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

Evaluating strategies for e-business change
C – there are many physical locations where staff are
employed, e.g. BP.
D – the majority of staff work in one central location, e.g.
Bank of England.
The organization can then measure and plot its level of virtuality
and that of its major competitors and assess the impact of
changing or not changing. Criteria that might be applied are
identified in Table 8.5.
The ACHIEVE group emphasize that there are four main
management concerns when overseeing such change:
� Managing and changing culture.
� Communication, internally and externally.
� New approaches to control.
� Managing and refreshing knowledge as a major asset.
None of these are easily solved but they must be given priority
over technological change.
Table 8.5 Criteria for measuring virtuality
Dispersion Empowerment Restlessness Interdependence
No. of locations Degree of definition
of accountabilities
Personal
workplaces
Amount of hotdesking
Extent and quality
of reach
Degree of political/
economic support
in any one location
Degree to which
dispersion is visible
to the customer
No. of decision
levels
Degree of risk
acceptance
Investment in
workplace skills
Complexity,
magnitude and
scope of decisions by
customer facing staff
No new products/
services; markets;
processes; job
profiles per year
Level of staff
education
Level of openness
to change
Rate of change of
appraisal criteria
Degree of
anticipation to
changing markets
Level of stress in
workforce
No formal alliances
with external
organizations
No. and
importance of
informal alliances
Level of influence
on external
organizations
Proportion of staff
to line functions
Degree of contact
between sister
companies
Use of crossfunctional/process
teams and
interactions
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