Achieving business-IT alignment (BITA) as a long-term and appraising management issue can be accomplished in a few ways, enterprise architecture (EA) being one of them. This paper attempts to give a critical understanding of the effects of performing EA on different aspects of BITA maturity through a global survey. A total of 236 respondents from 60 countries, a relatively large response for a survey, were selected. The main purpose of the research is to examine these impacts and to identify directions for innovative practices in the future, the unique contributions of this work. A questionnaire designed on the Luftman’s maturity model as well as various other statistical methods, including PLS path modeling, Wilcoxon matched-pairs signed-ranks test and Mann–Whitney U test, are applied to understand how the EA can deliver benefits. The implications of our findings in this study as well as its limitations are discussed from different viewpoints to enable both academics and practitioners to detect the flaws in the existing EA frameworks and propose improvements.

中文翻译：

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通过企业体系结构利用业务与IT的一致性-评估程度的实证研究

实现业务IT一致性（BITA）作为一个长期问题并评估管理问题可以通过几种方法来实现，其中企业体系结构（EA）就是其中之一。本文试图通过全球调查对执行EA对BITA成熟度不同方面的影响进行批判性理解。共有来自60个国家/地区的236名受访者被选中，这是一项相对较大的调查。该研究的主要目的是研究这些影响，并确定未来创新实践的方向，以及这项工作的独特贡献。根据Luftman的成熟度模型以及其他各种统计方法（包括PLS路径建模，Wilcoxon配对对签名秩检验和Mann-Whitney U检验）设计的问卷被用于了解EA如何带来收益。