An Empirical Analysis and Extension of Factors Driving Global Integration of Business Processes Within MNCs

Previous work has generally viewed multinational companies as a group of monolithic units that can be characterized in a uniform way (i.e., either integrated or responsive). Environmental and industrial factors that facilitate global integration of these headquarters-subsidiaries relationships are extensively studied. Our research, in contrast, decomposes firms into their business processes. Bridging literature on business process orientation, we hypothesize that (1) global integration and (2) cross-functional integration of business functions that perform activities of the processes (i.e., intra-company factors) and (3) customers and (4) suppliers that pursue the processes along value chains (i.e., intercompany factors) significantly affect global integration of similar business processes among geographically dispersed subsidiaries. A large-scale sample of multinational companies, headquartered in North America, Europe, and Asia should provide evidence.