Dynamics of Control Mechanisms in Enterprise Architecture Management: A Sensemaking Perspective

Enterprise architecture management (EAM) has long been considered a governance means to impose enterprise-wide objectives to local information systems development projects. This perspective on EAM inevitably brings about formal control mechanisms with the aim of enforcing enterprise-wide objectives in a top-down fashion. This study takes a complementary perspective by investigating the portfolio of control mechanisms with and beyond formal control mechanisms. We examine control portfolios and their dynamics over time. We employ control theory to capture the portfolio of control mechanisms, and an organizational sensemaking perspective, to capture its dynamics. The longitudinal analysis of a financial service company over a decade reveals that EAM’s portfolio of control mechanisms emerges in an ongoing sensemaking process. In this process, various stakeholders continuously interpret cues in their environment and take actions in response to these cues. Further, we demonstrate that control portfolios are constantly (re)configured, through different combinations of formal and informal mechanisms.