Deriving a Process for Interorganizational Business Capability Modeling
through Case Study Analysis
Fatih Yılmaz
1,2
, Julian Feldmeier
1
and Florian Matthes
1
1
Department of Informatics, Technical University of Munich, Boltzmannstr. 3, Garching, Germany
2
Institut f
¨
ur Rundfunktechnik GmbH, Floriansm
¨
uhlstr. 60, Munich, Germany
Keywords:
Enterprise Architecture, Business Capabilities, Interorganizational, Collaborative, Multiple Case Study.
Abstract:
To stay competitive in a globalized, constantly changing market environment with ongoing technological ad-
vancements, companies are not only focusing on their organization’s key capabilities but also collaborate more
closely with partners, suppliers, customers, and also competitors. By analyzing an enterprise’s business capa-
bilities, business leaders get an abstracted, holistic view of the organization and the alignment of its business
model and visions with the IT. Further, business capabilities and visualizations can help to improve the commu-
nication with business partners. Therefore, different companies operating in the same industry collaboratively
identify and model common business capabilities to define a shared ontology. Based on the knowledge gained
through literature review carried out on the topic of business capability modeling, we conducted a multiple
case study in this field. As a result, we derived a reference process for interorganizational business capability
modeling which we evaluated by conducting semi-structured interviews with members of different interorga-
nizational initiatives. The outcome of our research is an iterative process of modeling business capabilities in
interorganizational collaborations.
1 INTRODUCTION
For decades, companies work together due to many
benefits for the collaborating organizations (Diirr and
Cappelli, 2018). This becomes especially impor-
tant as enterprises and their IT landscapes become
more and more interconnected (Drews and Schirmer,
2014). To manage the rising complexity of busi-
ness processes and IT components communicating
across the enterprise’s boundaries, the concept of
interorganizational Enterprise Architecture Manage-
ment (EAM) has gained interest from the industry and
science (Yilmaz et al., 2020).
According to Moore, companies are shifting to
collaborate not only with their suppliers and cus-
tomers but also with their competitors working in the
same industry (Moore, 1996). Since these companies
often have similar capabilities, it appears natural to
collaborate in modeling these capabilities. The de-
sign and model of business capabilities supports the
alignment of business and IT as it allows an abstracted
and holistic view of an organization’s abilities and its
components (Ulrich and Rosen, 2011). The way a
single company can identify, and design its capabili-
ties was subject to an increasing amount of research
(Brits et al., 2007). But despite the shift to cooperat-
ing business ecosystems and interorganizational col-
laborations, the process of developing and modeling
business capabilities involving multiple companies is
barely studied and might vary widely from the one in
a single company. With this background, we identi-
fied the following research questions (RQ):
RQ 1: How do companies from the same industry
proceed in modeling common business capabilities?
RQ 2: How does the interorganizational business
capability modeling process differ from the modeling
process of a single organization?
To answer the first research question, a literature
review according to Webster and Watson was con-
ducted (Webster and Watson, 2002). The relevant lit-
erature provided a basis for the analysis of documents
and protocols and conducting semi-structured inter-
views following the guidelines for multiple case study
(Runeson and H
¨
ost, 2009; Yin, 2017). We evaluated
the developed draft process by conducting interviews
with experts involved in interorganizational business
capability modeling initiatives. The findings are even-
tually compared to the literature-based approaches of
modeling business capabilities in a single company to
find differences as well as similarities.
Yílmaz, F., Feldmeier, J. and Matthes, F.
Deriving a Process for Interorganizational Business Capability Modeling through Case Study Analysis.
DOI: 10.5220/0010386306730680
In Proceedings of the 23rd International Conference on Enterprise Information Systems (ICEIS 2021) - Volume 2, pages 673-680
ISBN: 978-989-758-509-8
Copyright
c
2021 by SCITEPRESS Science and Technology Publications, Lda. All rights reserved
673
2 RELATED WORK
Before identifying steps of interorganizational busi-
ness capability modeling, we conducted a literature
review to find relevant publications about the model-
ing steps of business capabilities within a single and
multiple organizations (Table 1).
Brits et al. (2007) propose a conceptual frame-
work for modeling business capabilities, where an
organization first needs to extract its ”critical in-
formation”, including ”Business Entities”, ”Business
Rules”, ”Business Processes” and ”Strategic Arti-
facts”. In this framework, people are not part of re-
sources but a separate component.
Espa
˜
na et al. (2015) propose strategies for mod-
eling business capabilities based on the capability-
driven design. All strategies consist of three steps:
”Capability Design”, ”Capability Evaluation”, and
”Capability Delivery”, with the research focus lying
on the design. Regardless of which starting point
for capability design is taken, an iterative structure
is proposed involving the business goals, processes,
and eventually the context affecting the capabilities
(Espa
˜
na et al., 2015).
Zdravkovic et al. (2013) conducted research on
capability modeling and delivery using cloud ser-
vices. It is based on a meta-model for capability-
driven development (Stirna et al., 2012). The de-
sign, which is, next to the delivery, one of the two
perspectives in capability-driven development, starts
with modeling the enterprise. The Capability-Driven
Design and Development (CDD), which is the under-
lying methodology in the research of Espa
˜
na (2015),
Zdravkovic (2013), and Stirna (2012), involves en-
terprise models, goals, processes, the underlying re-
sources, as well as concepts. It also considers the ap-
plication context in delivering the capabilities to allow
a fast reaction to changes (Zdravkovic et al., 2013;
Stirna et al., 2012).
Bondel et al. (2018) report from the modeling
of a business capability map (BCM) based on a case
study. The desired goal was the improvement of busi-
ness/IT alignment through the application of the BCM
(Bondel et al., 2018). A guideline for BCM creation
by The Open Group was used as a basis for their
approach (TheOpenGroup, 2018). The case study
started with the identification and modeling of more
general, top-level capabilities first.
Overall, these papers granted us profound knowl-
edge about the modeling steps of business capabili-
ties in a single organization, including the role of the
involved components. We further conducted a liter-
ate review on interorganizational business capability
modeling initiatives, methods and strategies. Due to
Table 1: Steps of BCM Modeling in Single Organization.
Step Authors
Use draft
capability model
Brits et al. (2007),
Zdravkovic et al.(2013),
Bondel et al. (2018)
Analyze business
processes
& functions
Brits et al. (2007),
Espa
˜
na et al.(2015),
Zdravkovic et al. (2013)
Analyze visions
& goals
Brits et al. (2007),
Espa
˜
na et al.(2015),
Zdravkovic et al. (2013)
Include
resources
Brits et al. (2007),
Zdravkovic et al. (2013),
Bondel et al. (2018)
Include
responsibilities
& roles
Brits et al. (2007),
Bondel et al. (2018)
Relations between
business
capabilities
Brits et al. (2007),
Espa
˜
na et al.(2015),
Zdravkovic et al. (2013),
Bondel et al. (2018)
Define KPIs
Espa
˜
na et al.(2015),
Zdravkovic et al. (2013)
Analyze application
context
Espa
˜
na et al.(2015),
Zdravkovic et al. (2013)
Create BCM Bondel et al. (2018)
Evaluation and
refinement
Brits et al. (2007),
Bondel et al. (2018)
the novelty of the topic, we were not surprised to only
find a handful of papers that mention business capa-
bilities in an interorganizational context.
Bakhtiyari et al. (2015) introduce a capability-
based approach for enterprise architecture in business
network planning (Bakhtiyari et al., 2015). By using
a BCM, the individual partners align their capabilities
with the capabilities of a global capability map. This
is used to map global capabilities to requirements and
relations. However, a description for the creation of
the global BCM itself is not presented.
Fleischer et al. (2007) use business capabilities
to configure and evaluate value-added networks. This
allows improved coordination of the single nodes in-
side the network (Fleischer et al., 2007). The result of
their research is a process for configuring the value-
added networks. A BCM is developed and used to
map business capabilities to the nodes of the network
and to compare the individual nodes’ BCMs. This
research does describe the identification and model-
ing of business capabilities in an interorganizational
context, but the identified business capabilities are de-
rived from the added value of a single company and
include the outsourced capabilities of its partners and
suppliers to configure the nodes in the network. In
contrast, our research is focusing on the collaborative
identification and modeling of common business ca-
pabilities by companies working in the same industry.
ICEIS 2021 - 23rd International Conference on Enterprise Information Systems
674
Overall, we did not find literature proposing a general
process of defining business capabilities in interorga-
nizational collaboration. Despite this result, the in-
dustry projects that are currently in progress underline
the actual relevance of this topic.
3 CASE STUDY
The main objective of our research is the identifica-
tion of general steps in the process of modeling busi-
ness capabilities in interorganizational collaborations
with companies from the same industry. In order to
build profound knowledge in the area of business ca-
pability modeling, we first conducted the literature re-
view as described in the previous section.
As our research uses different case studies as a ba-
sis for collecting information, we now want to present
the case studies. In the first case study, the cooper-
ating enterprises are public service media companies
from one European country cooperating in a working
group. The second case study consists of public ser-
vice media companies from several European coun-
tries within a community of practice (Wenger et al.,
2002). The documents and protocols provided by
these case studies were analyzed to derive a draft pro-
cess of collaborative business capability modeling.
To enrich and evaluate the findings, we conducted
semi-structured interviews with case study partner 1,
3, and 4. Case study 3 is an interorganizational collab-
oration active in the gambling domain. The intervie-
wee is a research assistant, who was responsible for
planning, consulting, and implementing the project.
The fourth case study was carried out with an associ-
ation of organizations operating in the finance indus-
try. The interviewees were enterprise architects and
project leaders of involved companies. Their motiva-
tion for collaboration was to provide industry-specific
enterprise architecture artifacts, which are not only
limited to a BCM. A summary of involved organiza-
tions can be seen in Table 2, whereas our case study
design is illustrated in Figure 1.
4 RESULTS
4.1 Reasons and Expectations
Before deriving the process of modeling business ca-
pabilities in an interorganizational collaboration, the
individual reasons of the case studies’ members for
participating in the collaborative modeling activity
need to be analyzed (Yilmaz et al., 2020). This pro-
Design and Plan
Collect and Analyze
Evaluate and Conclude
Conduction of literature
research
Definition of research questions
Analysis of protocols and
documents
Deriving of a process for inter-
organizational business
capability modeling
Conduction of semi-structured
interviews
Conduction of surveys
Jan 2020
Feb 2020
March 2020
April 2020
May 2020
Jun 2020
Figure 1: Study Design acc. Runeson and H
¨
ost (2009).
vides a holistic view of the projects and allows to
identify possible influencing factors.
The reason for the first case study is to provide
a basis for mapping their application portfolio to the
capabilities. This is then used to visualize which
applications are used by the organizations in which
group of capabilities, which organizations are similar
or different in certain business capabilities with re-
gard to their application landscape, as well as reveal-
ing the potential for standards and consolidation. The
second case study’s aim is to establish an industry-
specific reference model of a BCM and exchange
knowledge and experience. In the third case study,
the involved companies want to identify and visualize
similar and overlapping capabilities to reveal the po-
tential for synergies, merging, and acquisitions, and
create a common understanding and taxonomy. The
fourth case study justified the collaborative modeling
of capabilities with the creation of a reference model
to be used by organizations operating in the same in-
dustry.
4.2 Structure of the Meetings
The first case study’s modeling team consisted of the
heads of departments in IT and EA, project leaders of
IT- and EA projects, and enterprise architects. By in-
volving project leaders and heads of departments, the
companies ensure that employees with fundamental
knowledge about their own company’s business archi-
tecture can represent the enterprise appropriately as
well as guarantee high quality of the result. Addition-
ally, each member had to name a stand-in, who was
continuously kept up-to-date. Still, internal presenta-
tions and discussions with business leaders and execu-
tives as stakeholders of the project were performed in
order to collect feedback and impressions from a busi-
ness point of view. This was observed in the second
Deriving a Process for Interorganizational Business Capability Modeling through Case Study Analysis
675
Table 2: Case Study Partners.
Case Study
Partner 1
Case Study
Partner 2
Case Study
Partner 3
Case Study
Partner 4
Industry Broadcasting Broadcasting Gambling
Banking and
Finance
Source of
Information
Documents,
protocols and
semi-structured
interview
Documents and
protocols
Semi-structured
interview
Semi-structured
interview
Collaboration
Form
Working group
Community of
practice
Working group
Community of
practice
Collaboration
Goal
Basis for further
collaboration
Reference
architecture
Identify synergies and
create taxonomy
Reference
architecture
No. companies
involved
13 4 10 >30
Meeting Structure Physical Virtual and physical Physical Virtual
and fourth case study as well, where the relevance of
getting a cross-section of stakeholders, especially but
not only from the business side, was pointed out. The
meetings in the first case study were physical as all
member organizations operated in the same country
and should take place every quarter with extra meet-
ings arranged when needed. In between the meet-
ings, feedback was collected inside each company by
the corresponding team members and presented in the
next meeting.
The second case study’s modeling team consisted
of enterprise architects working in each of the partic-
ipating organizations. The meetings were scheduled
every two weeks and were mostly virtual due to the
international scope of the project. Additionally, the
team conducted a physical workshop in the last third
of the project. In the meetings, the members provided
feedback regarding the current work results, gained
from internal discussions in their organization, which
was then revised by the members responsible for this
deliverable.
With the third case study project being solely
driven by strategic goals, namely the revealing of po-
tential for synergy and acquisitions, the people in-
volved in capability modeling were mostly business
leaders and heads of departments. This also illus-
trates the relevance of business capabilities for the
business perspective. It stands out that in the third
case study the interviewee, a research assistant act-
ing as an enterprise architect, was coordinating and
leading the project because most of the participants
were new to the field of business capabilities or enter-
prise architecture itself. Here, the participants deliv-
ered ideas, information, and held discussions which
were collected by the enterprise architect, accumu-
lated and evaluated through several interviews and
presentations.
The modeling team of the fourth case study con-
sisted of enterprise architects and project managers.
In the first case study we could observe an assign-
ment of responsibilities and tasks to subgroups. The
allocation of roles and responsibilities was performed
by the members of the second case study as well.
Here, certain members were responsible for collecting
and implementing the feedback provided by the indi-
vidual members and their stakeholders. Noteworthy
is the allocation of a coordinating role in case study
1, 2, and 3. Appointing a moderator to coordinate the
meetings as well as to collect and distribute feedback
and tasks is supporting a clear structure of the meet-
ings and serves as a contact person. The forming of
subgroups as in case studies 1 and 2 to collaborate on
specific topics was not confirmed by case studies 3
and 4. Analyzing the first two case studies, we could
identify a disagreement in the form and relevance of
the venue. This was confirmed by case studies 3 and
4, as the meetings of case study 3 were physical in-
terviews and workshops, whereas the members of the
fourth group only had virtual meetings.
4.3 Collaborative Modeling of Business
Capabilities
Each case study used a draft business capability
model or business capability framework to get a bet-
ter understanding of the desired outcome, to use it as a
guideline, or as a foundation for their own modeling.
The draft capability model can be provided by one of
the members or obtained from external sources. In
the second case study enterprise architects decided to
use an external BCM to identify the appropriate level
of abstraction and used it as a basis for the develop-
ment of the own capability map. In addition to that,
case study 2 and also case studies 3 and 4 used ex-
isting BCMs from some of the members, whereas in
case study 1, a capability map from a company oper-
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676
ating in the same industry, yet not participating in the
project was used as a draft. As in case study 4, the
BCMs which were brought in by members worked as
a foundation first, but due to overlapping, duplication,
and the lack of following any particular standard, it
was decided to start from scratch, without using any
draft in order not to be biased. Using existing BCMs
from members or external sources provides a basic
understanding for the stakeholders and also for the de-
velopment team. In addition to that, it can be used as
the starting point for identifying business capabilities
and creating the BCM as it was done in case studies 2
and 4.
All projects started with the modeling of gen-
eral business capabilities before adding granularity
by modeling lower-level capabilities. This might be
caused by the usage of draft models and frameworks
that usually present a general, industry-independent
high-level architecture of an enterprise. It also makes
sense in the context of collaboration, as in a conglom-
erate of enterprises it may be easier to find common
top-level capabilities, which can then be used as the
basis for further decomposition if needed, than find-
ing consensus for specific low-level capabilities. Ad-
ditionally, as case studies 2 and 4 had the aim of
building an industry-specific reference architecture,
the needed degree of granularity was not as high as
one might expect in a single company where the BCM
is used for further, profound analysis. This was con-
firmed by the interviewees. The fear of revealing
valuable insights and therefore potentially losing an
advantage over the other members, which are still op-
erating in the same industry, by modeling more spe-
cific, lower-level capabilities was not found to be a
reason for starting with top-level capabilities. Busi-
ness capabilities themselves abstract from the under-
lying technologies and processes and hence would
not reveal many details. According to the intervie-
wees, in case of different views on the desired mod-
eling level of capabilities by the member organiza-
tions, discussions were held until a general agreement
was achieved. In case study 3, the modeling group
was working with a BCM from one of the members
as a foundation. This map was extended in the in-
terorganizational BCM creation by coloring the newly
added capabilities. This helped to reach a consensus
regarding the new capability map. Potential member-
exclusive capabilities were not found to be problem-
atic while modeling the capabilities and the creation
of the BCM. The case studies introduced up to six
categories to group the business capabilities. How-
ever, it was stated that grouping was not of great sig-
nificance but only improves orientation in the BCM.
Case studies 2 and 4 explicitly allow the enterprise-
specific re-grouping of their grouping proposal. Ex-
amples for categories occurring in the capability maps
are ”Core”, ”Strategic”, and ”Support” capabilities,
which is also proposed by TOGAF (TheOpenGroup,
2018).
Modeling of business capabilities within a single
enterprise can be based on the company’s business
processes (Espa
˜
na et al., 2015; Brits et al., 2007;
Zdravkovic et al., 2013). In case study 1, the underly-
ing business processes of the different organizations
were analyzed through the business process chains
and used for identifying the business capabilities but
were not modeled with them. During the evaluation
through interviews, it was pointed out that the busi-
ness processes and the internal structure of the orga-
nizations were too different to be embedded in the ca-
pabilities. Case studies 2, 3, and 4 did not involve the
business processes. Case study 3 analyzed the busi-
ness functions in order to identify the business capa-
bilities. Additionally, organization charts were ana-
lyzed. Even though business processes can be helpful
to identify or evaluate business capabilities, strict ad-
herence to business processes in modeling the capa-
bilities led to problems in the further progress of the
project, as the developed BCM closely resembled a
process map and caused the need for renewed discus-
sion and revision.
The company’s vision and goals can play a major
role in defining the business capabilities within a sin-
gle company (Espa
˜
na et al., 2015; Brits et al., 2007;
Zdravkovic et al., 2013). However, in all of the case
studies, the companies’ vision and goals were not an-
alyzed in the modeling process. The obtained BCMs
were throughout visualizing the current business ca-
pabilities and did not include a to-be view. Therefore,
a company’s goals and visions could be affecting the
final usage of the obtained BCM but did not affect the
creation of it in an interorganizational approach.
In literature, responsibilities and roles are com-
ponents of business capabilities (Brits et al., 2007;
Bondel et al., 2018). In most of the case studies,
roles and tasks were no components of the modeled
capabilities. This seems natural in a conglomerate of
various organizations, where different skills and tasks
enable the capabilities, depending on each company.
Only in case study 3, people responsible for the ca-
pability were included in the capability description.
This was caused by the fact that the initiative used the
BCM from one member not only as templates for ori-
entation but extended them with the capabilities from
other members. The other case studies did not include
responsibilities.
The creation of a common vocabulary seems to
be crucial as we observed a shared glossary in case
Deriving a Process for Interorganizational Business Capability Modeling through Case Study Analysis
677
Developing Team
Organization nOrganization 1
Project
Managers
Enterprise
Architects
Domain
Experts
Project
Managers
Enterprise
Architects
Domain
Experts
Organization 1
Organizational
Components
Organization n
Business
Objects
Business
Processes
Business
Functions
analyzed by
Business
Objects
Business
Processes
Business
Functions
Draft BCM
analyzed by
contribute
Business Capabilities
Top level BCs
Sub level BCs
aggregate
decompose
define
refine
Common
Vocabulary
Business Capability Map
Top level BCM
Sub level BCM
evaluate
create
use
revise
create
use
visualized
by
obtain
optional
Strategic
Core
Support
Evaluation
Components
Organization nOrganization 1
Presentation
Interviews
Use Cases &
Activities
Presentation
Interviews
Use Cases &
Activities
Strategic
Core
Support
Strategic
Core
Support
Figure 2: The derived reference process of interorganizational business capability modeling.
studies 2 and 4. Since these two groups contain or-
ganizations from different countries, they determined
that the common language is English. In case study 4,
the interviewees explicitly mentioned their focus on
differentiating business capability names and names
of the service domains. This is meant to prevent con-
fusion within the member group. Case study 1 de-
veloped and introduced a glossary and naming con-
vention to provide a common language and vocabu-
lary in the first meetings. At the same time the final-
ized business capabilities were documented including
a description, the outcome of the capability, and a ref-
erence to the position on the BCM. The descriptions
introduced and followed this common vocabulary.
In general, the business capabilities modeled in
the case studies did not embed resources, applica-
tions or technologies. Even if the organization’s
technologies play a negligible role, as the before men-
tioned internal structure and processes result in a va-
riety of used technology. Only in the first case study,
applications and technologies used by each member
were collected, analyzed, and put in relation to the
capabilities, which was caused by the additional col-
laboration target of building an application portfolio
that should be mapped to the BCM. Nevertheless, the
technologies were not modeled in the final descrip-
tion of the capabilities or in the BCM. In case study
4, it was pointed out that the technologies, roles, and
business processes should not be modeled in the in-
terorganizational BCM.
The identified business capabilities, their descrip-
tions, sub-capabilities, and interrelations were con-
stantly evaluated. This was done by presenting the
BCM to the stakeholders of each company to collect
feedback. But also use cases and activities were col-
lected from organizations and used to validate the ca-
pabilities. In general, there was a high level of support
and involvement of the business leaders and stake-
holders from each contributing organization. The
evaluation resulted in changes of capability names,
the further decomposition of a former top-level ca-
pability, or the aggregation of sub-level capabilities
until consensus was reached. In case study 2, the
group focused mainly on modeling one core capabil-
ity at a time until all members agreed on the naming,
description, and the sub-capabilities. As the point of
view got extended and shifted, the name, description
or the composition of sub-capabilities to core capa-
bilities had to be revised and adjusted. This iterative
process validated the final capabilities and guaranteed
the fulfillment of each organizations’ expectations.
Based on our observation in the case studies, we
designed a reference model visualizing the steps and
components of an interorganizational business capa-
bility modeling initiative (Figure 2). By following the
guideline, organizations operating in the same indus-
try can collaboratively develop a common BCM.
We suggest to begin with the developing team
consisting of enterprise architects, domain experts,
and department heads. The developing team can as-
sign responsibilities, e.g., a moderator for the meet-
ings or someone to incorporate the feedback. The
ICEIS 2021 - 23rd International Conference on Enterprise Information Systems
678
structure of meetings, and their regularity has to be
set. The development and use of a common language
and vocabulary are crucial and highly recommended.
With a common glossary developed, the modeling
team analyses the organizations’ charts, business pro-
cesses, business objects, and business functions to
identify common top-level capabilities. Identified
business capabilities do not embed the underlying
business processes, people, and roles as it might not
be useful or even possible with multiple organiza-
tions involved. Further, the mapping of the underlying
technology and application is optional. The identifi-
cation and modeling can be supported by the usage
of a draft business capability model. A draft BCM
can also introduce stakeholders or members of the
modeling team, who may be unfamiliar with the con-
cept of business capabilities and illustrate the desired
outcome. Our approach recommends the top-down
approach, due to the background of the interorgani-
zational context. The identified top-level capabilities
should be extended with a description using the com-
mon vocabulary and be illustrated in a BCM to visu-
alize relations between the capabilities. The top-level
capabilities can be grouped to facilitate the identifi-
cation of relations between the capabilities and their
role in the organizations. We suggest the grouping
into three categories as proposed by The Open Group
(2018) and Ulrich et al. (2011): Core capabilities,
support capabilities, and strategic capabilities.
This first version of the BCM is presented in the
individual organizations to stakeholders and domain
experts to collect feedback and to evaluate the first
version. With the feedback incorporated, the BCM
can be adjusted. This is an iterative process involving
constant feedback and evaluation from the stakehold-
ers and revision by the developing team. If a bottom-
up approach is chosen, the specific lower-level capa-
bilities should be grouped and their relations illus-
trated, before evaluating them using the stakeholders’
feedback. With many organizations involved, this can
bear a challenge and is only recommended if neces-
sary for the collaboration goal. Aggregating the low-
level business capabilities to higher-level capabilities
involves the agreement of the modeling team as well
as consensus with the stakeholders. In general, ag-
gregation of capabilities can result in changes of re-
lations or the composition in other layers, therefore a
holistic view, achieved through the BCM, is crucial.
The BCM should allow adjustments during the mod-
eling, e.g., decomposing former top-level capabilities
and vice versa. The degree of granularity for each
business capability depends on its intended purpose.
If the aim is the identification of synergies and poten-
tials for consolidations a high granularity is useful. If
defining a holistic reference architecture the granular-
ity can be lower. Members of the developing team
can submit change requests for the BCM if necessary
in the later stage.
5 DISCUSSION
In this paper, we introduced a reference process of
interorganizational business capability modeling de-
rived from multiple case studies, in order to answer
our research questions defined in section 1.
We could observe different approaches of collabo-
rative BCM development. First, we identified the rel-
evance of draft BCMs either submitted by members
or obtained from external sources. A common glos-
sary is an integral part of the process and is created
at the beginning of as well as applied and refined dur-
ing the modeling process. The developing team con-
sists of enterprise architects as well as domain experts
and department heads. By analyzing the companies’
organization charts, functions, processes, and objects
the developing team can further identify and describe
capabilities. The derived process is of iterative na-
ture, where each participant collects feedback from its
company and stakeholders, which is merged and used
to revise the capabilities. Responsibilities should be
allocated inside the developing team to provide struc-
ture and a clear contact persons. After coming to an
agreement of a final BCM, the result is being eval-
uated by the members regularly in order to find any
deviations or needs for changes in the BCM. Due to
the stability in the nature of a BCM, major changes in
the BCM were not expected and observed.
The modeling of business capabilities in collab-
oration was found to be less driven by the compa-
nies’ vision and goals as in the single enterprise. Even
though the involved companies’ technologies are an-
alyzed, they play a minor role and are not modeled
within the capabilities. Roles should not be taken
into account in collaborative projects. BCMs obtained
through interorganizational collaboration are found to
be less granular than in a single organization. The in-
troduction of a common vocabulary is not necessarily
needed in a single organization whereas it is an impor-
tant component in the interorganizational approach.
The top management and stakeholders are usually
supporting interorganizational collaboration and pro-
vide valuable feedback, whereas this is not generally
the case in a single organization with, e.g., capabil-
ity modeling initiatives driven by the IT department.
Further, we could not confirm the application of KPIs.
The reason for this can be the early stage of BCM us-
age in most of the observed cases.
Deriving a Process for Interorganizational Business Capability Modeling through Case Study Analysis
679
6 LIMITATION
As our findings are based on case studies, which gen-
erally have limitations such as validity, generalizabil-
ity, and reliability (Runeson and H
¨
ost, 2009). We
used several methods to cope with these limitations.
To ensure construct validity the interviews were con-
ducted with employees from different organizations
with the necessary background. By conducting multi-
ple case studies from various industries with different
collaboration motivations and goals, the derived pro-
cess can be applied to most interorganizational collab-
oration projects. Therefore, the generalizability as-
pect is addressed. The reliability aspect is ensured
by traceable analysis and results. To fulfill this crite-
rion, the interviews were following a previously de-
fined guideline reviewed by a second researcher.
7 CONCLUSION
In this paper, we presented related work in the field
of business capabilities in a single- and interorganiza-
tional context. As a foundation, we conducted a litera-
ture review to obtain profound knowledge about busi-
ness capabilities and their modeling in single organi-
zations as well as available frameworks. Through the
analysis of four case studies, we identified the steps of
interorganizational business capability modeling. By
conducting interviews, we could iteratively evaluate
and revise the derived steps. This resulted in the pro-
cess of interorganizational business capability model-
ing for companies operating in the same industry as
illustrated in Figure 2.
Based on our research, future studies could be
conducted on the composition and size of the teams
in up-scaled projects. More organizations and stake-
holders involved in the modeling process can increase
the complexity and communication effort in the de-
veloping team.
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