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      The Zachman Framework for Enterprise Architecture: An Explanatory IS Theory

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          Abstract

          Enterprise Architecture (EA) has had an interesting and often controversial history since its inception in the late 80’s by pioneers such as John Zachman. Zachman proposed the Zachman Framework for Enterprise Architecture (ZFEA), a descriptive, holistic representation of an enterprise for the purposes of providing insights and understanding. Some scholars claim that EA is an imperative to ensure successful business structures or business-IT alignment, or more recently with Enterprise Architecture Management (EAM), to manage required organizational transformation. However, EA initiatives within companies are often costly and the expected return on investment is not realized. In fact, Gartner recently indicated in their 2018 Enterprise Architecture Hype Cycle that EA is slowly emerging from the trough of disillusionment after nearly a decade. In this paper we argue that the role and value of EA is often misunderstood, and that EA, specifically the ZFEA for the purpose of this paper, could be considered as a theory given the view of theory within Information Systems (IS). The purpose of IS theories is to analyse, predict, explain and/or prescribe and it could be argued that EA often conform to these purposes. Using the taxonomy of theories as well as the structural components of theory within IS as proposed by Gregor, we motivate that the ZFEA could be regarded as an explanatory theory. Positioning ZFEA as IS explanatory theory provides insight into the role and purpose of the ZFEA (and by extension EA), and could assist researchers and practitioners with mediating the challenges experienced when instituting EA and EAM initiatives within organizations.

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                Author and article information

                Contributors
                marie.hattingh@up.ac.za
                machdel.matthee@up.ac.za
                hanlie.smuts@up.ac.za
                ilias.pappas@uia.no
                ykdwivedi@gmail.com
                matti.mantymaki@utu.fi
                aurona.gerber@up.ac.za
                pierre.leroux@moyoafrica.com
                Journal
                978-3-030-44999-5
                10.1007/978-3-030-44999-5
                Responsible Design, Implementation and Use of Information and Communication Technology
                Responsible Design, Implementation and Use of Information and Communication Technology
                19th IFIP WG 6.11 Conference on e-Business, e-Services, and e-Society, I3E 2020, Skukuza, South Africa, April 6–8, 2020, Proceedings, Part I
                978-3-030-44998-8
                978-3-030-44999-5
                06 March 2020
                : 12066
                : 383-396
                Affiliations
                [8 ]GRID grid.49697.35, ISNI 0000 0001 2107 2298, University of Pretoria, ; Pretoria, South Africa
                [9 ]GRID grid.49697.35, ISNI 0000 0001 2107 2298, University of Pretoria, ; Pretoria, South Africa
                [10 ]GRID grid.49697.35, ISNI 0000 0001 2107 2298, University of Pretoria, ; Pretoria, South Africa
                [11 ]GRID grid.23048.3d, ISNI 0000 0004 0417 6230, University of Agder, ; Kristiansand, Norway
                [12 ]GRID grid.4827.9, ISNI 0000 0001 0658 8800, Swansea University, ; Swansea, UK
                [13 ]GRID grid.1374.1, ISNI 0000 0001 2097 1371, University of Turku, ; Turku, Finland
                [14 ]GRID grid.49697.35, ISNI 0000 0001 2107 2298, Department of Informatics, , University of Pretoria, ; Pretoria, South Africa
                [15 ]CAIR, Pretoria, South Africa
                Author information
                http://orcid.org/0000-0003-1743-8167
                http://orcid.org/0000-0002-3652-7512
                Article
                32
                10.1007/978-3-030-44999-5_32
                7134282
                7e0a0665-e8db-43f7-a45a-b114ac05885f
                © IFIP International Federation for Information Processing 2020

                This article is made available via the PMC Open Access Subset for unrestricted research re-use and secondary analysis in any form or by any means with acknowledgement of the original source. These permissions are granted for the duration of the World Health Organization (WHO) declaration of COVID-19 as a global pandemic.

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                © IFIP International Federation for Information Processing 2020

                zachman framework for enterprise architecture,enterprise architecture,is theory,explanatory is theory

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