[8] 2002 e-business-strategies-for-virtual-organizations
[8] 2002 e-business-strategies-for-virtual-organizations
[8] 2002 e-business-strategies-for-virtual-organizations
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e-Business Strategies <strong>for</strong> Virtual Organizations<br />
More recently, leading firms that have begun to undertake<br />
e-<strong>business</strong> to meet strategic goals recognize that they only<br />
accomplish their objectives through people, there<strong>for</strong>e placing<br />
importance on improving the quality of work-life issues. If<br />
effectively managed, employees should ultimately be more<br />
productive in their work tasks and better able to serve<br />
customers, suppliers, and <strong>business</strong> partners. The key constructs<br />
that can be probed here are: gaps between effectiveness<br />
expectations (goals) and actual per<strong>for</strong>mance improvements, e.g.<br />
employee work satisfaction, efficient resourcing, and customer<br />
interaction (Venkatraman and Henderson 1998).<br />
� Outcomes – it was found that where success was achieved, the<br />
project showed an improvement in one of the outcome<br />
constructs – the quality of work life from the outset thus<br />
motivating employees to support additional change<br />
processes.<br />
� Per<strong>for</strong>mance gains – the per<strong>for</strong>mance gains were typically<br />
achieved from two sources; labour cost savings and greater<br />
operational efficiency through optimized resource allocation,<br />
and more effective decision making through access to more<br />
reliable real-time data frequently via mobile technology.<br />
The intrinsic motivation and self-management of autonomous<br />
knowledge within the development teams played an important<br />
role in the successful implementation. The emphasis was very<br />
much more on collective per<strong>for</strong>mance rather than individual but<br />
at the same time development and maintenance of personal and<br />
professional reputations was a significant driver.<br />
10.9 Successful management of change<br />
222<br />
The findings from our study found that a successful project had<br />
facilitators in all components of the <strong>business</strong> framework shown<br />
in Figure 10.2, including the change environment and project<br />
management. It was also found that the least successful<br />
e-<strong>business</strong> projects had inhibitors in several dimensions, especially<br />
in the area of cultural readiness and change management.<br />
This highlights the need to encourage the balancing of conflicting<br />
organizational knowledge, when contemplating the adoption<br />
of e-<strong>business</strong> solutions.<br />
In the future, as e-<strong>business</strong> activities become commonplace,<br />
corporate portals <strong>for</strong> empowering employees will be considered<br />
as an economic necessity. The next wave of economic advantage<br />
lies in revenue generation from new <strong>business</strong> opportunities in