VIRTUAL  ORGANIZATIONS

"Understanding Virtual Organizations"
- This article examines the concepts, technologies, and issues surrounding
virtual organizations (VO) from a knowledge management (KM) perspective. It
identifies foundational concepts, surveys KM technologies that support VOs
and looks at case studies of VOs in the private and public sector. Key to this
discussion is a look at technical and managerial issues surrounding VOs and
the migration strategies and best practices needed to ensure a successful
implementation, as well as the future of VOs.
By Les Pang, Information Systems Control Journal, Volume 6, 2001.

"Virtual Organizations' Pattern Language"
- To increase productivity and product quality in software development, companies
 invest inqualification of their engineers, improvement of their development processes
 and many otherapproaches. Siemens believe that in addition a much more powerful
 way to go in the above direction is to try new complementary organizational forms of
 how people work together.  Specifically the network form seems to fit modern daily
 practice and surrounding conditions.  The patterns described in this paper are from
a pattern language under development at Siemens.
By Siemens AG Austria, Program and System Development, 2000.

"Design and Implementation of Virtual Organizations"
- This paper summarizes 8 propositions concerned with the impact of the design and
 implementation processes on the effectiveness of virtual organizations. To illustrate the
 model, a case is selected from action research in the European Telematics Engineering
 Project.
By Dr. Bernhard Katzy, Erasmus University, Rotterdam, 1998.

"Performance of Virtual Organizations"
- The objective of this study is to define and enlighten the performance of knowledge
work, and especially the knowledge work in virtual organizations. The key topics
consist of the virtual organization concept, the framework of performance
measurement and definitions of performance. This paper introduces a framework for
performance measurement in knowledge work and points out the critical success
factors of a virtual organization.
By Jussi Okkonen, Tampere University of Technology, 2002

"Co-Evolution of Accessible
but Secure Virtual Space for Collaborative Activities"
- This paper describes and interprets a research and development process taking place
over several years concerning the evolution of a socio-technical system.
By 'socio-technical system' the authors mean a dynamic system that is socio-culturally
situated and involves both human activity and technical elements. The system design,
that is the focus of this research, brings together the human and technical dynamics of
the intricate and highly engaging processes of effective collaboration. In particular, an
investigation of the various integrated elements of the socio-technical system provides
the insight and confidence to build a virtual environment that actually supports
innovative collaborative activities.
By Kate Crawford & Helen Hasan, University of Wollongong, Australia 2006.

"Distributed Leadership Across the Boundaries of a Virtual Organization"
- This paper examines the leadership behaviors exhibited in a twelve-month field study
of the e-Commerce systems group for a global service consultancy. Leadership involves
a distributed management of meaning across functional and organizational boundaries.
Distributed forms of leadership are required to both manage
the social network necessary for global coordination and to acquire the polycontextual
knowledge and expertise required to complete projects that span multiple business units
and groups. The study presents a framework for how such groups manage distributed
leadership in practice, with significant implications for the design of global
management information systems.
By Susan Gasson & Edwin Elrod, Drexel University, Philadelphia, 2006.