What Are Important Governance and Management Mechanisms to Achieve IT Flexibility in Service-Oriented Architectures (SOA)?: An Empirical Exploration

Recent research results and practitioner experience both posit that Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) governance is critical to successfully implement and utilize SOA. We investigate the impact of different SOA governance and management mechanisms (structures, processes, and employees) for leveraging SOA's potential to increase an organization's IT infrastructure flexibility. The results based on data from 73 SOA using organizations reveal 1) a negative impact of implementing new decision-making bodies on 2 dimensions of IT flexibility (IT modularity and integration) 2) a positive impact of the SOA management processes service management and service development on 2 dimensions of IT flexibility (modularity and integration of IT infrastructure) 3) a positive impact of business units collaboratively identifying jointly utilizable services on modularity 4) and a particularly strong impact of standards, and also of employee qualification, on all dimensions of IT infrastructure flexibility.