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.