Discussion
Influences on the Field of Enterprise Architecture
EA is fundamentally an evaluation and depiction of people, processes, and resources. Some of the areas of practice and theory that have influenced the emerging discipline of EA include business administration, public administration, operations research, sociology, organizational theory, management theory, information science, and computer science. Understanding the mission, goals, and culture of an enterprise is as important to implementing an EA as the selection of analytic methods and documentation techniques. The EA approach described in this book is based on theories of how social enterprises (including enterprises) are structured and how systems and activities function within enterprises. Figure 2-1 shows the academic fields and areas of theory/practice that influence EA.