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

e-Business Strategies for Virtual Organizations
Figure 2.5
A framework for
success in virtual
organizing
2.8 Summary
30
other innovations) are argued to be more suitable for the virtual
organization than the highly interconnected systemic type of
innovations because of the information flows essential for
innovation. Codified information (that which can be easily
captured in industry standards and rules, for example), is
argued to be as easy to transfer from one party to another in the
virtual organization form as it is to transfer within a single
organization. Tacit knowledge (such as know-how, or ingrained
perspectives), however, is not easily transferred or diffused, and
is also subject to opportunism by individual parties who can
control how much of the tacit knowledge they share. Thus,
autonomous innovation involving codified information and
knowledge transfer may be more suitable for exploitation along
virtual organizing principles than systemic innovation involving
tacit information and knowledge. These notions are captured
in the framework below which itself can become important
in predicting likely success for the virtual organization.
In this chapter we have taken an extended look at the virtual
organization viewed as an emergent construct from the collaboration,
generally enabled by ICT, of pre-existing companies.
We have noted that this newly emergent organizational form is
characterized by an ability to respond to changing circumstances
in an agile manner; a marked degree of decentralized
control and devolved authority, reliance on interorganizational
systems and trust networks.