Should "virtual" mean "vague"? A plea for more conceptual clarity in researching virtual organisations

Riemer Kai, Vehring Nadine


Zusammenfassung
Around fifteen years ago the concept "virtual organisation" (VO) was coined to describe changes in organisational structures of value creation as a reaction to developments in modern market environments. Since then, the VO as a concept has been used to describe different things in different contexts, so that today we find a rather unsatisfying mix of VO notions in the literature. Moreover, in many articles the VO remains underspecified and vague; sometimes even a mismatch exists between VO definitions provided and examples discussed. Motivated by these observations we carried out a literature analysis to explore differing notions of virtual organisation. The contribution of our study is twofold. First, we identify and describe in conceptual detail three distinct types of VO as the basis for future research endeavours. Second, we point to a need for conceptual clarity in researching VOs in practice, in light of the rather different management challenges of the three identified types.



Publikationstyp
Forschungsartikel in Sammelband (Konferenz)

Begutachtet
Ja

Publikationsstatus
Veröffentlicht

Jahr
2008

Konferenz
21st Bled eConference

Konferenzort
Bled, Slovenia

Sprache
Englisch