Internet of things architectures: do organizational strategies matters?

Abstract

Purpose The technology used by an organization is significantly influenced by the organization’s preferred competitive capabilities. The Internet of things (IoT) is an important technology, which is implemented by most prominent business organizations. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationship between an organization’s strategies and the IoT architectures implemented by the organization. Design/methodology/approach This study has been carried out on primary data collected with the help of a structured questionnaire. The data have been analyzed by statistical techniques like cluster analysis and discriminant analysis through SPSS. Findings The empirical investigation of data revealed that there is a relationship between organizational strategy and IoT architectures. The three-layered architecture of the IoT is most suitable for caretakers; the three-, four- or five- layered architectures are suitable for marketeers; whereas innovators find it more suitable to use five- or more-layered architecture of the IoT. This paper draws the conclusion based on maximum likelihood rather than using statistical analyses like ANOVA. The idea behind using the maximum likelihood estimate is that there are many subjective parameters in deciding the architectures of the IoT. These subjective parameters are difficult to quantify, so it is not possible to apply ANOVA on these parameters. Research limitations/implications This study considers three organizational strategies; the relationship between other organizational strategies and IoT architecture will be studied in future. Practical implications This study offers multiple opportunities to practitioners and consulting firms of the IoT to adopt a suitable IoT architecture according to the organizational strategy. This study equips IoT development engineers to select suitable technology for data capturing, data transmission, and data management and access for an IoT architecture. Originality/value Although a lot of work has already been done on the architecture of IoT for different industries and businesses, to the best of our knowledge, this is the first study that relates organizational strategies to IoT architectures. This study applies to all the major industry types.