The impact of transborder data flow restrictions on international information systems management

This research investigates the effects of transborder data flow (TDF) restrictions on the information systems (IS) management strategies and costs of multinational corporations. An empirical study was designed to investigate several research hypotheses dealing with the impact of TDF restrictions on IS structure and strategies across different industries. Statistical results indicate that TDF restrictions will significantly increase IS costs and influence MIS decisions overseas. To alleviate the problem, MNCs are adopting distributed approaches to manage their international IS. These findings allow some important implications to be drawn for both practitioners and researchers dealing with this pressing issue. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science B.V.