Enhancing digital platform capabilities and networking capability with EA-driven dynamic capabilities

Digital platforms, e.g., like Alibaba, are currently revolutionizing and shaping the business ecosystem and transforming how firms build a competitive advantage. Decision-makers recognize the opportunities created by these new digital technologies, but to create compelling digital platforms, a firm requires digital platform capabilities (DPC). This study tries to explain how enterprise architecture (EA)-driven capabilities, conceptualized as dynamic capabilities, enhance DPC and the firms’ networking capability (NC), i.e., its ability to initiate, maintain, and utilize relationships with other players. A research model is developed with associated hypotheses. Data is collected from 414 respondents, including senior managers, executives, enterprise architects, IT, and business managers, to test the hypotheses. The findings show that EA-driven dynamic capabilities enhance both DPC and NC. This research advances our current understanding of how EA-driven dynamic capabilities drive DPC and NC to form the foundation for achieving business value during the COVID-19 shock.