Managing Distributed Information Systems Resources in a Globalized Environment

Research on international information systems suggests that alignment between IS service structures and the organizational structure is an important but complex issue. Little empirical work has been doole, however, to identify how such alignment might be achieved. 'Ihis paper reports on the results of a study examining the organizational factors which might be expected to have an impact on the alignment of IS resources in MNCs. Based on previous international research, nineteen factors are proposed and discussed through eight perspectives: organizational context, system owner, system goal, data, people, organizational structure, computer system and organizational environment. Finally, the results and findings of a questionnaire survey and case studies regarding the structural alignment issues of IS in MNCs are presented. These show that only three of these factors have a strong influence on structural alignment and relate to the internal consistency of the organization rather than the external environment. A number of secondary factors are also identified through the case analyses. Ihe authors suggest that many of the proposed factors are based on out-dated principles and further suggest that the challenges of globalization arc not fully understood by either practitioners or researchers.