Communication Breakdowns in Architecture Driven Transformations: The Result of Cultural Diversity? A Theoretical Grounding of Findings from Qualitative Interviews

Abstract

We aim at understanding how cultural differences within an organisation contribute to the struggling/failure of EA guided enterprise transformations. Our earlier work, which builds on interviews with enterprise architects, suggests that communication breakdowns act as an intermediary variable between cultural diversity and transformation struggles. This paper discusses to what extent earlier work can be grounded in existing literature. On the one hand, we find support for most of the factors found in earlier work. However, on the other hand, some of our results cannot be grounded in the existing body of knowledge. For instance, our finding that over-communication leads to transformation struggle is not underlined by literature. Finally, we discuss the implications of this paper for our own research and for future research in general.