Assessing Systems Integration: A Conceptual Framework and a Method

Systems integration is a strategy advocated in order to achieve sustainable development. However, in the literature, it is poorly conceptualized, and current research fails to address systems integration as a process of change. This paper proposes a conceptual framework and operationalization for assessing processes of systems integration. This includes a typology of systems integration inspired by organizational theory together with an empirical methodology for identifying types (or degrees) of systems integration. This paper also proposes a method for visualizing the integration process in order to uncover its dynamics. The typology as well as the visual mapping tool is applied to an empirical case. The analysis shows that six forms of integration exist. It also shows that systems integration is dynamic and highlights that systems integration sometimes requires systems that bridge others. This paper concludes by arguing that the presented methodology could be a good basis for analyzing the adaptive capacity of systems integration.