[8] 2002 e-business-strategies-for-virtual-organizations

e-Business Strategies for Virtual Organizations
business change by transferring work into an area of new
business value for you. In addition, the grid may be used to
act as a template against the activities of your firm and that of
competitors may be plotted for comparison. The extent to
which a website incorporates several cells in the grid becomes
a measure of the site’s effectiveness – and an obvious strategy
for improvement is to seek to extend one’s reach by moving
into neighbouring cells. In this way an examination of possible
advantageous next moves within the grid will prompt an
examination of the preparedness of the organization to effect
those changes.
The manager’s goal should therefore be to move from a
simple online presence which reduces time and distance
barriers, to move toward adding value through increased
efficiency and effectiveness, and considering moving further
by changing industry relationships and new partnerships,
perhaps with new products.
8.8 Reviewing organizational readiness for
change
182
Any organization wishing to maximize its effectiveness and
profitability as an e-business needs to recognize how virtual it
is, how virtual it should be and how it should manage the
opportunities and problems that arise. The ACHIEVE Working
Group (Impact Programme, 1998) identified four primary
characteristics of virtual organizations as:
� Dispersion (multiple locations).
� Empowerment (devolution of powers).
� Restlessness (acceptance, even enthusiasm for change).
� Interdependence (cooperation and synergy between and
within organizations).
These four characteristics can be used as a measurement scale
where an organization chooses a number of characteristics
that are important to it and defining a number of identifiable
levels of virtuality for each characteristic. For example, the
degree of dispersion could be measured on the following
scale:
A – there are no physical locations, staff scattered throughout
the world, e.g. Institute of Catalysis.
B – there is one HQ building, staff are scattered throughout
the world, e.g. Interpol.