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International Conference on Information Systems Architecture and Technology

ISAT 2018: Information Systems Architecture and Technology: Proceedings of 39th International Conference on Information Systems Architecture and Technology – ISAT 2018 pp 245–259Cite as

Enterprise Meta-architecture for Megacorps of Unmanageably Great Size, Speed, and Technological Complexity

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Part of the book series: Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing ((AISC,volume 854))

Abstract

The discipline of enterprise architecture (EA) provides valuable tools for aligning an organization’s business strategy and processes, IT strategy and systems, personnel structures, and organizational culture, with the goal of enhancing organizational agility, adaptability, and efficiency. However, the centralized and exhaustively detailed approach of conventional EA is susceptible to failure when employed in organizations demonstrating exceedingly great size, speed of operation and change, and IT complexity – a combination of traits that characterizes, for example, some emerging types of “technologized” oligopolistic megacorps reflecting the Industry 4.0 paradigm. This text develops the conceptual basis for a variant form of enterprise architecture that can be used to enact improved target architectures for organizations whose characteristics would otherwise render them “unmanageable” from the perspective of conventional EA. The proposed approach of “enterprise meta-architecture” (or EMA) disengages human enterprise architects from the fine-grained details of architectural analysis, design, and implementation, which are handled by artificially intelligent systems functioning as active agents rather than passive tools. The role of the human enterprise architect becomes one of determining the types of performance improvements a target architecture should ideally generate, establishing the operating parameters for an EMA system, and monitoring and optimizing its functioning. Advances in Big Data and parametric design provide models for enterprise meta-architecture, which is distinct from other new approaches like agile and adaptive EA. Deployment of EMA systems should become feasible as ongoing advances in AI result in an increasing share of organizational agency and decision-making responsibility being shifted to artificial agents.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Drawing on the philosophical notion of human culture as a “rhizome” (i.e., an array of mutual influences that lacks a central origin or genesis and that is horizontally spreading, non-hierarchical, and maximally interconnected; possesses self-healing internal links; assimilates heterogeneous elements to form symbioses or hybrids; and grows naturally without a centrally planned architecture) developed by Deleuze and Guattari [41] and the concept of the technologized oligopolistic “megacorp” discussed earlier in this text [19, 20], the dynamics that establish such immeasurably complex interconnections between constituent elements of an organization – which, aided by decentralized networking technologies, often develop in a quasi-organic, biomimetic pattern – could be understood as contributing to the emergence of a “rhizocorp.”

  2. 2.

    The phrase “enterprise meta-architecture” has been previously employed in other contexts, e.g., by Covvey et al. [50], who use it to describe a three-level EA incorporating the levels of “Meta-Applications,” “Enterprise Middleware,” and “Departmental Applications Systems,” and by Ota and Gerz [51], who explain that “the development of architectures requires an enterprise (meta) architecture on how to define architectures.” Similarly, Van de Wetering and Bos [52] formulate a noteworthy “meta-framework for Efficacious Adaptive EA” grounded in cybernetics and Complex Adaptive Systems theory; however, it still relies on the utilization of conventional EA frameworks by human enterprise architects.

  3. 3.

    The determination of which organizational elements should be parameterized within the EMA system could be informed by a robust “organizational phenomenology” grounded either in the phenomenology of architecture [26] or a systems-theoretical phenomenology [53].

  4. 4.

    The relative organizational stability of technologized oligopolistic megacorps, in particular, may provide a solid foundation for the development of such new architectural forms.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Computer Science, Polish Academy of Sciences, 01-248, Warsaw, Poland

    Matthew E. Gladden

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  1. Matthew E. Gladden
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Correspondence to Matthew E. Gladden .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Applied Sciences in Nysa, Nysa, Poland

    Zofia Wilimowska

  2. Faculty of Computer Science and Management, Wrocław University of Science and Technology, Wrocław, Poland

    Leszek Borzemski

  3. Faculty of Computer Science and Management, Wrocław University of Science and Technology, Wrocław, Poland

    Jerzy Świątek

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Gladden, M.E. (2019). Enterprise Meta-architecture for Megacorps of Unmanageably Great Size, Speed, and Technological Complexity. In: Wilimowska, Z., Borzemski, L., Świątek, J. (eds) Information Systems Architecture and Technology: Proceedings of 39th International Conference on Information Systems Architecture and Technology – ISAT 2018. ISAT 2018. Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing, vol 854. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-99993-7_22

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