What is Global Information Technology?

The emerging sub-discipline of Global Information Technology (GIT) is also referred to within the Information Systems (IS) discipline as Global Information Technology Management, as International Information Systems, and as Global Management Information Systems.

GIT encompasses multiple levels of analysis:

1. the nation(s), or international policy-making body.
2. the firm(s), the MultiNational Enterprise (MNE) or the IT vendors
3. the group(s) or team(s)
4. the individual
5. the technology overlay

Referent Disciplines: Clearly, these five levels of analysis look to numerous referent disciplines: Political Science, Economics, Law, Management, International Business, Human-computer interface, Cross-cultural studies, Sociology, Psychology, Telecommunications, Computer Science.

Motivation for the emergence of the GIT sub-discipline.

1. The obvious reason: the 1980s brought about increased levels of business globalization, international trade and competitiveness, and corresponding use of IT on a global basis including increased systems integration and convergence.
2. The not-so obvious reason: GIT is a result of the traditional US-centric discipline of IS that has awoken to the practical and intellectual needs of examining IS (and IT) in the global context, rather than as a generic country-agnostic construct, or one in which US issues dominate the research agenda. This is why, in part, one finds "IT in country X," or "IT in (non-US firm) Y" as a legitimate area of research in GIT...at this stage.
3. A third reason relates to the impact of culture on the development, implementation and use of IT around the world. With the move away from ethnocentrism, so increaseed attention is being paid to the impacts that culture, in its myriad variations, exerts.

Agenda & Issues. Two important articles that define GIT research follow. Noteworthy here is that while the first article's largest level of analysis is the firm (or set of firms) the second article lists four issues that are the national level of analysis.

1. Based on detailed interviews with IS executives charged with managing international IS, Ives and Jarvenpaa (1991) outline a global IS research agenda with four areas: (1) matching global IS strategy to global business strategy; (2) issues involving the technical platform for global IS applications; (3) issues involved in international sharing of data; and (4) issues of IS projects spanning cultures. Ives, B. and Jarvenpaa, S. .... Management Information Systems Quarterly....
2. In a "key issues" study, Dean & Ricks grouped issues for GIT into the following categories: (1) managerial/strategic, (2) technological/application, (3) host country social/cultural, (4) host country economic, (5) host country technological, and (6) host country political/legal. Deans, P.C. and Ricks, D.A. "MIS Research: A Model for Incorporating the International Dimension," The Journal of High Technology Management Research, 2, 1, 1991, 57-81.

Additional discussion of definitional issues can be found in the bibliography section of these pages.

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