Kalevi Pessi

Agility Through Implementation: A Case from a Global Supply Chain

This case is based on sharing empirical experiences and results from several years of collaborative research. The focus is on implementation projects with solutions for spare parts distribution in the automotive industry.

Sustainable Alignment in Enterprise Architecture: A Case Study of Architectural Principles

Enterprise Architecture (EA) has emerged as the preeminent means to change and transform large organizations. By employing architectural principles, organizations strive to master the complexity inherent in business processes and information system and their alignment. Despite the fact that Business-IT alignment has been a top concern for practitioners and researchers for years, the emergent nature of alignment in EA has rarely been taken into consideration. Even if different approaches focus on business IT alignment, most of them have a tendency to focus on alignment as a state or a process by focusing on strategy or organizational issues. Moreover, very few existing EA Frameworks give clear guidance on how to design and manage these alignment issues. In this paper we argue that the choice of architectural principles has an impact on the ability to achieve and maintain sustainable EA alignment in a dynamic business context. A case study is used as a basis for the analysis.

Agent action: business cases with individualised information services in a business intelligence context

Information services for business intelligence are becoming more integrated in day-to-day operations. This paper describes how the use of intelligent agent-enabled decision support in conjunction with the organisational trends of more dispersed and decentralised organic organised enterprises, enables new practice in the field of business intelligence (BI). The two business cases, illustrate the evolving area of business intelligence information services for large global enterprises. The information services in the cases aim to provide different levels of personalisation features through the use of intelligent agents. Traditional ideas of how to provide the organisation with right information at the right time and place according to the corporate communications top-down strategy and editorial process, or through business intelligence professionals who produce high-end reports, are undergoing change shown in the cases. Employees and managers start to get the information needed directly from the Internet, and are becoming more self-sufficient when it comes to business intelligence.

IT Agility: Current State, Organizational Contingencies, and Future Research Avenues

Recent years increase in organizations’ dependence on information technology has ushered in changing roles for IT departments and IT governance alike. Instead of being primarily focused on the continuous and cost efficient maintenance and support of existing resources, there is a need for a more balanced take on IT Governance which calls for an ambidextrous approach. This involves an increased focus on agility in terms of achieving both economies of scale and scope. This paper reports on a recent quantitative assessment of IT agility in Swedish Firms. Informed by contingency theory, the results are analyzed and discussed in relation to future research for IT agility. Our findings lead to six organizational contingencies expressed as six hypotheses that should be addressed within future IT agility research.

Operational and Structural Business IT Alignment

In recent years, Enterprise Architecture has gradually emerged as the preeminent means to change and transform large organizations. By employing Architectural Principles, organizations strive to master the complexity inherent in business processes and IT system and their harmonious alignment. Unfortunately, very rarely has the coevolutionary and emergent nature of alignment been taken into consideration in IS research. Even if different approaches focus on business IT alignment, most of them have a tendency to focus on alignment as a state or an outcome. In this paper we argue that a dynamic approach is necessary in order to achieve business IT alignment in a long-term perspective. Furthermore we demonstrate that the choice of architectural principles has an impact on the ability to achieve and maintain operational as well as structural alignment. A case study is used as a basis for the analysis. The conclusion is that an Enterprise-centric architecture can create freedom of action for dynamic operational alignment, and that Business-oriented IT management can keep the IS Architecture aligned with the Business Architecture in a long term perspective.