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

Creating virtual cultures for global online communities
� Are virtual cultures industry dependent or business model
dependent?
� Is the relationship between culture and the virtual organization
one of diversity exploitation or controlled
manipulation?
� Does the extent to which there are shared goals, synchronicity
of work, co-locations and reciprocity of risk and responsibility
define shared culture yet inhibit the extent of virtuality that
can be exploited in the organization?
� Are stronger cultures required at the interfaces of virtual
alliances to ensure reliability enhancement?
� Where member goals, roles, and responsibilities are more
carefully articulated in a virtual organization does this imply
the greater need for a unified culture?
� How can the virtual organization manage a diversity of
cultures?
� Will a desirable diversity of cultures be supported only under
conditions of high trust and open communication?
� To what extent should incentives and control systems be used
in virtual organizations to develop unified cultures?
Four areas should be considered as part of a basic framework for
reconstructing the organization:
� investment in extensive socialization: managers need to be
able to cope with diversity of race, gender, culture and
intellect;
� development of language skills;
� extensive documentation for common understanding;
� extensive commitment to training, both analytic and
experiential.
The future belongs to the imaginative.
11.3.3 Success in cultural change
An example of successful cultural change is described by
Buckman (1998) at Buckman International Laboratories as they
designed a system and built a culture that facilitates the
communication of whatever is needed across all the organization’s
boundaries (1200 people, 21 countries location, 90
countries for customers). The cost has been estimated at
US$7500 per person (3.5–4.5% of revenue) but they believe the
results justify every cent. Their philosophy has been to move the
entire organization to wherever it is needed at the time. This has
been achieved by expanding the span of communication and
231