Central purpose of the research is the identification of Enterprise Architecture Management (EAM) capabilities and their transfer to a flexible, feature-related measurement system, which contains both the methodology for the determination and concepts for the further development of the relevant EAM capabilities of an enterprise. For many enterprises the knowledge about their business architecture is crucial for the company’s success. This key success factor lies in the relationship between products, services and facilities, their manufacturing and delivering business processes, in the internal/external structures, both in the technical and organizational respect and, of course, in the employees. The methods of the enterprise modeling and the EAM contribute to the identification of knowledge in enterprises by illustrating, gathering and transparently documenting for further use structures, processes and relationships and establishing a planning and development based thereon. Yet it is a challenge for large as well as small and medium sized enterprises to efficiently put into practice the right information and the right knowledge under the EAM, which is required for the assessment and further development of enterprise architectures. In order to support this process, a capability model is to be developed and examined, which enables a simple performance assessment of EAM skills and suggests methods for their further development. For the development of the so-called Enterprise Architecture Evolution Model already existing EAM approaches, indicator systems and methods are examined regarding their application possibilities, handling and development through different stages of life. Moreover, new studies and applications on this subject are developed together with partners from the industry.

Today’s economy is characterised by rapid change and digitalization. The technological advances and the increasing globalisation of the economy require in many areas high adaptability of enterprises. In order to improve their chances of success, enterprises need to cope with the challenges caused by dynamic markets, regulations, cus- tomer demands, novel technologies, etc. This requires a constant adaptation and flexible design of service/ product offerings to gain competitiveness. Due to the strong paradigm shift towards service economy and aforementioned digitalization trend, this thesis tackles the flexibility problem from the perspective of enterprises offering digital services. The central question tackled throughout the work is hence ”from the methodological perspective, how can the design of digital services adaptable to changing requirements of the environ- ment be supported?”. In this respect, the thesis argues that the enterprises need to under- stand their application context to be able to offer flexible digital ser- vices. Furthermore, after analysing the state of research in Services Science, it concludes that different roles with varying backgrounds participate to design and implementation of digital services, which adds the need for alignment between those as a further challenge for flexibility. To fulfil this, the thesis suggests that capabilities can be used as an overarching term and a communication vehicle. The thesis has two main contributions to the scientific body of knowledge. First and foremost, by following Design Science Research (DSR) guidelines, it proposes Digital Enterprise Context Modelling Method (deCOM), a capability-based context modelling method that aims to increase digital service flexibility by means of conceptual modelling. Second, it combines the capability and service research streams, which is rarely found in the literature. Evaluated via differ- ent methods in a total of six evaluation episodes, the method has been iteratively developed in line with the feedback collected from vari- ous audiences. The results show that, although requiring an effort to learn, deCOM is a comprehensible, useful and well-documented method to elicit, identify and model the context of a digital service.

Knowledge Management Systems (KMS) and their application have been accepted as an approach for knowledge preservation, renewal and for systemic identification of knowledge in enterprises in practical experience for years. Yet, the practical implementation of KM approaches and the application of KMS in SME remains underreported in research, though due to the sparse resources available the application process remains challenging. These resources however are the reason for a strong value orientation in the KMS selection process in SME, yet a specific concept for the benefits to be expected is still to be elaborated.

Within this research project the described problem is to be addressed by the means of already existing success models (IS Success, KMS Success) as well as ideal architecture, which are to be assembled into a framework allowing a value-oriented implementation process of KMS in SME. The orientation towards value is an approach to be based on individual perception due to the immaterial characteristics of knowledge, as well as the lacking accountability of knowledge management activities.

One part of this research field is the determination of the knowledge need in SME, which should be the foundation of the framework. The research approach is based on the operationalization of existing success models and their transformation to concrete guidance by the means of case studies in SME.