Search

The virtual organization (VO) emerged intending to improve products and services in a globalized environment through collaborative work between organizations of different kinds. There is abundant literature around this topic for more than ten years. Today, with the mandatory trend of digital transformation, the aim is to redefine VO concepts and study them in the context of Industry 4.0. This paper will study the evolution of VO, from its beginnings (2010) to 2020, with a systematic literature review (SLR). This SLR will be quantified by a meta-analysis, which will allow an orderly view of the findings found. The objective is to find all the studies that have been carried out on VO frameworks based on Industry 4.0, collaborative works, and autonomous processes.

The article is devoted to a new model for organizing production activities that is adequate to the challenges of digitalization – virtual organizations. The authors show that the widespread adoption of virtual organizations that have no clear boundaries in space and time over the past decade gives rise to new management problems. Old management models based on hierarchy, authoritarian approach, and punishment / reward as the main motivators are not effective in virtual teams. Traditional transactional leadership should be replaced by transformational leadership, which involves an individual approach, intellectual stimulation, idealized influence and inspiring motivation. The authors indicate the social and psychological difficulties of the spread of transformational leadership. The paper emphasizes the need for the formation of leadership, managerial and digital competencies for effective leadership in project virtual teams.

This paper identifies structural and relational factors for the performance of cyberinfrastructure as a class of cyber-physical systems, filling the gap in our knowledge about social and technical factors, as well as their coupling, for performance. This study draws from the literature on virtual organizations, network governance, and the coupling of socio-technical systems to develop a conceptual framework for performance. The empirical investigation focuses on the NSF-funded cyberinfrastructure program in the United States, arguably one of the largest and most comprehensive cyberinfrastructure programs in the country. The researchers created a unique data set with 11,143 projects over a 15-year period by combining three cyberinfrastructure program data sources. We utilized regression and random forest techniques to study the utilization and amount utilized. The results indicate the importance of structural factors—including resource allocation, field of science, and type of universities/colleges—as well as relational factors—including transaction types, resource involved, and time of coupling. The results also underscore the relevance of multi-level and actor-network perspectives in advancing theories and practice of performance for virtual organizations and network governance.

High reliability organizing is an important approach to crisis prevention and mitigation. Resilience is a term that has been used to describe an organization’s ability to respond or ‘bounce back’ from untoward, surprising or disruptive events. A growing number of organizations have increased mandates for maintaining safety, reliability and resilience; some of these are also virtual or semi virtual organizations—geographically distributed organizations whose members are bound by a long-term common interest or goal, and who largely communicate and coordinate their work through information technology. The objective of this paper is to explicate the challenges that reliability-seeking virtual organizations (RSVOs) pose for high reliability and resilient organizations, based on what is known about high reliability organizations (HROs) and resilient organizations, and what can be surmised about RSVOs. We begin by exploring a test case for RSVOs, distributed offshore oil and gas systems, using the example of the challenges presented during the Deepwater Horizon event. Since a common characteristic of resilient and reliable organizations is fluidity in organizational structures, we examine requirements for fluidity in and across RSVO organizational structures and the forms that fluidity can assume, leaning on our understanding of the role of fluidity in HROs and resilient organizations, and suggesting challenges posed by these different forms of interconnectedness. We then follow with a discussion of when a virtual organization is not highly reliable or resilient. We describe future RSVO challenges in remote settings with little infrastructure, such as Arctic energy exploration and development and IT-enabled healthcare systems in third world countries, and conclude with an agenda for future research.

Collaboration Moderator Services (CMS) are discussed as a Knowledge management service for SMEs operating in a virtual organization (VO). In this research, a CMS supports the pre-creation stage of ...

The article deals with the main features of the management of an international organization in the virtual space. In the course of the study on the basis of the analysis of various sources concluded the main causes and factors that contributed to the emergence of the phenomenon of virtual organization. The key factors that determine the speed and direction of development vector are economic and technical factors. The study concluded that they can be both locomotives for the development of the phenomenon and deter development for various reasons. The author conducted a comparative analysis of the properties of a virtual company and a traditional company, which allowed to identify a number of advantages, based on current trends. At the same time, the aspect of the volatility of virtual organizations, as one of the most significant negative phenomena, will be touched upon. The author considers a number of problematic issues, in particular, recruitment, excessive economic dependence on partners, etc., which require informed decisions and the development of individual approaches to ensure the activities of the virtual organization. The emphasis in decision-making should be on the opinion of each member of the virtual organization, which, one way or another will contribute to their self-motivation. On the basis of the collected opinions it is concluded about the prospects of the phenomenon under consideration. In the place with that, the lack of a full theoretical base necessitates additional research, including empirical nature. The article can be used as a scientific and theoretical basis for further research, in particular to eliminate gaps and problematic issues in the activities of virtual international companies.

PurposeThis paper investigates how global talent management processes are adopted and implemented in a virtual organization to successfully address the challenges of global work arrangements and the sustainable human and social outcomes that can be achieved.Design/methodology/approachAdopting a single, exploratory and critical case study methodology, this paper analyzes a global distributed company, Automattic Inc., to provide in-depth and rich insights on successful business process management in the human resources (HR) domain.FindingsThe findings offer some exemplary and valuable lessons in sustainable human resource management for firms in all sectors on how to embrace global talent management in a more creative and sustainable way – and the benefits in terms of efficiency and effectiveness that can be derived – by identifying talent through auditions, recruiting by inspiring others to apply, developing talent by sharing the value of learning and retaining talent by having fun.Originality/valueThe study contributes a more rounded understanding of successful business process management in the HR domain. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, this is particularly relevant and timely for all organizations (traditional or virtual) venturing into successful global work arrangements.

Organizational reliance on virtual teams (VTs) is increasing tremendously due to the significant benefits they offer, such as efficiently reaching objectives and increasing organizational performance. However, VTs face a lot of challenges that, if overlooked, will prevent them from yielding the required benefits. One of the major issues that hinders the effectiveness of VTs is the decision-making process. There is a lack of scientific research that attempts to understand the factors affecting decision making processes in VTs. Studies in this area have only been done in the United States and Europe. However, such research has not been conducted in the Middle East, where specific scientific solutions are still required to improve the performance of VTs. Therefore, this study is conducted in the Middle East, namely in the United Arab Emirates, to gain scientific knowledge on this region&rsquo, s specificity. An online questionnaire (Google forms) was used to obtain the necessary data. Hypotheses were developed to test the influence of ICT (Information and communications technologies), language, information sharing, and trust on the decision-making processes, and the effect of decision making on team performance. Structural equational model (SEM) methodology was used to test our proposed model. The results showed that factors such as trust, ICT, and information sharing have a direct effect on decision-making processes, while language has no effect on decision making, and decision-making processes have a direct effect on the performance of the VTs.

Studying behavior of individuals and teams in an organization is termed organizational behavior (OB) study and has a profound research literature under the area of social sciences. OB can be studied through empirical studies or using agent-based system (ABS). Using computing techniques has an advantage over empirical studies, since humans need not be involved in ABS studies and time can be incorporated into the system to study the evolution of the organization over a period. The recent literature on organization behavior shows research gap in using the Big Five personality traits in ABSs to study and evaluate them. An attempt has been made in this study to create a virtual organization incorporating the personality traits and applying it to a real-world problem. The solution obtained is used as a concrete method for evaluation. The observations are encouraging in modeling an organization using ABS and to gain insight into the individual and organizational evolution.

The development and use of information and communications technology (ICT) are growing at a rapid speed across the world. ICT has been the cause for new types of work arrangements, such as virtual organizations, virtual teams, teleworking, etc. Virtual teams provide organizations with competitive advantage by enabling them to hire talented people across the world and eliminating the need for physical availability in the office. However, one major issue hindering the productivity of the virtual team is knowledge sharing. The lack of proper knowledge sharing between team members may cause organizations to fail with regards to the implementation of successful strategies. The research into understanding knowledge sharing in virtual teams (VT) in the Middle East is lacking. While such studies have been done in the United States and Europe, the Middle East has been overlooked. In this study, the authors assume that there are some specific behavioral aspects of VT in the Middle East that create the need for specific scientific solutions. Accordingly, this study was conducted in the Middle East in order to gain scientific knowledge on the region’s specificity. The objective of this article is to create a model for the evaluation of the effect on knowledge sharing in virtual teams in the Middle East. For analysis, the selection of companies includes United Arab Emirates (UAE)-based companies in the IT industry whose businesses engage in VT. The results show that the following factors have a direct effect on knowledge sharing in VT: Culture, motivation, conflict, ICT, trust, and leadership. Conversely, the results do not demonstrate that language has any impact on knowledge sharing. The methodology used is as follows: Literature review, survey methods, and structural equation modeling., This article belongs to the Special Issue Sustainable Virtual Organization: Management Challenges and Development Perspectives

A central process of virtual organization design relates to how newcomers are assimilated into organizational dynamics. Research on organizational assimilation has traditionally investigated 'serious' organizational contexts. Nonetheless, video games can offer insights on how such assimilation can be effectively supported. In this article, I propose to look at World of Warcraft (WoW) to understand how individuals can be successfully integrated into online organizations. Through an ethnographic research, made up of participant observation and 36 semi-structured interviews, I explore how specific game design elements support organizational assimilation into WoW raiding guilds. This shows how designers elicit extremely engaging organizational dynamics that encourage players to identify with their organizations. Based on these findings, I propose design considerations for gamifying virtual organizations that draw from the structure of WoW raiding guilds.

With the rapid development of global science and technology and the deepening of economic globalization, enterprises are facing the dynamic environment of fierce market competition and accelerated technological innovation cycle. In order to improve the efficiency of resource utilization, it is necessary to cooperate with other organizations. At the same time, knowledge has become an important resource and key element for industrial development and organizational innovation. Enterprise competition in the era of knowledge economy is knowledge competition, which is of great significance to enterprises. More and more enterprises are improving their competitiveness through knowledge collaboration in various ways. The law and characteristics of subject's knowledge collaborative activities are very important for improving the knowledge innovation system and improving the efficiency of industrial alliance. The theoretical and practical value of this research is high. Based on the research of relevant literature at home and abroad, this study analyzed the driving forces of inter-organizational knowledge collaboration in industrial technology alliance, including the source and mechanism of inter-organizational knowledge collaboration in industrial technology alliance. At the same time, the operation mode of virtual organization based on information network is explored.

In each organization, the goal of human resource management (HRM) is to form, employ and develop human resources. The massive spread of Internet technologies and the globalization of the economy in the late twentieth century have allowed the enterprises to form a temporary partnership, and subsequently have led to the formation and expansion of virtual organizations (VO) by establishing these relationships over the Internet. Unquestionably, the success of VO depends on appropriate organization of HRM and selection, deployment, socialization, motivation and evaluation of employees and partners. In this regard, this paper analyzes the features of HRM in VO and proposes methods for the recruitmentandassessment of the performance of virtual employees (contractors). The article analyzes the specific features of HRM in VO. The issues of HRM in VT are characterized as decision-making in fuzzy environment. Based on the peer comparison of expert estimates for the alternatives, including on the hierarchical analysis method, detection of the contradictions in the expert estimates and multiplicative aggregation methods, a decision making technique is proposed for the recruitment of the employees. Assessment of the virtual employees’ performance to achieve overall objective of the organization is formulated as a decision-making process in distributed environment and appropriate decision-making methods are proposed. The proposed approach is a methodological framework for decision support for human resources management in virtual organizations. This system can support more objective and scientifically justified decision-making on presented task. It can also enable VO to be more "reliable" in relation to the "trust" component for the formation of VO, which is the key point for the increase of the effectiveness of VO.

Constant changes in information technology cause changes in many areas of life, therefore, with in the field of management as well. Virtualization, the issue of timelessness in offering services has led to the need for organizations to operate in virtual space - at the distance, thus creating new forms of work. Often, the only way to contact such organization is over the Internet. These contacts concern both the business-customer relationship (B2C), the businessbusiness relationship (B2B) and the relationship between the leader and the employee. Due to the fact there are strong links between trust and virtual space, the purpose of this article is to show how important the trust is in a virtual organization that is operating in a complex, variable reality where employees, entrepreneurs and their customers without mutual trust cannot coexist. Contemporary, modern and learning organizations are oriented to human and only these organizations are able to compete with others. Building trust in complex interactions between participants in a virtual organization is central to interpersonal relationships in general and the foundation for virtual organization functioning.

Telkom Divisi Digital Service (DDS) is a unit responsible for product innovations for Telkom. An internal survey conducted in June 2016 showed the lack of good understanding about the innovation process among employees. Entropy measurement showed that the organization culture categorized as “less than healthy”. Moreover, the implementation of virtual organization resulted in a lot of confusion among the employees. This research aimed to investigate the influence of Organization Culture variable and Organization Structure variable to the Innovation Process variable. Data were collected by distributing online questionnaires to 308 DDS employees and got 202 valid responses. Path analysis with SPSS showed that both Organization Culture and Organization Structure, either simultaneously or partially, had a positive influence toward Innovation Process. The Organizational Culture variable has a 37.27% influence towards Innovation Process variable, whereas the Organizational Structure variable has an 8.94% influence towards Innovation Process variable. In accordance with the research result, it is suggested that Telkom DDS focuses on the improvement of the organization culture to increase the innovation process. And for further research, it is recommended to explore other variables uncovered yet in this research, such as leadership within an organization, work environment, etc.

IntroductionThe intra-organizational analysis of relationships and ties between (human and nonhuman) nodes is a relatively rare subject of interest among researchers specializing in organizations and management. Most scientists concentrate on inter-organizational relations (e.g., Carlsson, 2003; Harima, 2014; Hydle & Meland, 2016; Mentzas et al., 2006; Ryan et al., 2014; Wasche, 2015), including one-mode social networks (e.g., Alguliyev et al., 2015; Fang et al., 2015; Hollenbeck & Jamieson, 2015; Zemaitaitiene et al., 2016). Even when the research deals with two-mode networks, where relations are identified within the affiliation network, they still remain social networks (Field et al., 2006; Rawlings & McFarland, 2011; Rodriguez et al., 2011), which determine the ties between actors and a particular organization, location or events (Davis et al., 2009).In this research, networks have a two-mode nature and contain relations between an actor (human) and an actor (non-human): knowledge, resources and tasks. There are also relations only between non-human actors: between knowledge and a task and resources and a task. The analysis of this area is justified by the fact that an outlook on organizations, taking into account the interrelationship of ties between employees and knowledge, resources and tasks they use or perform in their work, provides a complex picture of how effectively an organization works from the perspective of the network of relations and ties. The unique networks analyzed here are: networks of knowledge (an employee utilizes knowledge), networks of resources (an employee uses resources, usually intangible ones, such as computer software) and networks of tasks (an employee performs a task). To calculate the workload generated by work, knowledge and resources it is necessary to determine the interdependencies between knowledge and tasks (what knowledge is essential to accomplish the task) and between resources and tasks (what are key resources for accomplishing the task). The input data in shape of a two-mode matrix was presented in Table 1 below.Taking the above into account, apart from research questions, the following research hypotheses were formulated:H1: There is a relation between the knowledge network and the resource network.H2: There is a relation between the knowledge network and the task network.H3: There is a relation between the resource network and the task network.The article fills the gap in research concerning two-mode networks in intraorganizational conditions, correlations existing between specific networks and effectiveness of using intangible resources in an organization. The theoretical context is provided by the resource approach and the actor-network theory which has not been yet widely used in theories of organization and management, particularly, however, on resource-based approach. The actor-network theory is a unique approach to joining people, artifacts, institutions and organizations, which allows to understand the complexity in which organizations function. As rightly observed by Czarniawska and Hernes (2005), many European and American scientists use ANT to examine various aspects of an organization, including technologies, organizational changes, procedures, virtual organization, strategy, power, market mechanisms, consumer behavior, public administration and knowledge management. However, there is a deficit of research which would combine ANT and the network approach. Usually, ANT is used is research on information systems (e.g., Doolin & Lowe, 2002; Tatnall, 2005; Walsham, 1997).The article treats social relations, including the prominence of network nodes, as network results. Similarly to Law's approach (1992) it was assumed that ANT describes heterogeneous networks and an organization would not exist is it was only social. Intangible resources, such as knowledge, resources (structural capital), understood as IT infrastructure, and tasks create the complexity of the network and are of primary importance for social networks existing in an organization. …

Advances in information, communication, and computational technologies allow digital volunteer networks formed by concerned publics across the globe to contribute to an effective response to disasters and crises. Digital volunteer networks are event-centric and emergent networks. Currently, the literature is sharply growing in the fields of communication, computer science, emergency management, and geography. This article aims to assess the current status of the literature and suggest a comprehensive conceptual framework of digital volunteer networks in response to disasters and crises. This framework is based on a traditional input–process–output model consisting of three dimensions: the disaster and crisis context, a voluntary response process, and outputs and outcomes. We also discuss challenges of digital volunteer networks for crisis response. This article is expected to contribute to the development of related theories and hypotheses and practical strategies for managing digital volunteer networks.

Virtual Organizations in a dynamic environment need efficient methods of change management to initiate changes to partners' services. In this paper, the authors present a structural and a procedural framework for change management in Service-Oriented Virtual Organizations. The structural framework categorizes changes into three layers of change and identifies triggers of changes. The procedural framework incorporates various components including the six layers of change processes, change control, change actors, and related management processes. A prototype with different scenarios of change is developed to validate the change management process in a collaborative environment. The authors employ the functionalities of the IBM Business Process Manager, including its recent Web 2.0 capabilities, to enhance collaboration between partners in the process of change. They demonstrate that the proposed solutions facilitate and enhance the process of change by effectively engaging all partners in a dynamic and collaborative way.

New organizational structures which are based on informatics, are new organizational models that use technology to dynamically connect people, resources and ideas. That is, the core of the enterprise network, which creates the opportunities and risks of products and services, and such a commitment to a virtual organization has no boundaries. For the success of the concept it is necessary: mutual trust, high technology, as well as the pursuit of excellent performance and perfect satisfaction of customers' needs. Today, companies can not afford to work for themselves, and in this way they get the opportunity to orient themselves to their basic strategy, ie. its realization and its combination with the basic strategies of other companies. A system that should support state structures in the Republic of North Macedonia, especially in the legal regulation of the conclusion of agreements and monitoring the implementation of the agreement in a virtual organization, which is its most important part. With the efficiency and speed of the Macedonian judiciary, one should be cautious in implementing the organization.

The research presented in this paper, focuses on an investment recommendation system for businesses in order to provide investment related suggestions. For this purpose, it is identified different factors that could be extracted from the internet and from the information provided by the users. Currently, the research is in its initial stage, it has been reviewed the literature on data based techniques for investment recommendations, which will provide a complete overview of the methodologies, techniques and recent developments in this field. Once the state of the art has been reviewed, the platform model developed through a virtual organization of agents, called INSIDER.

The paper is devoted to the creation of complex discipline «Computer-based Product Lifecycle Management» in accordance to competency approach and specification of its role in education process for technical university.

This study has built on research on today's modern organizations with cloud computing to lay the foundations for a comprehensive and systematic theorization of Enterprise Social Systems. The trend toward virtuality marks a fundamental transformation in space-time parameters in communications. This is especially so in the context of rapid current advancements in IT such as cloud computing, as well as numerous other technological fronts. Current IT trends show that increased spatio-temporal plasticity heightens the effectiveness and the efficiency of predominantly Enterprise Social Systems in the cloud computing environment. In particular, subject oriented asynchronous communications experience greater inferred plasticity and event oriented synchronous communications experience greater referred plasticity. Finally, Enterprise Social Systems vary in their degree of virtuality based on the perspective of the relevant stakeholder group considered.

The service-oriented architecture (SOA) enables organizations to cooperate in expanding their businesses and creating new opportunities by connecting multiple participant’s resources. However, some organizations are not yet ready to integrate with this inter-enterprise SOA environment due to their internal traditional IT-based systems. So, to face the challenge of market and system expansion, they first have to enable their systems for collaboration. This paper explores and analyses SOA implementation aspects in the small and medium enterprise (SME) communities by using systematic literature review method. This work presents facts regarding the state of SME community, i.e. the attributes, existing IT architectures, and the adopted collaboration frameworks. Virtual organization (VO) with its variants is a prominent model to establish in the ICT-based SME community. The centralized system is the dominant architectural structure types proposed due to the natural characteristics of SOA and SMEs.

The paper focuses on the issue of virtual organizations which can be also called as virtual offices, enterprises registered at virtual addresses etc. The paper solves several goals. First this contribution supports other findings that the number of this kind of businesses is significant in the Czech Republic. Second the legal environment is discussed. Then different reasons for using the virtual address are mentioned. These reasons are presented as legal and economic aspects. The paper tries to uncover enterprise incentives for the virtual address choice. The classical incentives are presented in the literature. Some incentives could be valid only for the specific national conditions. This paper uses available data as a support for its statements which should explain the current importance of the virtual addresses in the Czech Republic.

© 2019 The Authors. By applying the lenses of institutional work, this study presents an empirical analysis on how agents create and manage a hybrid virtual organization to provide an innovative solution to the problem of the lack of occupational health (OH) services among small businesses. We specifically focus on how these actors exploit and balance the prescriptions of different logics within this hybrid organization. Our qualitative study showed that the funders manage this virtual social enterprise through two main strategies: ‘commitment to the social mission’ and ‘support for the social mission’. The first strategy shows how the social mission helped a diverse group of funders and employees to work together as a team. The second strategy assists these actors to grant the maintenance and justify the existence of this novel organization, which provides immense societal benefits but could not support itself financially. This article shows how a hybrid organizations’ capacity for innovation and societal advantages depends on the ability to rely on multiple logics and simultaneously to shift the attention on the social mission as a catalytic force for its survival. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/emre.12182

Virtual organization uses information technology to achieve a closer integration and better management of business relationships between internal and external parties. There are many emerging issues in virtual organization and one of them is knowledge sharing. Knowledge sharing that is the core of knowledge management plays a key role in virtual organization. However, game theoretic exploration about knowledge sharing mechanism based on virtual organization is seldom published. In this study, knowledge sharing mechanism in virtual organization enterprise is explored using game theories from two aspects based on the features of knowledge sharing in virtual organization enterprise. Finally, the critical model of knowledge sharing mechanism in virtual organization also is presented based on the perspective of game analysis.

Multinational organizations are turning to collaborative technology to enable virtual organizational structures. While collaborative technology provides distributed workers with new affordances to form relationships and share knowledge, collaborative technology also has complex, interwoven implications for virtual organizing. To disentangle these concerns, this study considers four key dimensions of virtuality—spatial dispersion, temporal dispersion, dynamic structure, and functional diversity—in relation to technology use and engagement with peers within an organization. Survey data were collected in a multinational organization that facilitates work through extensive use of collaborative technology. The results of structural equation modeling reveal connections between two dimensions of virtuality, use of collaborative technology and peer engagement in the organization. Findings suggest that understanding interactions in virtual organizations requires a more nuanced approach to virtuality and active man...

Dynamic changes in the environment with constant technological developments, influence the emergence of new forms of conducting business. One of the important forms of conducting a contemporary market activity, becomes a model of virtual organization. Generally, virtual organization is a collective of independent, specialized and often geographically dispersed business units (eg. enterprises, divisional parts of companies, institutions, individuals), combining their resources and forming the cooperation for the realization of a particular purpose.The main factor enabling the cooperation of subjects, grouped within the frame of virtual organization, are a variety of resources and ICT tools (Information and Communication Technology). High efficiency and effectiveness of ICT, requires the adoption of specific information strategies of virtual organization. Currently, the Cloud Computing is an increasingly popular service model, which provides and lets for ICT use. The aim of the article is to present information strategy of VO, based on the Cloud Computing model. To achieve that ambitious objective, at the beginning of the article, the VO outline and ICT’s role in its activity, is presented. Then, referring to the M.J. Earl’s frame, a information strategy of VO was discusses, together with the indication of the role and place of Cloud Computing in VO’s information strategy. Article tops the list of national and international Cloud Computing solutions, that can support information strategy for virtual organizations.