Abstract

JOURNAL OF GLOBAL INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY MANAGEMENT 2021, VOL. 24, NO. 4, 229–234 https://doi.org/10.1080/1097198X.2021.1996925 EDITORIAL Global Multinational Organizations: Unintended Threats from Nation-State Cyberwarfare Virginia Franke Kleist John Chambers College of Business and Economics, MIS Department, West Virginia University, Morgantown, West Virginia, USA Introduction Global multinationals are as vulnerable as are nation-states to acts of state-sponsored cyberwarfare, no matter where they are headquartered or what their country of origin. In general, the unintentional or tangential collateral damage of nation-state motivated cyberwarfare impacts businesses of all kinds. We hypothesize that cyberwarfare has a particularly deleterious effect on global multinational cor- porations, not only in terms of the risk of loss and cost of prevention, but also in terms of the future viability of the multinational organizational structure. Are these global organizations at an increased risk because these entities are caught in the cross fire of nation-state cyberwarfare due to their multi- country location exposure? Global multinationals are so large that the combined sales of the world’s top 500 global corporations exceed one third of the GDP of every nation on earth (Fortune, 2021). A few examples of global multinationals include Lenovo, which has its headquarters in China with additional leadership offices in