The impact of SOA implementation strategies on business value and agility: A systems dynamics approach

With firms facing intense rivalry, globalization, and time-to-market pressures, the need for organizational and Information Systems (IS) agility assumed greater importance. However, despite the emergence of Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) as a prominent agility-enhancing technology, the fundamental question of how SOA can shape a firm's competitive advantage over times and how firms can derive business value from SOA initiatives has not been adequately addressed. The dynamic interaction among environmental factors, IT-Business alignment, and organizational and IS agility makes the process of deriving business value relatively complex. This study examines the effect of employing alternative SOA implementation strategies on the organization's cost and process discrepancy with a view to providing guidance for managerial decisions.