1 Introduction

This theme section on Trends in Enterprise Architecture Research originated at the 2022 TEAR workshop, co-located with the Enterprise Design, Operations and Computing conference. Together with a general call for papers, an invitation to submit papers to this theme section was extended to the authors of the TEAR 2022 workshop papers. The international TEAR series brings together Enterprise Architecture (EA) researchers from different research communities and provides a forum to present EA research results and to discuss future EA research directions.

We received a total of 11 intentions to submit, from which six submissions materialized and went into review. After a thorough reviewing process, whereby each paper went through multiple revisions, receiving three reviews per round, two papers were finally selected for inclusion into the theme section.

2 Selected papers

The two selected papers focus on enterprise architecture modeling.

Toward an ontology for EA modeling and EA model quality by Jan A. H. Schoonderbeek and Henderik A. Proper proposes a comprehensive applied ontology tailored for EA modeling. Derived from a modeling theory, this ontology elucidates key concepts like “enterprise architecture model” while introducing novel ones such as “model audience” and “model objective.” Represented in OntoUML, this ontology aligns with the Unified Foundational Ontology for modeling, offering a structured framework for studying and improving EA models.

Modeling Competences in Enterprise Architecture: From Knowledge, Skills, and Attitudes to Organizational Capabilities by Rodrigo Calhau, Joao Paulo Almeida, Satya Kokkula and Giancarlo Guizzardi delves into integrating competencies into Enterprise Architecture (EA) modeling, crucial for organizational performance. It identifies key competence-related concepts and proposes a representation strategy using the ArchiMate modeling language. Grounded on a reference ontology, the paper examines relations between competencies, knowledge, skills, and attitudes, aiming to enhance competency-based practices within enterprises. The paper elucidates two tasks: focusing on competencies to elucidate their connections and situating them within broader organizational capabilities. An empirical survey evaluates the representation’s effectiveness.

3 Reviewers

Several well-established field experts acted as reviewers, and we wish to wholeheartedly thank them for their effort and expertise:

Joao Paulo Almeida,

Robert Buchmann,

Rik Eshuis,

Hans-Georg Fill,

Ulrik Franke,

Asif Gill,

John Goetze,

Simon Hacks,

Knut Hinkelmann,

Svyatoslav Kotusev,

Henderik Proper,

Ben Roelens,

Philipp Zech,

Alfred Zimmermann.