As globalization moves forward, many IS/IT investments are being deployed across organizations located in different countries and world regions. Cross-system and inter-system integration and collaboration technologies play essential roles and often determine investment success or failure. However, economic, social and other factors outside the system must also be taken into consideration for global IS/IT projects to be successful and productive. Academic literature has extensively focused on trying to explain IS/IT productivity, but has rarely examined the links between international and multi-national collaboration processes and the payoffs from IS/IT investments.

Despite the intensive research for more than two decades of different aspects of IS/IT collaboration, many findings are based on the cultural environment of North America or Western Europe. As corporate reality demands that firms cooperate across national, economic and social boundaries, collaboration models need to be constructed, validated, and further refined in terms of the global economy.

IS/IT collaboration in the global economy differs substantially from collaboration in any single country or region for several reasons. First, IS/IT infrastructures vary significantly in terms of stage of development and maturity. Second, regulatory, legal, social, and cultural environments may also vary substantially. Third, various stakeholders in global IS/IT projects often have different or even conflicting goals and ascribe to their own definitions of project success. In addition, managing globally distributed teams requires a very high level of coordination and collaboration that exceeds that needed for more typical virtual teams within one economy or region. For IS/IT projects to be successful and productive in the global economy researchers and practitioners need to address the aforementioned and other issues.