🤖 AI Summary
This study examines how Enterprise Architecture (EA) can be localized within Vietnamese government agencies operating under weak institutional foundations to support digital transformation. Addressing EA’s conceptual ambiguity and poor contextual fit, we propose a dual translation mechanism: “theoretical translation”—abstracting indigenous practices into generalizable concepts—and “contextual translation”—deconstructing EA into actionable, organizationally prioritized interventions. Drawing on a 15-year longitudinal case study and integrating mechanism-based analysis with sensemaking theory, we identify critical diffusion pathways for EA in institutionally immature environments. Our findings extend EA theory’s applicability to digital governance in developing countries and yield a reusable conceptual translation framework. This framework offers methodological guidance for digital capacity building across the Global South, bridging theory-practice gaps in public-sector digital transformation.
📝 Abstract
Governments around the world have increasingly adopted digital transformation (DT) initiatives to increase their strategic competitiveness in the global market. To support successful DT, governments have to introduce new governance logics and revise IT strategies to facilitate DT initiatives. In this study, we report a case study of how Enterprise Architecture (EA) concepts were introduced and translated into practices in Vietnamese government agencies over a span of 15 years. This translation process has enabled EA concepts to facilitate various DT initiatives such as e-government, digitalization, to name a few. Our findings suggest two mechanisms in the translation process: a theorization mechanism to generalize local practices into field-level abstract concepts, making them easier to spread, while a contextualization mechanism unpacks these concepts into practical, adaptable approaches, aligning EA with adopters' priorities and increasing its chances of dissemination. Furthermore, our findings illustrate how translation happened when the initial concepts are ambiguous and not-well-understood by adopters. In this situation, there is a need for widespread experiments and sense-making among pioneers before field- and organizational-level translation can occur.