ORIGINAL ARTICLE Enterprise architecture management and its role in corporate strategic management Daniel Simon • Kai Fischbach • Detlef Schoder Received: 5 October 2011 / Revised: 30 December 2012 / Accepted: 6 January 2013 / Published online: 8 March 2013 Ó Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2013 Abstract A considerable number of organizations continually face difficulties bringing strategy to execution, and suffer from a lack of structure and transparency in corporate strategic management. Yet, enterprise architecture as a fundamental exercise to achieve a structured description of the enterprise and its relationships appears far from being adopted in the strategic management arena. To move the adoption process along, this paper develops a comprehensive business architecture framework that assimilates and extends prior research and applies the framework to selected scenarios in corporate strategic management. This paper also presents the approach in practice, based on a qualitative appraisal of interviews with strategic directors across different industries. With its integrated conceptual guideline for using enterprise architecture to facilitate corporate strategic management and the insights gained from the interviews, this paper not only delves more deeply into the research but also offers advice for both researchers and practitioners. Keywords Enterprise architecture Á Enterprise architecture management Á Business architecture Á Corporate strategic management Á Strategic planning Á Business model D. Simon Á D. Schoder Department of Information Systems and Information Management, University of Cologne, Pohligstr. 1, 50969 Cologne, Germany e-mail: simon@wim.uni-koeln.de URL: http://www.wim.uni-koeln.de/ D. Schoder e-mail: schoder@wim.uni-koeln.de URL: http://www.wim.uni-koeln.de/ K. Fischbach (&) Chair in Information Systems and Social Networks, University of Bamberg, An der Weberei 5, 96047 Bamberg, Germany e-mail: kai.fischbach@uni-bamberg.de URL: http://www.uni-bamberg.de/sna 123 Inf Syst E-Bus Manage (2014) 12:5–42 DOI 10.1007/s10257-013-0213-4