The rapid globalization of business creates significant challenges for managing information technology. To coordinate their international networks most effectively, multinational companies must establish systems that can efficiently coordinate a wide variety of business requirements and processes.“Patterns in the Organization of Transnational Information Systems,” a study published in the February 2001 Information & Management, concludes that the most successful companies select the approach that fits most closely with their corporate strategy. “When there is a match between centralization and dispersal of the geographic business and similar arrangements for IT, the organization is doing better in terms of revenues and intangible factors such as customer satisfaction,” says Vikram Sethi, an associate professor of information and management sciences in the University of Texas at Arlington and a co-author of the study. “In the case of mismatches, they are creating dissatisfaction among system customers.”To determine basic benchmarks for integrating information systems into corporate strategies for the study, Sethi began working with William R. King of the University of Pittsburgh's Joseph M. Katz Graduate School of Business in 1992.
