Governance and Longevity of Architecturally Embedded Applications

Figures & data

Figure 1. Multi-level view of IS architecture and governance

Table 1. Application Governance Archetypes

	IT owned (centralized)	Business IT owned	Business owned	Business managed (decentralized)
Decision control	Planning decisions with a central IT unit	Planning decisions with an IT unit within the business	Planning decisions with a business unit	Planning decisions with a business unit
Decision management	Change-coordination responsibility with a central IT unit	Change-coordination responsibility with a central IT unit	Change-coordination responsibility with a central IT unit	Change-coordination responsibility with a business unit

Figure 2. Research Model

Table 2: Constructs and Definitions

Construct	Definition	Operationalization	Guiding references
Application longevity	Continued operation and organizational use of an application over a predefined period	Duration in days of operation within the period	Agarwal & Tiwana [1] Swanson & Dans [62] Furneaux & Wade [22]
		Binary attribute 0: Inactive at the period end 1: Active at the period end
Application governance	Distribution of application planning and change-coordination decision rights for an individual business application	Four rank-ordered archetypes 1: IT owned 2: Business IT owned 3: Business owned 4: Business managed	Winkler & Brown [76] Tiwana & Konsynski [67] Brown & Magill [9] Xue et al. [80]
Internal modularity	Extent to which an application can be decomposed into smaller standardized and customizable building blocks (instead of being integrated and monolithic)	Five rank-ordered types 1: Closed legacy software 2: Modified software 3: Customizable software 4: Open software 5: Modular end-user software	Simon [59] Subramanyam et al. [61] Tiwana [65] Tiwana & Safadi [69]
Inter-connectedness	Number of other applications interconnected with the focal application	Degree of information flow dependencies in the architectural network	Dreyfus & Iyer [17] MacCormack & Lagerström [45] Fürstenau et al. [24]
Cluster governance	Dominant governance archetype of surrounding applications in the neighborhood of a focal application	Median of the governance of all applications in the focal application’s neighborhood cluster	Simon [58] David [15]
(Governance-Architecture) Fit	Correspondence between observed governance and that collectively induced by architectural contingencies, i.e., whether decision rights are allocated consistently with architecturally similar applications	1: Observed governance matches induced governance 0: Observed governance does not match the induced governance	Misztal [49] Gu et al. [30]

Table 3: Case Organization Overview

Case	Total assets	Employees	Core activities	Apps.^1	IT function structure^2
Media	2 billion euros	~4,500	Production, program planning, and broadcasting	225	Centralized and decentralized
Banking	46 billion euros	~3,500	Account management (private and corporate) and treasury	498	Centralized and shared service provider
Utilities	0.5 billion euros	~8,000	Sales/distribution, operations, and financials for waste disposal	193	Centralized (corporate and waste management) and decentralized

¹Clean number of applications considered from the enterprise architecture repository.² Categorization based on archetypes in Winkler and Brown [74].

Figure 3. Media IS Architecture Network (at t₂)

Notes: Schematic representation. Unconnected applications filtered. Each application unambiguously assigned to one cluster, despite visual overlaps.

Table 4: Descriptive Statistics and Correlations

	Mean	SD	Median	[Min, Max]	1	2	3	4	5
Media (t2)
1. Survival (binary)	0.87	0.34	1.00	[0, 1]
2. Application governance	2.41	0.86	2.00	[1, 4]	-0.17*^a
3. Internal modularity	2.82	0.99	3.00	[1, 5]	0.23***	0.22**^a
4. Inter-connectedness^b	2.00	1.02	1.82	[0, 5.77]	0.06	-0.28***^a	-0.34***
5. Cluster governance	2.55	0.69	3.00	[1, 4]	0.06	0.16*^a	-0.16*	0.13
6. Fit	0.56	0.50	1.00	[0, 1]	0.17*	-0.15*^a	-0.06	0.15*	0.10
Banking
1. Survival (binary)	0.45	0.50	0.00	[0, 1]
2. Application governance	2.57	1.18	2.00	[1, 4]	-0.39***^a
3. Internal modularity	4.01	1.10	4.00	[1, 5]	-0.24***	0.57***^a
4. Inter-connectedness^b	0.98	1.23	0.88	[0, 6.32]	0.24***	-0.53***^a	-0.60***
5. Cluster governance	2.37	0.84	3.00	[1, 4]	-0.42***	0.52***^a	0.51***	-0.61***
6. Fit	0.53	0.50	1.00	[0, 1]	-0.01	0.16***^a	0.15**	-0.06	0.06
Utilities
1. Survival (binary)	0.18	0.39	0.00	[0, 1]
2. Application governance	3.22	1.23	3.00	[1, 5]	-0.04^a
3. Internal modularity	5.60	0.49	6.00	[5, 6]	-0.44***	0.21**^a
4. Inter-connectedness	2.20	3.59	1.00	[1, 24]	0.03	-0.10^a	0.18*
5. Cluster governance	2.65	0.59	3.00	[2, 4]	-0.16*	0.13^a	0.20**	0.07
6. Fit	0.32	0.47	0.00	[0, 1]	0.28***	-0.05^a	-0.28***	0.06	-0.16*

*p < 0.05, **p < 0.01, ***p < 0.001

Correlations without superscripts are Pearson correlation coefficients

^aSpearman correlation coefficient

^bihs-transformed

Table 5: Results for Effects on Application Governance (Contingencies)

	Media						Banking		Utilities
	Application Governance (Ordinal logistic regressions)						Application Governance (Ordinal logistic regression)		Application Governance (Ordinal logistic regression)
	t0 (2015)		t1 (2016)		t2 (2018)		B (SE)^2	Exp(B)^2	B (SE)^3	Exp(B)^3
	B (SE)^1	Exp(B)^1	B (SE)^1	Exp(B)^1	B (SE)^1	Exp(B)^1
H1: Internal modularity	0.33* (0.16)	1.40	0.40* (0.17)	1.49	0.65*** (0.18)	1.92	0.38*** (0.11)	1.46	0.72* (0.32)	2.06
H2: Inter-connectedness	-0.06* (0.03)	0.94	-0.37* (0.15) ^4	0.69^5	-0.41** (0.15) ^4	0.67^6	-0.28** (0.11)^4	0.75^7	-0.10** (0.04)	0.90
H3: Cluster governance	0.83** (0.28)	2.30	0.66** (0.23)	1.93	0.55* (0.22)	1.73	0.73*** (0.14)	2.07	0.61* (0.25)	1.85
Scope of use	-0.05*** (0.01)	0.95	-0.06*** (0.01)	0.94	-0.05*** (0.01)	0.95	-0.03* (0.02)	0.97	-0.14* (0.06)	0.87
Age	0.03 (0.02)	1.03	0.02 (0.02)	1.02	0.04* (0.02)	1.04	-0.04 (0.02)	0.96
BF: Operations	0.27 (0.54)	1.31	0.58 (0.52)	1.78	0.58 (0.54)	1.78	1.47*** (0.27)	4.36	-0.24 (0.53)	0.78
BF: General administration	-0.67 (0.66)	0.51	-0.44 (0.72)	0.64	-0.77 (0.71)	0.47	2.07*** (0.29)	7.89
BF: Distribution	1.01 (0.53)	2.74	1.08* (0.54)	2.94	0.77 (0.55)	2.15	1.94*** (0.35)	6.95
BF: Human resources	1.24* (0.62)	3.47	1.38* (0.63)	3.99	1.48* (0.72)	4.40			0.05 (0.69)	1.05
BF: Finance	0.23 (0.49)	1.26	0.18 (0.49)	1.20	0.05 (0.50)	1.05			-0.63 (0.57)	0.53
BF: Marketing & sales	0.29 (0.48)	1.34	0.36 (0.47)	1.43	0.01 (0.48)	1.01			-0.01 (0.53)	0.99
BF: Procurement	-0.07 (0.64)	0.93	-0.25 (0.65)	0.78	-0.39 (0.65)	0.68
BF: Infrastructure							-2.36* (1.10)	0.09
BF: Customer services									0.38 (0.66)	1.46
Num. obs.	225		219		209		498		193
Nagelkerke R^2	0.37		0.36		0.36		0.47		0.16
McFadden R^2	0.17		0.16		0.16		0.21		0.05
Log likelihood	-233.30		-229.15		-218.01		-534.43		-278.54
Model χ^2	92.56, df=12, p<0.001		87.44, df=12, p<0.001		84.71, df=12, p<0.001		286.52, df=9, p<0.001		31.36, df=9, p<0.001

*p < 0.05, **p < 0.01, ***p < 0.001

¹ BF: Production as reference category.

² BF: Support as reference category.

³ BF: Tour planning as reference category.

⁴ ihs-transformed

⁵ $k^B=2^{-0.37}=0.77$

⁶ $k^B=2^{-0.41}=0.75$

⁷ $k^B=2^{-0.28}=0.82$

Table 6: Regression Results for Effects on Longevity

	Media		Banking		Utilities
	Decommissioning (Penalized Cox models)		Decommissioning (Penalized Cox models)		Decommissioning (Penalized binary log.)
	B (SE)^1	Exp(B)^1	B (SE)^2	Exp(B)^2	B (SE)^3	Exp(B)^3
H4: Fit	-0.86* (0.39)	0.42	-0.77*** (0.16)	0.46	-1.01* (0.46)	0.36
Application governance (binary)	1.09** (0.40)	2.96	0.47 (0.26)	1.60	0.51 (0.62)	1.66
BF: Operations	-0.73 (0.74)	0.48	0.05 (0.21)	1.05	0.47 (0.81)	1.59
BF: General administration	0.31 (0.69)	1.36	0.16 (0.22)	1.17
BF: Distribution	0.70 (0.64)	2.02	-0.31 (0.33)	0.73
BF: Human resources	1.14 (0.67)	3.12			0.38 (1.11)	1.47
BF: Finance	-0.21 (0.79)	0.81			0.64 (0.96)	1.90
BF: Marketing & sales	-0.21 (0.63)	0.81			-1.98** (0.77)	0.14
BF: Procurement	-2.39* (1.57)	0.09
BF: Infrastructure			-1.08* (0.56)	0.34
BF: Customer services					1.80 (1.58)	6.04
Age	0.07*** (0.02)	1.08	0.12*** (0.01)	1.13
Risk rating	-0.08 (0.41)	0.92	-0.49*** (0.07)	0.61
External application	-0.93 (0.62)	0.39
Shadow IT policy			0.12 (0.34)	1.13
Documentation quality			0.70*** (0.09)	2.01
Num. obs.	271		498		193
Likelihood-ratio test	49.91, df=12, p<0.01		203.56, df=10, p<0.01		52.51, df=7, p<0.01
Wald test (χ2)	45.84, df=12, p<0.01		189.42, df=10, p<0.01		65.49, df=7, p<0.01

*p < 0.05, **p < 0.01, ***p < 0.001

¹ BF: Production as reference category.

² BF: Support as reference category.

³ BF: Tour planning as reference category.

Figure 4. Estimated Distribution of Survival Times for (A) Media and (B) Banking (excluding shadow IT)¹⁰

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