As businesses expand globally and reconfigure their value chains, they must cope with a variety of complex challenges in managing their IT resources. This research examines how enterprises attempt to simultaneously achieve scale economies, responsiveness to business needs, and innovation. These three strategic objectives often raise conflicting requirements. Through interviews with CIOs and other senior executives of global enterprises, we identify a set of structural elements implemented to meet these requirements—shared services, centers of excellence, and value managers. Firms carefully design these elements to balance their inherent global-local tensions and help achieve the three strategic objectives.
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