Enterprise-Level IS Research: Challenges and Potentials of Looking Beyond Enterprise Solutions
Journal
Proceedings of the 25th International Conference on Enterprise Information Systems
Type
conference paper
Date Issued
2023-04-25
Author(s)
Abstract
For more than 40 years, enterprise solutions, specifically enterprise systems, allowed companies to integrate enterprises’ operations throughout. Starting with integrating core operational functions, the integration scope of enterprise solutions has increasingly widened, now often covering customer activities, activities along supply chains, and business analytics. IS research has contributed a wide range of explanatory and design knowledge dealing with this class of IS. During the last two decades, however, not only technological innovations, but also managerial / organizational innovations not only extend the affordances of enterprise solutions, but also challenge traditional approaches to their design and coordination. Particularly in large enterprises or complex business ecosystems, many IT/business alignment issues have not yet been fundamentally addressed, and novel, more decentralized (aka agile) forms of coordination have not yet been integrated with mainstream IS design and management practice. At the same time, IS complexity is not harnessed at all, and is increasingly threatening to impose limits to IS efficiency and flexibility gains. This position paper presents a cross-solution (= enterprise-level) perspective on IS, discusses the challenges of complexity and coordination for IS design and management, presents selected enterprise-level insights for IS coordination and governance, and explores avenues towards a more comprehensive body of knowledge on this important level of analysis.
HSG Classification
contribution to scientific community
Refereed
Yes
Start page
9
End page
14
Event Location
Prague, Czech Republic
Subject(s)
Division(s)