and future business requirements (Open Group, 2018). The language pattern used by the Open Group is ArchiMate, developed by a group of researchers with the intention of making it an open standard. It prioritizes the consistent alignment of the organization's abstraction layers (business, systems and infrastructure) (Lankhorst, 2012).
Despite the robust backgroup, according to a study by Gartner (2020), nearly...
Para continuar a ler
PEÇA SUA AVALIAÇÃOCOPYRIGHT GALE, Cengage Learning. All rights reserved.
