Firms’ multilevel access to information and knowledge plays a significant role in improving operating performance. Increasingly, firms are devoting more resources to improve their operational integration through IT as they are grappling with the challenge of intense competition. Competition networks are an important but often overlooked source of information and knowledge that, if leveraged correctly, can provide significant competitive and operational advantages to firms. In this study, we develop a multilevel research model of operating performance (firm level) that simultaneously considers the effects of IT for operational integration (ITOI, firm level) and competitive brokerage (competition network level). We explicate the mechanisms through which ITOI and competitive brokerage create a synergy to help firms to cope with information, knowledge and competitive actions to improve their operating performance. We assess the model using a 7-year longitudinal secondary dataset including firms from multiple industries. We find that ITOI and competitive brokerage have a synergistic effect on operating performance, as they provide significant information and knowledge access benefits to the firm. These findings are robust to concerns of endogeneity and alternative model specifications and taken together, provide a summative view of multilevel effects of IT on firm performance.