Information technology in international business: An architectural perspectiv

Globalization of business firms headquartered in the United States has been prescribed for several years. With products and capital traveling greater distances, unbounded by national borders or time zones, information technology became an indispensable tool for the effective and efficient conduct of international business. Paradoxically, spectacular advances in information technology capabilities have been accompanied by an inability to develop systems that satisfied the information requirements of global firms. This disturbing paradox, encompassing interrelated phenomena such as the opportunities for the strategic use of information technology and the corresponding challenges of globalization, served as the staging area for this research.;The established disciplines of strategic management, international business and information systems have each, separately, contributed much to the research literature stream and to the practice of global management. We believed that the competitive impact of information technology in international business could be substantially improved by multidisciplinary research directed toward the development of a more effective model for relating foreign subsidiary strategic roles and international information technology architectures. A parsimonious modeling of the relationship between international information technology requirements and capabilities would serve as a map to guide and document the information systems decisions for globally competing organizations.;Our research design had two distinct, yet interrelated phases. The first phase adopted a case study framework that utilized interviewing as a qualitative data collection technique. This initial field work, in turn, provided the foundation for the second research phase, a mail survey of a larger sample of firms. The research results empirically identified international information technology architecture patterns that reflected strategic and international context considerations.