TDT4735 Project in Software Engineering

A Study of Virtual Organizations

- in mobile computing environments -

Kristoffer Jacobsen

Advisor: Carl-Fredrik Sørensen Coordinator: Alf Inge Wang

Norwegian University of Science and Technology Department of Computer and Information Science, NTNU

Fall 2004

Abstract

Abstract

This project explores the domain of Virtual Organizations (VOs), presenting an overview of the concept, and describing enabling technologies. An analysis of dynamic collaborative organizations in mobile computing environments is provided, along with a comparison between these new organizational forms and the existing VO taxonomy.

Motivated by the work performed by the MOWAHS project, this report aims to contribute in understanding VOs, and in continuously assessing and improving the work processes within these.

The first part of the report addresses several perspectives of the VO, such as key characteristics, factors of emergence, organizational benefits, knowledge management, and coordination. Along with an overview of contemporary research and enabling technologies, this part constitutes the State-of-the-art evaluation.

The second part of the report aims to challenge the way the look at VOs today, and provides a scenario analysis of dynamic collaborative organizations in mobile computing environments. The comparison of these organizations to the traditional VO characteristics, results in an extension of the VO taxonomy to include what we define as Mobil Ad Hoc VOs (MAHVOs).

MAHVOs are temporary dynamic networks of independent actors with complementary core competencies, working towards a common goal in a nomadic environment. The co-operation is based on Information and Communication Technology (ICT) as the main facilitator for sharing knowledge and fostering trust.

These organizations are enabled through the use of ICT, and the work processes can be improved by using emerging technologies in ubiquitous and mobile computing, thus operating in intelligent environments. The latter part of the report applies the knowledge and experiences from traditional VOs to the future working environments. This includes extensive use of sensors and actuators serving both as supporting tools, and as actors in the organization.

Keywords: Virtual Organizations, Strategic Alliances, Knowledge Management, Mobile Work, Ad hoc Networking, Intelligent environments.

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Abstract

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Preface

Preface

This report has been written in the context of the course TDT4735 at IDI, NTNU. The project description was given by the Mobile Work Across Heterogeneous Systems (MOWAHS) project. The report is result of the work carried out by Kristoffer Jacobsen during the autumn 2004.

I would like to take this opportunity to thank my supervisor, PhD Fellow Carl-Fredrik Sørensen, for providing valuable and inspiring guidance and feedback through all phases of this project.

Trondheim, November 2004

Kristoffer Jacobsen

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Preface

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Table of contents

Table of contents

PART I: Introduction

1. Introduction ........................................................................................................................ 11.1 Motivation .................................................................................................................... 1

1.2 Project context ............................................................................................................. 2

1.3 Project objective .......................................................................................................... 2

1.4 Reader’s guide............................................................................................................. 3

2. Research method ............................................................................................................... 72.1 Literature study ............................................................................................................ 7

2.2 Scenario analysis......................................................................................................... 7

PART II: State-of-the-art

3. Literature study .................................................................................................................. 93.1 Introduction .................................................................................................................. 9

3.2 The concept of Virtual.................................................................................................. 9

3.3 The concept of Virtual Organization .......................................................................... 11

3.4 Definitions .................................................................................................................. 12

3.5 Characteristics ........................................................................................................... 15

3.6 Trends toward Virtual Organizations ......................................................................... 24

3.7 Benefits and Drawbacks ............................................................................................ 25

3.8 Typology of Virtual organizations............................................................................... 27

3.9 Examples of Virtual Organizations............................................................................. 36

3.10 Knowledge Management / Work processes ............................................................ 38

3.11 Modeling of the Virtual organization ........................................................................ 40

3.12 Summary ................................................................................................................. 44

4. VO research initiatives..................................................................................................... 474.1 VOmap....................................................................................................................... 47

4.2 TrustCoM ................................................................................................................... 50

4.3 Other research........................................................................................................... 53

5. Enabling technologies ..................................................................................................... 555.1 Introduction ................................................................................................................ 55

5.2 Collaborative Engineering Communities.................................................................... 56

5.3 Computer Supported Cooperative Work.................................................................... 59

5.4 Ubiquitous and Mobile computing.............................................................................. 61

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Table of contents

PART III: Own contribution

6. Problem elaboration......................................................................................................... 656.1 Introduction ................................................................................................................ 65

6.2 Scenarios................................................................................................................... 65

7. Scenarios .......................................................................................................................... 677.1 Introduction ................................................................................................................ 67

7.2 Traffic accident .......................................................................................................... 67

7.3 Crime scene investigation.......................................................................................... 70

7.4 Voluntary communal work ......................................................................................... 72

7.5 Experts in Team......................................................................................................... 75

7.6 Traffic......................................................................................................................... 77

7.7 Summary ................................................................................................................... 80

8. Extension of the VO taxonomy ....................................................................................... 858.1 Ad hoc alliances......................................................................................................... 85

8.2 Characteristics ........................................................................................................... 86

9. Future trends .................................................................................................................... 899.1 Technology ................................................................................................................ 89

9.2 Working environments ............................................................................................... 89

PART IV: Evaluation and conclusion

10. Evaluation and discussion............................................................................................ 9110.1 Evaluation ................................................................................................................ 91

10.2 Discussion ............................................................................................................... 91

11. Conclusion and further work ........................................................................................ 9311.1 Conclusion ............................................................................................................... 93

11.2 Further work............................................................................................................. 93

PART V: Appendix

Bibliography ......................................................................................................................... 95

Appendix A: Projects ......................................................................................................... 103

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List of figures

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List of figures

Figure 1. Virtual objects (Scholz, 1997) ................................................................................. 11

Figure 2. Traditional vs. ad hoc corporate structures ............................................................. 17

Figure 3. Characteristic dispersion of VOs (McKay & Marshall, 2000) .................................. 20

Figure 4. Virtual organization life cycle model (Strader et al., 1998)...................................... 21

Figure 5. The Virtual Face...................................................................................................... 28

Figure 6. Co-alliance Model ................................................................................................... 28

Figure 7. Star-alliance Model ................................................................................................. 29

Figure 8. Value-alliance Model............................................................................................... 29

Figure 9. Market-alliance Model ............................................................................................. 30

Figure 10. Virtual Broker ........................................................................................................ 31

Figure 11. Virtual alliance models (Burn & Ash, 2000)........................................................... 31

Figure 12. Three layers in the VO model (Saabel et al, 2002) ............................................... 35

Figure 13. Model towards a Virtual Organization (Saabel et al., 2002).................................. 36

Figure 14. Modeling viewpoints of a VO (Camarinha-Matos & Abreu, 2003)......................... 41

Figure 15. Positioning of modeling approaches ..................................................................... 43

Figure 16. Interpretation of the VO concept ........................................................................... 45

Figure 17. The VOmap vision (Camarinha-Matos, 2003)....................................................... 48

Figure 18. The VOmap roadmap (Camarinha-Matos, 2003).................................................. 49

Figure 19. The VOmap consortium (www.vomap.org) ........................................................... 50

Figure 20. The TrustCoM framework, conceptual model (www.eu-trustcom.com) ................ 52

Figure 21. The TrustCoM consortium (www.eu-trustcom.com).............................................. 53

Figure 22. Types of online activities ....................................................................................... 55

Figure 23. Differentiation of groups using interaction and identity ......................................... 57

Figure 24. Categorization of collaborative engineering communities..................................... 58

Figure 25. Successful VO collaboration ................................................................................. 60

Figure 26. Decentralized broker ............................................................................................. 86

List of tables

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List of tables

Table 1. Overview of the report ................................................................................................ 3

Table 2. Sections addressing the research questions.............................................................. 4

Table 3. Concept of Virtual..................................................................................................... 10

Table 4. Authors and their main focus on virtual organization ............................................... 12

Table 5. Selection of organizations in case study (Bultje & van Wijk, 1998).......................... 22

Table 6. Primary and secondary characteristics (Bultje & van Wijk, 1998) ............................ 23

Table 7. Typology of VO in case study (Bultje & van Wijk, 1998) .......................................... 33

Table 8. VO types comparison on multiple dimensions (Palmer & Speier, 1997).................. 34

Table 9. Inter-organizational partnerships vs. VOs (Mertens & Faisst, 1996)........................ 34

Table 10. Experienced problems with SigSys ........................................................................ 37

Table 11. Challenges in concurrent engineering.................................................................... 59

Table 12. Properties of ad hoc networking............................................................................. 62

Table 13. VO characteristics in the scenarios ........................................................................ 81

Table 14. Classification of scenarios...................................................................................... 81

Part I Introduction

Introduction

1. Introduction

This chapter describes the motivation for this project, outlines the report context,introduces the project objective, including the research questions, and provides areading guide.

1.1 Motivation

New ways of organizing businesses are continuously evolving with the Informationand Communication Technology (ICT) as an enabling factor along with increasingpace and globalization of the market. Individuals and businesses now collaboratefrom geographically dispersed locations in a much larger degree than before. Thetechnology is now enabling individuals to connect to the Internet and carry outtheir work anywhere, anytime. This is referred to as nomadic computing by(LaPorta et al., 1996). As this concept of work matures in organizations, newchallenges and issues emerge related to the computer interfaces and informationsystems the users interact with. The explosive growth in the number and type ofdevices connected to the Internet requires more flexible frameworks for workingacross heterogeneous systems.

The research on Virtual Organizations is considered to be inconsistent in the formof having lots of contributors proposing their own definitions to the concept, thusleading to a diversity of terms and descriptions of the phenomenon. The mainfocus for the first part of the project has been developed together with arepresentative from the organization SINTEF1 and the supervisors at NTNU, tomap the different approaches to the subject and provide an overview that clearlypresents the concept of VOs.

The second part of the project will be related to mobility and how businesses canutilize mobile technology in VOs to increase the efficiency of their work. This is animportant and interesting issue for many organizations which gives me an extramotivation towards this project by providing a study that is valuable to variousresearch establishments.

The own contribution in this project is a creative effort to challenge the way welook at VOs today. It provides thoughts and suggestions for an extension of the VOtaxonomy. This is carried out by taking the characteristics of a VO into a differentsetting, and discuss whether the new scenarios qualify as types of VOs.

1. SINTEF: http://www.sintef.no

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Introduction

1.2 Project context

The project description for this thesis was developed in co-operation with theresearch project MOWAHS1 (MObile Work Across Heterogeneous Systems). TheMOWAHS project is carried out jointly by IDI’s software engineering and databasetechnology groups. The project is supported by the Norwegian Research Council.

The MOWAHS goals are threefold (www.mowahs.com):

G1) Helping to understand and to continuously assess and improve workprocesses in virtual organizations.

G2) Providing a flexible, common work environment to execute and share realwork processes and their artifacts, applicable on a variety of electronic devices(from big servers to small PDAs).

G3) Disseminating the results to colleagues, students, companies, and thecommunity at large.

One of the research challenges in MOWAHS is to provide an efficient and user-friendly environment for helping people in virtual organizations to perform andcoordinate their work at their current location, time and device configurations.

The focus for this thesis will be to assist the MOWAHS project in achievingprimarily the first goal, G1, providing a deeper understanding of what a virtualorganization is and how it is organized, and partly G2 by studying enablingtechnologies.

1.3 Project objective

The main task of this project is to examine Virtual Organizations, and give anoverview of the related research presented in the literature. The goal is to presentan explanatory study of the concept of VOs and related discussions, and identifythe work processes in these organizations. The following research questions havebeen identified as the foundation for this research:

RQ1) What is a virtual organization?

RQ2) What are the characteristics of a VO?

RQ3) Why do VOs emerge?

RQ4) What are the types of VOs?

1. MOWAHS: http://www.mowahs.com

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Introduction

RQ5) What are the benefits of adopting the VO?

RQ6) What is the role of information technology in VOs?

RQ7) What is the difference between a VO and an inter-organizational project?

The main part of the contribution is a creative effort to introduce scenarios andanalyze new organizational forms with regards to the existing taxonomy of VOs.The scenarios are focused on everyday collaborating organizations in mobilecomputing environments, and the work processes related to mobile work in such.

The latter part of this report will discuss issues and challenges of mobile work andmobile collaboration in VOs, and will prepare the ground for a master thesis byidentifying research propositions for further work on VOs and mobile collaboration.

1.4 Reader’s guide

This section is provided for the reader’s convenience and briefly describes whatthe report contains and how it should be read. Table 1 outlines the main chaptersin this report and indicates if a chapter is dependent on another. Reading thetable, one can see that e.g. Chapter 3 is dependent on the information found inChapter 1 and Chapter 2.

Part I - Introduction

Chapter 1: IntroductionThis chapter contains background information about the project such asmotivation, project context, problem definition and this reader’s guide.

Table 1: Overview of the report

Chapter Chapter overview Chapter Dependency1 Introduction --2 Research method --3 Literature study Chapter 1 and 24 VO research initiatives Chapter 35 Enabling technologies Chapter 36 Problem elaboration Chapter 2, 37 Scenarios Chapter 3, 5 and 68 Extension of the VO taxonomy Chapter 3, 6 and 79 Future trends Chapter 3, 5 and 810 Evaluation and discussion All previous chapters11 Conclusion and further work All previous chapters

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Introduction

Chapter 2: Research methodThis chapter describes the work process and the methodologies used in theproject. It motivates the choice of research methods, and relates them tosoftware engineering.

Part II - State-of-the-art

Chapter 3: Literature studyThis chapter is the result of an extensive literature study on VOs, and aims toexamine and answer the research questions defined in section 1.3. Table 2shows which sections in the chapter that address the different researchquestions.

Chapter 4: VO research initiativesThis chapter describes contemporary research initiatives on VOs, and presentsthe vision and roadmap for European research on VOs towards 2015.

Chapter 5: Enabling technologiesThis chapter presents different enabling technologies for the type of VOsdepicted in the literature study, and describes challenges to the use ofInformation and Communication Technology in such organizations. Emergingtechnologies within ubiquitous and mobile computing are also presented, andrelated to the context of the report.

Part III - Own Contribution

Chapter 6: Problem elaborationThis chapter elaborates on the problem definition for the contribution of thisreport. It describes, in more detail, the work process of relating the concept ofVOs to mobile computing environments.

Table 2: Sections addressing the research questions

Research question Section

RQ1 All sectionsRQ2 Section 3.5RQ3 Section 3.6 and 3.7RQ4 Section 3.8 and 3.9RQ5 Section 3.5 and 3.7RQ6 All sectionsRQ7 Section 3.8, 3.9 and 3.10

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Introduction

Chapter 7: ScenariosThis chapter presents scenarios of collaboration in mobile environments, andprovides an analysis of the work processes to the characteristics of VOs.

Chapter 8: Extension of the VO taxonomyThis chapter presents the results of the scenario analysis, and describes theobservations as an extension of the VO taxonomy, in terms of characteristicsand qualities of such organizations.

Chapter 9: Future trendsThis chapter further discusses the results of the analysis applied to futureworking environments, and presents opportunities and requirements towardscoordination in intelligent environments.

Part IV - Evaluation and Conclusion

Chapter 10: Evaluation and discussionThis chapter evaluates the work with regards to research method and achievedresults, and discusses possible weaknesses in the context of the research.

Chapter 11: Conclusion and further workThis chapter concludes the work, and presents research propositions for furtherwork.

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Introduction

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Research method

2. Research method

The research activities for this report in the domain of Virtual Organization aremainly divided in two approaches:

• Literature study

• Scenario analysis

2.1 Literature study

The literature study constitutes the major part of this project. It was chosen as thebest way to get an overview of the domain, and to explore the topics related to theresearch questions. The background and resources for this part of the report areresult of an extensive literature study of articles, journals, books, web pages andforum discussions related to the concept.

The approach to this study has been to find the most cited authors and the mostreferred publications. In this way, we have been able to get an insight in whichcontributors that are most acknowledged and accepted among other researchers.We have been able to present a selection of contributions that reflect the researchtopics in a reasonably good way, after following innumerable links between theauthors.

We have tried to balance the work of these acknowledged authors with a numberof more specific research contributions in order to make the review of the domainas complete and consistent as possible, taking into consideration the fairly shortproject time period.

This approach to the literature study was chosen after conferring the experienceswith software engineering research methods described in (Glass et al., 2002).

2.2 Scenario analysis

The second part of the research is a scenario analysis of the concept of VirtualOrganizations. It is an effort of bringing a new contribution and thoughts into aresearch field that is highly abundant, with the purpose of continuing the respectedand innovative work within the MOWAHS project. The distinct goals of employingthis research method in the project are to:

• Challenge the existing view of the Virtual Organization concept.

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Research method

• Identify new problem definitions and challenges, creating synergy effects between the VO research and mobile computing.

• Get a deeper understanding of the subject, by applying the gained knowledge of VOs in a different setting.

Scenario analysis as a research method in software engineering, is mainly relatedto requirements engineering, as described in (Sutcliffe, 1998). However, for thepurpose of visualizing and extracting valuable knowledge of mobile environments,scenarios are used as the foundation for this approach to VOs. This method ofmodeling a domain is a sort of use case modeling. In software engineering,scenarios are defined in the following way:

“A scenario is a sequence of steps describing an interaction between a user and a system.” (Fowler, 2000)

The scenarios in this report are textual use cases focusing on describing thedifferent actors in the organization, their roles and responsibilities, and the rules ofwhich the organizational entities acts according to. The technology and systemsthe users interact with are described both in terms of method, and the role of thetechnology in each specific organization.

When describing the scenarios, we used qualitative methods to provide correctinformation and to secure consistency of our interpretation of the domain. Thesestudies were carried out in good software engineering practice, as described in(Seaman, 1999).

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Part II State-of-the-art

Literature study

3. Literature study

This chapter gives an overview of the literature that describes the concept ofVirtual Organizations (VO). We take a broad approach to the subject and try tocover most of the topics that are relevant to answer the presented researchquestions.

3.1 Introduction

(Mowshowitz, 1986) used the term Virtual Organization for the first time in 1986.Since then, there has been a lot of research on this type of networkedorganizations and how they will revolutionize the way we work in the 21st Century.There are numerous definitions of a VO because many authors and researchgroups use their own definition for their work. In the book "The VirtualCorporation", (Davidow & Malone, 1992) presented one of the first extensiveapproaches to the subject. The focus for their conception of a Virtual Corporationrelates to the concept of a Virtual Product. The ideal virtual product according tothem, was a product or service that "is produced instantaneously and customizedin response to customer demand."

Throughout this chapter, we will present different approaches to the subject basedon the literature, and try to give an overview of the characteristics of a VirtualOrganization.

In the literature, there exist various synonyms to the term Virtual Organization:Virtual Corporation (VC), Virtual Enterprise (VE) and Virtual Company (VCo) areall related to the same concept of co-operation between different organizations orindividuals.

3.2 The concept of Virtual

According to Oxford Concise Dictionary the term “virtual” is defined as: “that issuch for practical purposes, though not in name or according to a strict definition.”Related to this definition, (Fairchild, 2004) says that “an organization may bethought of as a number of individuals systematically united for some end or work”.He proposes that a virtual organization may be viewed as “a number of individualsunited with a practical purpose, or a practical purpose for the 21st century”.

(Bultje & van Wijk, 1998) claim that the different definitions of a VO partly dependon the view the authors have on the concept of "virtual". Table 3 presents fourdifferent views that describe the meaning of “virtual”:

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Literature study

(Bultje & van Wijk, 1998) analyzed different definitions of a VO, and concludedthat all four views on virtuality presented in Table 3 could be found among thedefinitions.

The examples given by Franke on the different views of the term virtual are basedon a model presented in (Scholz, 1997) of virtual objects. Figure 1 shows howScholz divides a virtual organization into an intra- and inter-organizationalperspective, where the concept Virtual Corporation is considered inter-organizational.

Table 3: Concept of Virtual

View of “Virtual” Interpretation(Bultje & van Wijk, 1998)

Example(Franke, 2000)

Unreal, looking real Originated from optics. Discrimination between a real picture and a virtual picture. Both pictures look the same, but as opposed to a real picture, a virtual picture can’t be caught on a photographic paper.

Virtual reality

Immaterial, supported by ICT

Used in expressions like virtual library, virtual classroom, etc. In this view, functions that are often performed by people are replaced by the use of ICT.

Virtual shopping mall

Potentially present Only active if a certain opportunity comes along. It can directly unfold new activities if a new project is initiated.

Virtual memory

Existing, but changing

Something exists, but the composition is temporary and is possibly changing every day.

Virtual corporation

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Literature study

The term virtualness was introduced by (Venkatraman & Henderson, 1996) andrelated to what the concept of virtuality mean for organizations. They proposedthat:

“Virtualness is the ability of the organization to consistently obtain and coordinate critical competencies through its design of value-adding business processes and governance mechanisms involving external and internal constituencies to deliver differential, superior value in the market place.”

This emphasizes that an organization does not become virtual simply by using ICTand nominating themselves as a VO, but as a result of how the organization ismanaged.

3.3 The concept of Virtual Organization

Virtual organizations are given attention by researchers within a wide range offields, from social anthropology and organizational theory to computer science.They have not yet agreed on a mutual definition of the concept, and there is notheoretical framework available to give a better understanding of the concept.

Figure 1: Virtual objects (Scholz, 1997)

VirtualObjects

VirtualOrganisation

VirtualHolidays

VirtualProduct

VirtualReality

VirtualMemory

Intra-organisationalInter-organisational

VirtualDepartment

VirtualOffice

VirtualCorporation

VirtualMarkets

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Literature study

There are a lot of different contributions to the subject, and many of them arerelated to functional aspects, such as the role of information technology in VOs,legal issues, socio-economic issues, and so on.

Other authors relate the concept to business concepts such as knowledgemanagement, flexible or dynamic networking, agile competition, business processredesign and supply webs.

The focus on VOs can be divided into two main categories:

• Structure perspective.

• Process perspective.

Contributions from different authors are mainly within one of these categories. Thestructure perspective focuses on the building blocks of the VO and its properties,while the process perspective focuses on behavior and operation.

Table 4 from (Saabel et al., 2002) shows how the literature reflects the two views.

3.4 Definitions

Analysis of the definitions of a VO provided by authors and scholars is areasonable way to determine the attributes of a VO. This section presents differentviews on what defines this type of organization.

Table 4: Authors and their main focus on virtual organization

Perspective Author Terminology

Structure Byrne (1993)Aken et al. (1998)Strader et al. (1998)Wildeman (1998)Grenier and Metes (1995)Wütrich and Phillips (1998)Mertens et al. (1998)Goldman et al. (1995)Davidow and Malone (1992)

NetworkNetworkNetworkAllianceAllianceForm of co-operationForm of co-operationCombination of core-competenciesCombination of activities

Process Hale and Whitlaw (1997)Venkatraman and Henderson (1998)Mowshowitz (1997)Katzy (1998)

Continuous or institutionalized changeStrategic approachManagement approachAction or ability

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Literature study

(Grimshaw and Kwok, 1998) presents five major attributes of a VO:

• Alliance for a common goal

• Underlying Information and Communication Technology

• Vertical Integration

• Globalization

• Collaboration

The presented attributes are based on definitions in the literature:

"In a virtual organization, complementary resources existing in a number of co-operating companies are left in place, but are integrated to support a particular product effort for as long as it is justifiable to do so." (Goldman et al., 1995)

"Virtual organizations are distributed 'business processes'. These processes may be 'owned' by one or more organizations acting in partnership. For a specific project, resources are assembled to perform a business process on behalf of the project owner(s), and then disassembled on completion of the contract." (Wolff, 1995)

These definitions characterize the VO as an alliance for a common goal. Theauthors describe the co-operation between the companies as a sort of partnershipor joint venture where all members contribute their core-competencies. It isinteresting to note that they do not mention the role of Information andCommunication Technology (ICT) to support co-operation. ICT as a facilitatingmechanism for VOs is emphasized by other authors:

"The key to understanding the virtual corporation is the profound effect that information technology has as it distorts traditional relationships of management and work to time and space." (Coates, 1994)

"The conjunctional grouping, based on the Net, of companies, individuals, and organizations to create a business." (Tapscott, 1996)

"Increasingly, executives are turning to alliances, partnerships and joint ventures, often formed to produce particular products and then disbanded. These enable costs to be shared, development times to be shortened and effective use to be made of design, manufacturing and marketing skills inside

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Literature study

and outside the company. Such linkages - variously described as virtual corporations or agile enterprises - are made easier by computer technology." (Fisher, 1993)

Vertical integration as an attribute to VO was introduced by (Pastore, 1993) and(Klein, 1994), and was based on the suggestion that the companies in a VOshould include both suppliers and long-term customers into the VO to increase theefficiency of their value-chain.

"In order to have a rapid response to the market (customers), companies have to reorganize themselves around response to customer demand, forging tight relational and technological bonds with core suppliers and long-term customers. That is the shape of the corporation of the future, a virtual corporation." (Pastore, 1993)

"Virtual corporation consists of the company that faces the customer and a network of other companies that co-operate to achieve what none of them could achieve alone. This arrangement permits each participant to concentrate on what each does best and to limit its risks and investments to its core competencies." (Klein, 1994)

Globalization of the VO was mentioned in (Wolff, 1995) and (Coates, 1994) anddescribes how various departments of an organization could be spread overseveral countries. The authors also discuss potential benefits from distributing theoperations globally.

"To achieve maximum benefits for the project owners, the majority of the resources are independent sub-contractors working from home or local centres. They could be distributed globally." (Wolff, 1995)

"The virtual corporation can be taken to be one with a relatively small headquarters operating with many different internal units, alliances and subcontractors. The largest of them will operate on a global scale." (Coates, 1994)

The last attribute discussed by (Grimshaw and Kwok, 1998) is collaboration. Thisis one of the most important features of the VO, and is highlighted by (Dubinskas,1993).

"The terms 'virtual team' and 'virtual organization' evoke the special status of groups created through the use of groupware such as computer conferencing. Virtual organization… is important in shaping organizational

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Literature study

outcomes. Virtual teams become part of the ongoing process of structuration, while also providing a new tool for organizational design. Virtual team exists through the use of groupware, but it appears to the user to have attributes and functions of a conventional social group. Virtual organization is the larger scale ordering and linking of virtual groups." (Dubinskas, 1993)

From all these definitions, we observe the different attributes of the VO and thesemake the foundation to start talking about the formal characteristics of a VO.(Byrne, 1993) provide the most widely accepted and cited definition of the termVirtual Corporation within the academic literature:

"A virtual corporation is a temporary network of independent companies - suppliers, customers, and even rivals - linked by information technology to share skills, costs, and access to one another's markets. This corporate model is fluid and flexible - a group of collaborators that quickly unite to exploit a specific opportunity. Once the opportunity is met, the venture will, more often than not, disband. In the concept's purest form, each company that links up with others to create a virtual corporation contributes only what it regards as its core competencies. Technology plays a central role in the development of the virtual corporation. Teams of people in different companies work together, concurrently rather than sequentially, via computer networks in real time." (Byrne, 1993)

This definition has clearly a structural perspective, and gives a detailed picture ofthe building blocks of a virtual organization. (Hale & Whitlaw, 1997) on the otherside provide a definition from a process perspective within the subject oforganizational development.

"The virtual organization is the name given to any organization which is continually evolving, redefining and reinventing itself for practical business purposes." (Hale & Whitlaw, 1997)

They emphasize that the concept is not so much about “managing in the sense ofplanning, controlling, directing and organizing, but more concerned with the notionof continuous or institutionalized change”.

3.5 Characteristics

To answer the question “What is a Virtual Organization?”, it is important to reviewthe different characteristics of a VO. The selection of characteristics discussed inthis section is based on the work of (Bultje & van Wijk, 1998). They performed anextensive literature research to map the different properties that constitute a VO.

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Literature study

The characteristics in section 3.5.1 are, according to several authors, key factorsof a VO. The characteristics described in section 3.5.1 and section 3.5.2 are a mixof proven properties of companies referred to as VOs in the literature and differentauthor’s view of a VO. Therefore, the list of characteristics has to be evaluated byperforming further empirical studies, and can for the time being be considered tobe a sort of proposition.

3.5.1 Key characteristics

The characteristics presented in this section are considered key factors for a VOby several authors.

KC1 Based on core competenciesEach partner in the VO contributes with its core competencies. The initiatordetermines the most suitable business process related to the complementary skillsprovided by the different companies in the VO. The synergy effect that is the resultof combining all the core competencies enables the organization with a flexibleway of meeting the customer demands. The goal is to produce a sort of all-starteam.

KC2 Network of independent organizationsThe designation of a VO as a network of independent organizations is widelyaccepted in the literature. This means that we focus on the VO from an inter-organizational perspective (see Figure 1), and that we discuss the concept VirtualCorporation when we talk about VOs according to the model provided by (Scholz,1997).

KC3 One identityAccording to (Aken et al., 1998), the VO must have its own identity. If the identityof the partners remains visible in addition to the VOs identity, it is considered a“Soft VO”. A “Hard VO” looks from the outside like one common organization.

KC4 Based on Information TechnologyDifferent authors have their own view on Information and CommunicationTechnology as a factor in VOs. (Mowshowitz, 1994) regards the advances intransportation, communication and computing as important for a VO. (Byrne,1993) considers an information network as essential for companies to link up andwork together. The vision of VOs presented by (Davidow & Malone, 1992) isstrongly based on ICT.

KC5 No hierarchyThe equality of the partners in a VO leads to an organization without hierarchy. It iscalled an egalitarian structure by (Sieber, 1998). Other authors also state that

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Literature study

there is no hierarchy in a VO. The positive effects of this structure would beenhancing the efficiency and the responsiveness of the organization, anddecreasing the overhead (Bultje & van Wijk, 1998). The term “adhocracies” wasintroduced in (Toffler, 1970) as part of his predictions for the future, and lateracknowledged in (Malone & Rockart, 1993) as a description of the managementstructure in networked organizations. It is the large amount of unpredictable lateralcommunication that makes this organizational structure extremely coordination-intensive. Figure 2, inspired by (Malone & Rockart, 1993), shows a comparisonbetween the traditional hierarchy and the notion of an adhocracy.

KC6 Distinction between strategical and operational level (~ separability)According to (Mowshowitz, 1999), the logical separation of need from need-fulfillment is the foundation of VO. He emphasizes that there, on a manageriallevel, is a clear distinction between the abstract requirements and the concreteimplementation to reach the organizational goals. This is called the “switchingprinciple”.

3.5.2 Other characteristics

The characteristics presented in this section are considered characteristics of aVO by several authors, but is not regarded as essential to define a VO.

OC1 Small sized partners: Small companies and/or parts of large companiesThe core competencies of a partner are usually not the whole company, unless itis a small company that has specialized its operations within a niche. The smallersize of partners leads to more flexibility and makes it easier for the organization totake advantage of opportunities in the market. Several authors point to the factthat larger companies often are slower in decision making and innovation, whichare essential factors in responding to opportunities.

Figure 2: Traditional vs. ad hoc corporate structures

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OC2 Vague/fluid boundariesIt is not easy to determine where one organization begins and another ends whentalking about VOs. This is the result of more co-operation among competitors,customers, suppliers, designers, etc. (Bultje & van Wijk, 1998). The boundaries ofthe traditional organizations are redefined by the VO. (Mowshowitz, 1994)distinguishes internal and external boundaries, where the latter is between the VOand the outside world as opposed to boundaries between the internal partners(units) in the VO.

OC3 Semi-stable relationsAccording to (Byrne, 1993), the relations in a VO are less formal and lesspermanent. The relations create dependencies among the partners, but thepartners can also survive without them (Aken et al., 1998).

OC4 Dependent on opportunismPart of the most widely accepted definition of a VO by (Byrne, 1993), describeshow companies band together to meet a special market opportunity, and are mostlikely to fall apart once the need disappear. When a company partners with othersin a VO, they enlarge their scope and scale of opportunities available. Smallorganizations, limited by size and lack of capital, often cannot take advantage ofemerging business opportunities alone.

OC5 Shared risksAs described above, VOs respond to opportunities in the market, and risks areshared by every partner in the VO. (Chesbrough & Teece, 1996) providedinformative lessons on how to analyze risks within networked organizations. Theauthors present a framework to help managers when to innovate by going virtual,when to form alliances, and when to rely on internal development. They state that“as market-based incentives become greater, the risk-taking will increase”.

OC6 Based on trustSince VOs are based on sharing information and knowledge, there must be a highamount of trust among the partners. Especially since each partner contribute withtheir core competencies. The most important contribution on the subject of trustwithin VOs was provided in (Handy, 1995).

“Virtuality requires trust to make it work: Technology on its own is not enough.” (Handy, 1995)

Handy discusses how you can manage people whom you do not see, and definesthe rules of trust, based on common sense. An interesting comment on working ina VO is that a shared commitment still requires personal contact to make it real.

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“Paradoxically, the more virtual the organization, the more its people need to meet in person.” (Handy, 1995)

Related to trust is also co-destiny discussed by (Byrne, 1993), which means thatthe fate of each partner is dependent on the fate of other partners.

OC7 Shared ownershipThis characteristic is related to the fact that every independent partner has its owninterests in the VO, and that parts of the VO can be owned by different partners(Bultje & van Wijk, 1998). (Aken et al., 1998) state that a partner will, or can, stepout of the VO once its goals have been met.

OC8 Shared leadershipAccording to (Aken et al., 1998), every partner controls its own resources but notautomatically the resources of the whole VO.

OC9 Shared loyaltyAlong with shared ownership comes shared loyalty. Every employee of everypartner in the VO must identify themselves with the VO, and at the same time withtheir own company. It is important to build a culture within the organization. AsSieber puts it:

“People determine the success of a VO.” (Sieber, 1998)

The concept of a Virtual Culture is discussed by (Ash & Burn, 2000), who describeit as a perception of the entire VO held by its stakeholder community. In otherwords, it is the feeling of collectivity with respect to value sharing and time-spacearrangement. For example, each client’s expectations are satisfied in the productaccessed, and each partner has the feeling of a continuous access to theorganization and its products.

OC10 Dynamic networkThe description of a VO as a dynamic network is related to the fact thatorganizations or individuals can enter and leave the network at any time.

OC11 Dependent on innovationAs described earlier, the VO is often based on market opportunities, and theessential element is the corresponding responsiveness. (Chesbrough & Teece,1996) state that the adequate way to react to a market-based incentive, is throughinnovative products and services. This is not necessarily only in a technicalperspective, and could for instance be related to innovation in organizationaldesign.

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OC12 Geographical dispersedSeveral authors state that the partners in a VO are geographically dispersed. Thedefinition of “geographical dispersed” in the work of (Bultje & van Wijk, 1998) isthat “a company is geographical dispersed if the buildings are separated”. Figure 3shows a classification of geographical dispersion related to business alliances.

This factor is one of the most important for the use of ICT in VOs. Technologyenables the companies to collaborate independently of location and time, andcould give the members of a virtual team a sense of presence and connectivityeven though they are miles apart.

OC13 No organization chart and meta-organizationThe VO can be looked upon as some sort of umbrella organization, a meta-organization. There are all kinds of organizational structures within thecooperating companies, which make it difficult to draw an organization chart.Another implication is the dynamic characteristics of the VO, where thestakeholders in some instances come and go dependent on whether their goalsfor the co-operation have been met.

OC14 Customer based and mass-customizationMass-customization is related to individual services and products to satisfy theparticular needs and wishes of the customers. A concretization of this is theconcept of the Virtual Product introduced by (Davidow & Malone, 1992) based onstrong interaction with the customer.

OC15 Lifespan of co-operation: temporary vs. permanentThe lifetime of a VO is widely discussed in the literature, but most of the authorsare focusing their definition towards VO as a temporary network of independentcompanies as stated by (Byrne, 1993). The underlying notion is that they unite

Figure 3: Characteristic dispersion of VOs (McKay & Marshall, 2000)

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quickly, exploit an opportunity and disband afterwards. Other research uses theinterpretation of VO as a temporary organization that also can exist on a long-lasting base (Aken et al., 1998). Van Aken introduces the concepts “Project” fortemporary organization, and “Program” for the long-lasting organization. As anexample, a VO can be disbanded in the event of project completion, but can alsohave an undetermined duration in the case of the organization remainingfunctional for as long as customer demands exist and/or the participants find theircollaboration to be beneficial (Jägers et al., 1998).

The life cycle of a VO has been discussed in more detail by (Strader et al., 1998),and they proposed a model of the life cycle of a VO as presented in Figure 4.

The authors define two or more major decision processes for each of the fourstages of the life cycle; Identification, Formation, Operation and Termination. Theidentification phase involves opportunity identification and opportunity evaluationand selection. These decisions are sequentially related. Once the best availablemarket opportunity has been selected to be pursued, the formation phase of theVO begins by partner identification followed by selecting the most suitablepartners for partnership. Once the organization has been formed, it can begin itsoperation phase. Important decisions are categorized into five functional areas ofdesign, marketing, financial management, manufacturing, and distribution. Whenthe market opportunity is fulfilled or has ceased to exist, the VO will be terminatedby two major decision processes in the termination phase; operation terminationand asset dispersal.

Figure 4: Virtual organization life cycle model (Strader et al., 1998)

OpportunityIdentification

OpportunitySelection

PartnerIdentification

PartnerSelection

Partnershipformation

OperationTermination

AssetDispersal

Design

Marketing

FinancialManagement

Manufacturing

Distribution

Identification Formation Operation Termination

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OC16 Balance of power: equality of partners vs. core-partnersBecause of the high dependency between the partners in a VO, the participantrelations become more equal. (Jägers et al., 1998) state that the former culture ofcontrol is replaced by a culture based on the desire to share skills and information.On the contrary, (Aken et al., 1998) make a distinction between a VO with orwithout a core-partner. They state that “a core-partner is some sort of ‘leader’ of aVO to which the other partners have to comply”. Worth noting here is that sincemembers of a virtual alliance may be partners in one venture but competitors inothers, they have less incentive to be open and share data than within hierarchicalorganizations or within their alliance with suppliers and customers.

OC17 Mission-overlap: partial vs. completePartners that do business outside the context of the VO, in addition to the workwithin the alliance, are considered having partial mission-overlap. While partnersperforming all business within the organizational context, have complete mission-overlap. The literature describes both kinds of VOs (Bultje & van Wijk, 1998).

3.5.3 Case Study

(Bultje & van Wijk, 1998) have performed an empirical study on the selection ofcharacteristics. The sample source for their case study was six existingcompanies, described in literature as VOs and differing on three points; smallversus large, Dutch versus international, and ICT based versus non-ICT based.The companies are listed in Table 5, where “Company X” and “Company Y”denote the columns for the criteria comparison.

The case studies were performed by mapping the characteristics on eachcompany, conducting interviews with employees. An analysis of the results wasperformed to distinguish different levels in the list of characteristics. Three levelswere defined: “primary”, “secondary”, and “no” characteristic. Based on theselection of companies, characteristics that fit all VOs were considered primarycharacteristics, while the ones that fit four or five VOs were considered secondarycharacteristics. Characteristics that met less than four organizations were ruledout of the list. The results of this level analysis are shown in Table 6.

Table 5: Selection of organizations in case study (Bultje & van Wijk, 1998)

Criteria Company X Company YSmall VOs vs. Large VOs Prolion NikeDutch VOs vs. International VOs ING AirbusICT-based VOs vs. no ICT-based VOs Amazon.com TMG

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The analysis divides the list into seven primary and five secondary characteristics,where only two of the key factors mentioned in section 3.5.1 (Based on corecompetencies and Network of independent organizations) are considered primarycharacteristics. Out of the four other key factors, only (No hierarchy) does notcomply to the secondary characteristics condition, matching only threecompanies.

To enhance the readability of their study, (Bultje & van Wijk, 1998) formulated theirdefinition of a VO, divided in two parts according to the two levels ofcharacteristics:

“A Virtual Organization is primarily characterized as being a network of independent, geographically dispersed organizations with a partial mission overlap. Within the network, all partners provide their own core competencies and the co-operation is based on semi-stable relations. The products and services provided by a Virtual Organization are dependent on innovation and are strongly customer-based.” (Bultje & van Wijk, 1998)

“Further, a Virtual Organization is secondarily characterized by a single identity with loyalty being shared among the partners and the co-operation based on trust and information technology. In addition, there is also a clear distinction between a strategic and an operational level.” (Bultje & van Wijk, 1998)

3.5.4 Summary

Although the study carried out by (Bultje & van Wijk, 1998) gives a good overviewon how the characteristics of a VO discussed in the literature maps to the realityand existing organizations, it can be questioned whether all of the companiesinvestigated in this study really are VOs. This study should also be supplementedwith other empirical studies of the domain. Some of the characteristics do not fit

Table 6: Primary and secondary characteristics (Bultje & van Wijk, 1998)

Primary characteristics Secondary characteristicsPartial mission overlap One identityCustomer based & mass-customization Based on trustNetwork of independent organizations Shared loyaltySemi-stable relations Based on information technologyGeographical dispersed Distinction between a strategical and

operational levelBased on core competenciesDependent on innovation

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the general definitions of a VO used by authors and researchers throughout theworld, and it is therefore interesting to deduce a typology of the concept of virtualorganizations. This view has captured the attention from several authors andsome of this research is discussed in section 3.8.

3.6 Trends toward Virtual Organizations

One of the interesting things about VOs is that the factors causing them to form,existed long before the age of computers. In the construction industry, groups ofindependent operators formed organizations to build houses and buildings. Thesame applies for the movie industry when producing films. What has changed isaccording to (Fairchild, 2004), that the trends that leads to VO have increased.The trends towards VOs are reviewed by (Bleeker, 1994) and are widely cited inthe literature. Bleeker proposes that the four key trends are:

• Pace

• Cost

• Personalization

• Globalization

3.6.1 Pace

(Bleeker, 1994) comments on Alvin Toffler’s predictions in (Toffler, 1970), aboutbusinesses running at warp speeds, demanding immediate responses -anywhere, anytime. Toffler predicted that the business market would turn into“survival of the fastest, not the fittest”. Today, this can be witnessed by thecompressed life cycles for all activities in the value chain, and hierarchicalorganizations that cannot respond to new demands (Fairchild, 2004).

3.6.2 Cost

The second trend (Bleeker, 1994) points to, is the decreasing cost of market entry,particularly in the information services and other technology-driven industries. Inthese industries, “even small undercapitalized startups can have an enormousimpact on innovation” (Bleeker, 1994), “far beyond the apparent limits of their size”(Fairchild, 2004).

3.6.3 Personalization

Personalization, or customization, is made possible in a higher degree bycomputerized manufacturing, which has made it “economical to produceassembly-line product runs of a few dozen items instead of a few thousand”

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(Bleeker, 1994). Not only do organizations save money by not needing largemanufacturing facilities, customization also allows organizations to producetailored products for a wider group of customers. Corporations are now drivenmore by customer demands than by internal needs. “Today, customers get whatthey want or go elsewhere” (Bleeker, 1994).

3.6.4 Globalization

Competition includes companies all over the world, rather than only with theirnearest located rivals.

“Taken together, these factors in many instances have made a hierarchical organization an inappropriate solution to the market’s needs and have made Virtual Organizations viable options”. (Fairchild, 2004)

Underlying all these trends is Information Technology, which enables anorganization to quickly gather, integrate and analyze large amounts of information,and disseminate it accurately to consumers throughout the world. VOs couldprobably exist without ICT, like general contractors have existed in the buildingindustry for generations. However, “its scope and the areas in which it operateswould be limited by time and space constraints” (Fairchild, 2004). This is alsoreviewed by (Bleeker, 1994), who talks about the “unwired society” and howemployees will work independently of time and space constraints.

“It’s the age of emancipation. Time and space will collapse, and the barriers to communications will fall away.” (Bleeker, 1994)

3.7 Benefits and Drawbacks

There are several reasons why VOs emerge, as depicted in the previous section.The benefits of adopting the VO model have become more noticeable. Thissection presents benefits and drawbacks identified by (Grimshaw & Kwok, 1998)from a case study of established VOs. A discussion of strategic reasons fororganizing the business as a VO is also provided here.

3.7.1 Benefits

VOs extend the strategic reach of an organization. This involves extending thescope and scale of opportunities that are available to the organization, quantifiedby the factors size, time and space. A VO can help the companies within thepartnership to take advantage of emerging business opportunities they could nothave done alone because of limited size or lack of capital. As part of a VO, thecompany could also respond more quickly and mobilize to take advantage of

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market opportunities. By strategically teaming up with other companies around theworld, a company can enter previously closed markets.

All the examples described above show how a VO breaks the size, time andspace constraints, broadens the strategic horizon and thereby offers great benefitsfor the organizations.

The results of the case study by (Grimshaw & Kwok, 1998), identify the followingbenefits within the investigated VOs:

• Increasing competitive capabilities

• Flexibility

• Greater responsiveness to market (customers)

• Improving customer service

• Cost benefits

• Improving communication and internal control

3.7.2 Drawbacks

The complexity of a VO has some implications for the organization, and brings thefollowing challenges according to the case studies in (Grimshaw & Kwok, 1998).

High costsThe main costs are related to investment in ICT and the subsequently highoperational costs, including training and maintenance. Looking at the generaltrends in technology costs, this issue is likely to be of reducing significance.

Legal problemsVOs are established fast and efficiently to respond to market opportunities ortackle specific projects. This can result in complex legal problems as theboundaries between the organizations become vague or fluid. For instance, theremay be discussions on which partner holding the copyrights to the final design orproducts.

Trust and respect issuesTrust and respect are one of the most important factors for a successful VO. Thisapplies both for knowledge sharing and the group dynamics for collaboration.Again, the pace of VO establishment and geographical dispersion can implyserious trust and respect issues. Empirical studies reveal that many companiesabandon co-operative arrangements due to problems with trust and control.

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Cultural issuesCo-operation in VOs may involve working across cultures. This is a big challengeto many managers, and requires them to transfer their business policies andculture to work with dispersed business teams - spanning organization,geography, and cultures.

3.7.3 Discussion

According to (Goldman et al., 1995), the benefits offered by the VO conceptoutclass the drawbacks. They suggest that the VO “is dramatically better thanbusiness as usual for a network of companies sharing a business opportunity” andpropose six strategic reasons for adopting the VO model:

1. Sharing infrastructure, R&D, risk and costs

2. Linking complementary core competencies

3. Reducing concept to cash time through sharing

4. Increasing facilities and apparent size

5. Gaining access to markets, and sharing market or customer loyalty

6. Migrating from selling products to selling solutions

3.8 Typology of Virtual organizations

The list of characteristics provided in section 3.5 does not comply to everyorganization referred to as a VO in the literature or in the industry and commerce.It is therefore reasonable to think that VOs exist in many different forms ofbusiness models. This section aims to provide an overview of the different kind ofVOs, describes the distinctions between them, and questions whether all of theseconcept models really refer to what the “most common” interpretation of a VO is.During the 1990’s the term Virtual Organization became a buzzword, possiblyresulting in businesses calling themselves VOs for marketing purposes.

3.8.1 Models of virtuality

Organizations denoted as VOs can be related to one of the six models of virtualitysuggested by (Burn et al., 1999).

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The Virtual FaceAn easy way to describe a virtual face is that it is a cyberspace incarnation of anon-virtual organization. These kinds of VOs are usually created to add value byproviding the same transactions and services to the customers over the Internet.For instance, web shops or newspapers on the web. Figure 5 shows a model ofthe virtual face, inspired by (Burn & Ash, 2000).

Co-alliance modelShared partnerships where each partner brings approximately equal amounts ofcommitment to the VO are denoted as the Co-alliance model. The partners form aconsortium, where the composition may change in order to reflect marketopportunities or the core competencies of each member. The links within the co-alliance are usually contractual for permanent alliances, or by mutual convenienceon a project by project basis. Figure 6 shows a model of the co-alliance, inspiredby (Burn & Ash, 2000).

Star-alliance modelCoordinated networks of interconnected members, where each member reflects acore surrounded by satellite organizations, is the definition of a star-alliance model(Burn & Ash, 2000). The core is normally a leading actor (star) in the market and

Figure 5: The Virtual Face

Figure 6: Co-alliance Model

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supplies the members of the alliance with competency or expertise. Figure 7shows a model of the star-alliance, inspired by (Burn & Ash, 2000).

Value-alliance modelBased on the value or supply chain, the value-alliance model gathers a range ofproducts, services and facilities into one package. The coordination is normallyprovided by the general contractor, but participants may also come together on aproject by project basis. In cases where longer term relationships have beendeveloped, the value alliance tends to adopt the form of constellations, withcomplex strategic relations between the suppliers and the companies in the valuechain. Figure 8 shows a model of the value-alliance, inspired by (Burn & Ash,2000).

Figure 7: Star-alliance Model

Figure 8: Value-alliance Model

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Market-alliance modelLike the value-alliance model, the market-alliance also brings together a range ofproducts and services and facilities into one package. In this case, they may beoffered separately by individual organizations, and the market-alliance existsprimarily in cyberspace. The concept of virtual communities could also be relatedto this model. Figure 9 shows a model of the market-alliance, inspired by (Burn &Ash, 2000).

Virtual brokerThe virtual broker can be described as a designer of dynamic networks. Virtualbrokers seek strategic opportunities either as third-party value-added suppliers oras a kind of information broker of specific business information services. This isthe most flexible purpose-built VO that is actually created to fill a window ofopportunity and is dissolved when that window is closed. When (Miles & Snow,1986) introduced the concept of dynamic networks, they suggested that this kindof network needed a coordinator, a net-broker. In (Snow et al., 1992), three net-broker roles; architect, lead operator and caretaker have been identified.Responsible for respectively the selection of suitable partners and web members,the overall project management and maintenance, and supporting the process of“learning to cooperate and cooperate to learn”. Figure 10 shows a model of thevirtual broker, inspired by (Burn & Ash, 2000).

Figure 9: Market-alliance Model

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Summary of the virtual alliance modelsEach of the presented alliances has a different degree of virtuality based on thetensions related to autonomy and interdependence within the organization. Ameasure of flexibility is the substitutability of the virtual links within theorganization to allow the creation of new competencies. (Burn & Ash, 2000)present an overview of the different models with regards to the degree of virtuality.This overview is shown in Figure 11.

Figure 10: Virtual Broker

Figure 11: Virtual alliance models (Burn & Ash, 2000)

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3.8.2 Types of VOs

The background for this section is the VO typology studies of (Bultje & van Wijk,1998) and (Palmer & Speier, 1997), which have been widely adopted byresearchers. They are approaches towards classifying the organizations specifiedas VOs in the literature.

The study by (Bultje & van Wijk, 1998) is based on previous work in (Campbell,1997), and proposes a typology of VOs divided into four concepts; internal VO,stable VO, dynamic VO and web-company.

Internal VOThis kind of VO could be described as one organization that aims at operating withinternal teams. The VO consists of several business units that are composed ofautonomous groups and teams. Management tasks are performed in adecentralized manner, and the availability of employees from different places isthe key factor for the flexible structure of the organization.

Stable VOThe foundation for this kind of VO is the co-operation between differentorganizations and it aims contracting non core-competencies out by a corepartner. The committed suppliers of core-competencies are closely related to thecore partner.

Dynamic VOThe dynamic VO co-operates on a large scale basis with other organizations.Opportunism and temporality are the foundation for the relations between them.Co-operation in these VOs are dependent on the occurrences of marketincentives, offering a great deal of flexibility to the organization.

Web-companyThe web-company, or agile organizations, is a temporary network of specializedorganizations based on the use of Internet (Bultje & van Wijk, 1998). The Internetis enabling the organization to offer their products and services on a global scale,and the key factors for a well functioning organization are knowledge managementand knowledge sharing.

From the case study performed by (Bultje & van Wijk, 1998), the six companies(also listed in Table 5) are distributed among the VO types as shown in Table 7.

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The study by (Palmer & Speier, 1997) is a survey of 55 organizations employingthe virtual model. Through survey responses and additional backgroundinformation supplied by the organizations, they developed a typology of VOsdivided into four concepts; virtual teams, virtual projects, temporary VOs andpermanent VOs.

Virtual teamsThe concept of virtual teams is generated by the internal organizational use of thevirtual concept, and is in use in a large variety of organizations. The virtual teamsnormally come from specific functional, process or strategic business units withina larger organization. This notion is strongly related to the concept of an internalVO discussed previously.

Virtual projectsThe concept of virtual projects is based on organizations that form alliances orconsortiums to bring complementary organizations together to meet marketopportunities. It is most common that the partnering organizations are basedaround similar industries or company types.

Temporary VOsThe concept of temporary VOs is an extension of the virtual project design,established to take on multiple projects and develop responses to a specificmarket opportunity. This is in other words similar to the initial virtual organizationalmodel proposed by (Byrne, 1993) among others.

Permanent VOThe concept of permanent VOs is that the VO, from its inception, is designed tobring together market players and respond to opportunities for both improvedrevenue-generating activities as well as cost savings (Palmer & Speier, 1997).

During the case study performed by (Palmer & Speier, 1997), the respondentsidentified the scope of their work, the projected length of time spent in virtual work,types of projects, the range of involvement and the number of personnel involved.

Table 7: Typology of VO in case study (Bultje & van Wijk, 1998)

Type Researched organizationsInternal VO -Stable VO Nike, ING, AirbusDynamic VO TMG, ProlionWeb-company Amazon.com

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These criteria suggested the distinct VO types presented above, and Table 8 givesa comparison of the VO types on the dimensions discussed.

3.8.3 Inter-organizational partnerships vs. VOs

Table 9 presents the major differences between the VO concept (with the notion ofVO as a temporary network of complementary organizations) and other forms ofinter-organizational partnerships from organizational theory.

Table 8: VO types comparison on multiple dimensions (Palmer & Speier, 1997)

Virtual teams Virtual projects Temporary VOs Permanent VOsRange of involvement

Internal to an organizational function or departmental unit

Across functions and organizations

Across organizations

Across Organizations

Membership Small, local Indeterminate Typically larger Typically smaller, but scalable

Mission Teams on specific, ongoing tasks

Multiple organizational representatives working on specific projects

Multiple functions responding to a market opportunity

All functions and full functionality as a working organization

Length of project

Membership varies, but form is permanent

Temporary Temporary Permanent

Use of IT Connectivity, sharing embedded knowledge (e-mail, groupware)

Repository of shared data (databases, groupware)

Shared infrastructure (groupware, WANs, remote computing)

Channel for marketing and distribution, replacing physical infrastructure (Web, Intranet)

Table 9: Inter-organizational partnerships vs. VOs (Mertens & Faisst, 1996)

Inter-organizational partnership Difference in characteristics compared to a VO

Strategic Alliance - a less closed relationship- hardly any virtual added value processes- mainly formed by large corporations- existence beside the core business

Conglomerate - dependency agreementCartel - aims to limit competitionConsortium - existence of formal agreementsFranchise - long lasting dependency agreementJoint Venture - establishment of a new businessKeiretsu - stable membership of partners

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3.8.4 Summary of VO typology

The study of the VO typology shows that there are many different incarnations ofVOs. They all have a certain set of characteristics in common, and some that areemphasized in that specific type of VO. For the rest of the study the focus will beset on the dynamic view of VOs, with the interpretation of a VO as a temporarynetwork of modules: organizations, companies or individuals.

Figure 12 shows the concept of the dynamic organization, presented in the VOmodel approach by (Saabel et al., 2002). It depicts three layers: a universe ofmodules, a dynamic web of modules with common purpose, and a dynamicorganization within the dynamic web responding to a market opportunity ordemand.

Furthermore, (Saabel et al., 2002) provides an integrated model of the structureand process perspective of a VO, presented in Figure 13. It transfers the moduleview into the concept of VOs, denoting information technology as an essential partof the organization. The model also defines the level of ownership among theparticipants, in the three layers, to respectively: actors, members and partners.

Figure 12: Three layers in the VO model (Saabel et al, 2002)

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3.9 Examples of Virtual Organizations

There are many different examples of VOs depicted in the literature, and some ofthe most discussed VOs are:

• Rosenbluth International Alliance (cf. Miller et al., 1993)

• Virtuelle Fabrik (cf. Katzy et al., 1996)

• Sigma

The latter will be described in this section, along with a short discussion of issuesand experiences related to it. The example is included here because it relates theconcepts of project and VO, and it is easy to map the VO characteristics to thisorganization.

Sigma is a training and consulting company operating nationwide in Germany. Itconsists of freelancing consultants and trainers who build small or large teams to

Figure 13: Model towards a Virtual Organization (Saabel et al., 2002)

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work on projects. The organization is considered what (Picot et al., 1996) describeas a team-oriented VO. The partners in Sigma work geographical dispersed fromtheir home offices. Some work full-time or nearly full-time for Sigma, and othersare appointed temporarily if their core competencies are needed on a project.Project managers staff a new project by recruiting from Sigma partners viaacquaintance or recommendation. The work processes within Sigma are furtherdescribed in section 3.10.

The organization applies to many of the VO characteristics. Projects are carriedout by legally independent freelancers, combining their core competencies for atemporary project and selling the end-product to a customer under the label ofSigma. The VO has a flat hierarchy, and communication and co-operation isbased on Information and Communication Technology, through a system calledSigSys.

(Rittenbruch et al., 1998) provide an empirical study of the organization, sharingthe experiences and suggestions to the design of technology extracted from theirin-depth interviews with Sigma partners. The problems identified during theempirical studies are organized in two problem categories: lack of support withregard to organizational requirements, and general problems regarding the use ofSigSys. Table 10 presents an overview of the problems related to the use ofSigSys.

Table 10: Experienced problems with SigSys

Problem category Problems Causing factors

Lack of support with regard to organizational requirements

Provision of internal information

Establishment of teams

Coordination of activities

Availability of organizational resources

Visibility of activities, decisions, and organization structure.

Availability of skill information.

No direct support for coordination, except e-mail and discussion groups.

Independent freelancers, thus not obliged to provide general resources to the rest of the organization.

General problems regarding the use of SigSys

Motivational factors

Heterogeneity of use

Acceptance of the system, and lack of participation. Subjective system relevance.

Variety of how the partners used the system. Request for appointments only gave a few responses.

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The experiences from this study serve as a model for designing ICT for thesekinds of VOs today. Many of these problems are also discussed as challenges toconcurrent engineering in section 5.2.

3.10 Knowledge Management / Work processes

Knowledge Management (KM) is closely related to the concept of VOs. The widelyaccepted working definition of KM is available from the WWW Virtual Library onKnowledge Management1:

"Knowledge Management caters to the critical issues of organizational adaptation, survival, and competence in face of increasingly discontinuous environmental change... Essentially, it embodies organizational processes that seek synergistic combination of data and information processing capacity of information technologies, and the creative and innovative capacity of human beings." (www.kmnetwork.com)

3.10.1 Knowledge Management and VOs

The founder of this library, Dr. Yogesh Malhotra, provides discussions on differentissues related to KM and VOs in (Malhotra, 2000). The core competencies in VOsare mostly human capital, or the knowledge the partners bring into theorganization. KM is about making the best use of the knowledge that is availableto an organization, and creating new knowledge in the process.

(Lemken et al., 2000) describe VOs as typical knowledge organizations, andpresent a list of reasons why these organizations depend heavily on effective KM:

• They are competitive by bundling capabilities and competencies, and selling their know-how.

• The knowledge resources of participants are unknown at the start of collaboration.

• People leave the organization and take their knowledge with them.

• Recently acquired know-how is difficult to preserve at the end of collaboration.

• Different viewpoints and requirements of partners make it difficult to represent knowledge.

1. WWW Virtual Library on Knowledge Management: http://www.kmnetwork.com

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Further, (Lemken et al., 2000) point out reasons why KM in VOs is difficult:

• Work is carried out under high time pressure.

• The dynamic and organizational structure inhibits establishing an infrastructure for knowledge sharing.

• For each partner, knowledge sharing is coupled with the risk of losing competitive advantages.

• Temporally limited co-operation leads to knowledge lost at the end of a work relation.

Storing the knowledge in the organization can be thought of as a kind oforganizational memory. This term was introduced by (Stein & Zwass, 1995), andlater discussed in (Schwartz et al., 2000) regarding VOs.

3.10.2 Knowledge sharing in Sigma

Sigma, the team-based VO presented in section 3.9, is discussed as a case studyin (Lemken et al., 2000) with regards to KM, describing the work processes of thisVO in more detail.

The organization started as a small network of people who knew each otherpersonally, and gathered in person, by phone or fax to share ideas aboutcollaboration and working practices. The expert network grew, and newcomersmade their way into the organization by personal acquaintance with a Sigmamember, who guided them and served as their primary contacts. The increasinggrowth and geographic distribution gradually made it more difficult to rely onpersonal acquaintance for all members. This resulted in the establishment ofregional branches driven by the same goals and ideas as the whole organization.However, this separation led to different cultures emerging in the branches,requiring a system to control the information flow in the organization. The bulletinboard system SigSys was introduced to provide the members with discussiongroups to exchange information.

The knowledge sharing are mostly performed by members pulling information andknow-how of other members. The tools for information transfer are mostly phonecalls or internet-based e-mail. This mutual exchange of information andknowledge works twofold according to (Lemken et al., 2000), because thecommunication partners receive as much information as they provide, and thepersonal relationship between the partners is enforced.

Sigma later introduced an Internet knowledge base for the whole organization bythe name “Ariadne’s Thread”, where all the partners can pull digitized informationand knowledge. While SigSys serves for every day group communication, the

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knowledge base serves as an information repository. Together they improve thecommunication and coordination in the VO, and arrange for a more effectivesharing of knowledge.

One of the enabling factors are according to (Lemken et al., 2000), the ability tobuild flexible teams. They point out two factors essential to support theestablishment of teams, namely providing information about skills and experience,and providing support mechanisms to negotiate the appointment of a partner.

The most interesting experiences with this organization are to see how a livingtradition of oral and personal information distribution cannot simply be replaced byintroducing computer-mediated communication and information systems. Mutualinformation exchange is not granted as the technical systems provide a moreanonymous access. (Lemken et al, 2000) conclude that “to achieve sustainedknowledge management, all members and levels of the organization mustcooperate”. This is made possible if everyone is participating in a process ofdeveloping common goals, values and procedures. They emphasize thatknowledge sharing requires mutual trust, and further state that “by providingtransparency about ongoing activities and openness for participation from allmembers, a trustful environment is created”.

3.11 Modeling of the Virtual organization

To improve the understanding of the VO concept, models can be developed thatdescribe the different aspects to this type of networked organizations. There arecertain assumptions made in traditional organizational modeling, especially withregards to interoperability, which do not hold in the case of VO modeling. Forinstance, same infrastructure, standards, environment, networking reliability,meaning of roles, are such assumptions.

3.11.1 Situation today

Europe is leading the research on the topic, and there is a growing awareness thatthe VO developments should be based on contributions of a multidisciplinarynature, from information and communication technologies, socio-economic,operations research, organizational, business management, legal, social security,and ethical area, among others.

The situation of VO modeling is summarized in (Camarinha-Matos & Abreu,2003):

• The lack of rigorous and well-founded methods for collaborative networks, collaborative decision-making and collaborative behavior modeling. The focus on short term results and lack of recognition of VO modeling as a scientific discipline in its own right have had a negative effect in effectiveness of results.

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• There are few VO reference models that have achieved wide acceptance.

• Most available modeling methods and tools were developed with single (potentially distributed enterprises) in mind and are not suitable for VO.

• Methods for integrating different models that offer partial solutions are missing.

• Existing approaches to model the social and human capital aspects in collaborative networks (soft modeling) are of poor quality.

• There is little support for dynamic ontology creation and maintenance in a networked environment.

3.11.2 Modeling viewpoints

(Camarinha-Matos & Abreu, 2003) identify and characterize different modelingviewpoints of a VO. This work was performed to partition the VO modelingproblem in more tractable sub-problems. Figure 14 visualizes four complementarymodeling viewpoints of a VO: relationships model, roles model, process modeland deontic/values model.

Figure 14: Modeling viewpoints of a VO (Camarinha-Matos & Abreu, 2003)

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Relationship modelThis model describes the inter-relationship that can occur between componentswithin a network. For instance, the following relationships can be identified: controlrelationships (identify the authority structure within a network), dependencerelationships (identify the topologic dependences between agents), ownershiprelationships (define the boundaries of each agent), and peer relationships(identify agents at the same level).

Roles modelThis model describes all roles and their positioning within the network structure. Arole model implicitly defines a topology of interactions and can describe a networkstructure in terms of “master role” and “slave role”.

Process modelThis model focuses in dynamic courses of events. Some generic concepts such asactivity and actor, time dependencies such as equal, during, starts, finishes, andresource-related perspectives such as necessary, sufficient, have to exist.

Deontic/values modelThis model defines constraints for all agents within a network at different levels,such as: computational level (interoperability constraints), organizational level(behavior constraints), economic level (financial constraints), and operational level(dependencies among tasks).

3.11.3 VO reference models

There are numerous existing modeling approaches available today, and theymostly include a definition of a reference model. The reference models support thefull range of needs from strategic business management to organizational design,Enterprise Software implementation and software development. The following fourmodels were pointed out by (Katzy & Sung, 2003) as potentially useful referenceexamples:

• The St. Gallen Management Model - general management model.

• Value System Designer - organizational process development.

• GERAM and related initiatives (e.g. VERAM, CIMOSA) - enterprise integration and system design/enactment.

• Rosettanet - information system integration.

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Figure 15 shows the positioning of the modeling approaches with regard to theirinherent modeling purposes.

It is a matrix with one dimension being target user (human actors versus computersystems), and the other domain being the type of usage (understanding theenterprise versus enacting it). The model can be viewed as the lower and furtherleft the objective for modeling is positioned, the simpler and easier the models areconsidered. On the other hand, if the objective is placed in the upper right corner,the more detailed and accurate the models need to be.

The St. Gallen Management ModelThe St. Gallen Management Model was first presented in (Ulrich & Krieg, 1974)and later refined by (Rüegg-Stürm, 2001). The model structures the organizationinto different important elements, distinguishing configuration from process andevolutionary views of VO modeling. It takes consideration of the context, mainstakeholders and their interactions of relevance for the VO (resources, norms andvalues, concerns and interests) or the environment (society, nature, technology,economy).

Value System DesignerThe Value System Designer (VSD) is an approach to management-orientedbusiness process modeling. It was developed as part of the EU-project TELEflowfor designing the processes for new businesses, such as VOs. The model servesas a reference model towards educating the users about typical process flows andto provide a type of checklist of important process elements when modeling thebusiness.

Figure 15: Positioning of modeling approaches

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GERAMGeneralized Enterprise Reference Architecture and Methodology (GERAM) wasdeveloped by the IFIP-IFAC task force on Enterprise Integration, analyzing thereference models: CIMOSA, PERA and GRAI-GIM. The model is most recentlydescribed in (Bernus, 2002), and it is a generalization of existing architectures andother necessary elements. It facilitates the unification of methods of severaldisciplines, such as methods of industrial engineering, management science,control engineering, communication and information technology. The importantcharacteristic of GERAM is that it has support for network of enterprises, and itsscope can be either part of an enterprise, a single enterprise or a network ofenterprises.

Rosettanet

Rosettanet1 is a non-profit consortium of more than 500 organizations working ondeveloping and implementing open e-business standards and services. Itcomprises world-leading companies in electronic components, informationtechnology, logistics, semiconductor manufacturing, solution provider andtelecommunications. The project delivers definitions called partner interfaceprocesses (PIP), which define standards for data exchange between companies,covering all business to business processes. The reference models are Internet-enabled and based on XML, and are according to (Katzy & Sung, 2003) aninteresting approach to modeling open VOs.

3.12 Summary

This chapter has presented an overview of the literature related to VOs, and hasgiven answers to the research questions presented in section 1.3. It is not theintention of this literature study to provide yet another definition of the concept.However, as guidance to the reader, our interpretation of the core concepts of thisdomain is presented below.

The interpretation of a VO, as a result of this literature study, is presented in Figure16. The model is an extension of the “relations of core concepts of VirtualEnterprise” model in (Camarinha-Matos et al., 2003). The new features are thecore concepts of a contract, represented by a collection of documents, informationand communication technology as a separate core concept, and the dynamiccharacterization of the network. The reason for including the concept of a contractis based on the contemporary research on VOs described in the next chapter. Italso serves as an abstract collaboration agreement between actors in a mobileenvironment, which will be examined in the latter part of this report.

1. Rosettanet: http://www.rosettanet.org

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The core concepts of the model are: Organization or individual, Dynamic network,Virtual Organization, Information and Communication Technology, Product orservice, and Customer. The concept of Contract is modeled as a set of documentsdescribing the concept as an abstract collection of “documents” that constitute therules and standards for the co-operation in the VO.

The circuit of the model aims to describe the life cycle of the organization, from thecustomer (representing the market opportunity) interacting with the individual ororganization, initiating the dynamic network that forms the VO, which again usesICT to support the delivery of a product or service to the customer.

Figure 16: Interpretation of the VO concept

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VO research initiatives

4. VO research initiatives

This chapter is meant to give an insight in which challenges and issues that havepresently caught researchers attention within the field of Virtual Organizations, bypresenting an overview of actual research consortiums and their work.

4.1 VOmap

To continue the development in the research on virtual organizations there hasbeen created a European consortium called VOmap1 with the aim at identifyingand characterizing the key research challenges needed to fulfill their vision,required constituency, and the implementation model for a comprehensiveEuropean initiative on dynamic collaborative virtual organizations. The VOmapproject had the objective of establishing a strategic research roadmap foradvanced virtual organizations. This section gives a short overview of the visionand the roadmap for the future advanced VOs.

4.1.1 Vision

The VOmap vision statement is developed to create new opportunities forbusinesses to become more competitive in the future global market, and moreinnovative and risk taking.

“In 2015 the majority of organizations and individuals will be part of sustainable collaborative networks that will act as breeding environments for the formation of dynamic virtual organizations, in response to fast changing economic and social conditions.” (Camarinha-Matos, 2003)

The vision further focuses on providing:

• Well-founded models of collaboration.

• Management systems for breeding environments replicable to a large variety of sectors.

• Generic and invisible infrastructure and re-utilizable service toolbox, based on interoperability standardization.

• Extensive use of pervasive computing.

• VO management principles adapted to emerging behavior in complex networks.

1. VOmap: http://www.vomap.org

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VO research initiatives

• Accepted mechanisms to handle innovation and new value systems.

• Social responsibility, including “life maintenance”.

• Better understanding and handling of VO-related cultural/regional issues.

• Definition of moral/ethical code for VOs.

• Comprehensive (international) legal frameworks for VOs.

“As a result, a strong and cohesive social fabric is built in response to turbulence and uncertainty.” (Camarinha-Matos, 2003)

The consortium has instantiated their vision into five main contributing areas: thesocio-economic, the business model, the ICT infrastructure, the support services,and the formal theories and models (see Figure 17).

4.1.2 The roadmap

The implementation of the roadmap is divided in three phases:

• Research and Development (R&D)

• Trials

• Broad deployment

Figure 17: The VOmap vision (Camarinha-Matos, 2003)

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VO research initiatives

The phases do not happen in a strict sequential order, but partially overlap. Theschedule of implementation is presented in Figure 18.

Figure 18: The VOmap roadmap (Camarinha-Matos, 2003)

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VO research initiatives

This figure gives an overview of which issues and tasks that will occupy the VOresearch in the future, and is included in this report to describe the status of VOresearch today.

4.1.3 The consortium

The VOmap consortium consists of a set of core partners and a large supportgroup composed of enterprises (SMEs1 and large companies), sectorassociations, governmental and non-governmental organizations and otherentities with a strong interest in VO development in Europe. An overview ispresented in Figure 19.

4.2 TrustCoM

The project TrustCoM2 was established as a European consortium in the end of2003 to provide dynamically evolving virtual organizations with a framework fortrust, security and contract management,

4.2.1 The mission

The mission of the TrustCoM integrated project is to:

1. SMEs: Small and Medium Enterprises

Figure 19: The VOmap consortium (www.vomap.org)

2. TrustCoM: http://www.eu-trustcom.com

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VO research initiatives

“provide a trust and contract management framework enabling the definition and secure enactment of collaborative business processes within Virtual Organizations that are formed on-demand, self-managing and evolve dynamically, sharing computation, data, information and knowledge across enterprise boundaries, in order to tackle collaborative projects that their participants could not undertake individually or to collectively offer services to customers that could not be provided by the individual enterprises.” (www.eu-trustcom.com)

To achieve this mission, TrustCoM will conduct multidisciplinary research intocomplex, adaptive and self-organizing systems.

4.2.2 The objectives

The first objective of the TrustCoM project is to develop the TrustCoM frameworkdefining the architecture, mechanisms and core elements needed for on-demandcreation of dynamically evolving scalable VOs. The framework will be supporting:

• Establishment of trust relationships.

• Autonomic security (confidentiality/privacy, integrity, availability, accountability).

• Formation, verification, negotiation and amendment of electronic contracts.

• Performance assessment in execution of electronic contracts, and enforcement of trust and security management policies.

The conceptual model of the TrustCoM framework is presented in Figure 20.

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VO research initiatives

The figure gives an overview of the TrustCoM model, and emphasizes that thefoundations of the system are technology, financial and economic issues, andsocial and legal issues. It describes the three architectural levels: computational,service, and enterprise. On the top, security management, trust management, andcontract management provide the secure collaborative business.

In addition to the development of the framework, the TrustCoM project aims todevelop software tools, and to define and document software engineeringmethods and resources to assist systems instantiating the framework. They willalso provide important contributions in the area of trust and security for networkedbusinesses and governments, and develop new business and socio-economicmodels necessary to establish stable VOs.

4.2.3 The consortium

The TrustCoM consortium consists of end-users, technology and serviceproviders, and experts in computing, economics and law, from industry,government and academia, who are actively involved in the development oftechnology and frameworks related to VOs. An overview is presented in Figure 21.

Figure 20: The TrustCoM framework, conceptual model (www.eu-trustcom.com)

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VO research initiatives

4.3 Other research

European research establishments are highly acknowledged on a global scalewithin the field of Virtual Organizations and the Networked Organizations domain.Appendix A contains an overview of the ongoing projects within this domain.

Figure 21: The TrustCoM consortium (www.eu-trustcom.com)

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Enabling technologies

5. Enabling technologies

This chapter provides a brief overview of some of the available technologies thatare relevant for enabling collaboration in a VO, and discuss the role of ICT.

5.1 Introduction

Through the last decade, the Internet has brought a new dimension to the way wecommunicate and exchange information, and the way we collaborate in workprocesses. The Internet has made a remarkable impact on society, and today it isenabling members in an organization to collaborate independently of time andspace barriers. This can be referred to as e-collaboration (Fong, 2004). Peopleare adopting the technology and using the online activities enabled by the Internetin a much larger scale than before. Companies are also looking at the power of theInternet for e-collaboration to create value (Fong, 2004). The simple illustration inFigure 22, adapted from (Fong, 2004), shows the types of online activitiesundertaken by the Internet users, both adults and children.

Figure 22: Types of online activities

Examples:- Online shopping- Online banking- Online bills payment- Teleworking

Examples:- Internet telephony- Email- Chatroom

Examples:- Pursuing hobbies- Sharing interests- Casino gaming

Examples:- Sharing of ideas/knowledge- School assignment tools- Teaching aid- Postings to a newsgroup- Research- Reading news

Examples:- Expression of rights- Channel for protest- Feedback

BasicsCommunication/

socialization

VoiceRe

crea

tion/

ente

rtain

men

t

Education/Self-development

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Enabling technologies

The culture of using online activities for collaboration is the foundation forincreased use of e-collaboration in companies and an important factor for theemerging of VOs.

5.2 Collaborative Engineering Communities

A Virtual Community is good way to organize semi-formal work interactionsbetween people, dispersed in time and space, collaborating in productdevelopment as a VO. This concept is well-known from open source softwareengineering, but is also used to a great extent in commercial engineering.

“Communities can be defined as an association of singles (agents) that share a common language, values and interests and that communicate with each other in roles using electronic media.” (Gronau, 2004)

(Gronau, 2004) describes different mechanisms of interaction between peopleworking in distributed systems, and defines a typology for this kind ofcommunities.

CommunicationCommunication is defined as exchange of information, where information isconsidered purpose or target oriented data in the field of business informationsystems (Gronau, 2004).

CoordinationCoordination is related to the mechanisms that are needed to handle complexeconomic systems and to fulfill the system’s purpose. The aim of coordination is tointegrate the actions of elements and subsystems to reach the goals of the wholesystem (Gronau, 2004).

Co-operationCo-operation can be defined as the shared production of goods or servicesbetween distributed agents, organizational units or organizations (Gronau, 2004).

CollaborationThe three described mechanisms of interaction, communication, coordination andco-operation, are fulfilled by single elements of distributed systems. (Gronau,2004) relates the term collaboration to the special case of co-operation whendistributed task agents perform a common execution of an action or a set ofactions at the same object. For instance, several people working on the samedocument.

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Enabling technologies

The typology of communities is provided through a differentiation of groups basedon their interaction and their identity. Figure 23, adapted from (Gronau, 2004),shows an overview of the technologies supporting the different communities.

Homepages typically contain static information that can be accessedanonymously. They provide pure information and have a low degree of interaction.

Intranets are collections of information formatted as web pages for internalorganizational use. Intranets are mostly maintained by content managementsystems (CMS). These systems allow categorization and index generation of itscontents.

Portals allow an individual access to different information storage vaults likeelectronic mail, groupware, calendaring systems, document managementsystems, databases and enterprise resource planning systems. The advantage ofportals is that they allow a unique ubiquitous access for a broad range of differentapplications.

Newsgroups are a tool for communication between the community members. Theinformation, sometimes controlled by a moderator, can be exchanged betweencertain or all group members.

Groupware is software that is supporting groups of people working on the sameinformation independent of time or space. The software connects groups over a

Figure 23: Differentiation of groups using interaction and identity

Indentityof participant

Intensityof interaction

anonymous nickname known authenticated

information

communication

coordination

co-operation

collaboration

Homepages Intranets

Newsgroups

Groupware

Portals

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Enabling technologies

network, and typically include services for sharing calendars, collective writing, e-mail handling, shared database access, electronic meetings with each personable to see and display information to others, and other activities (Gronau, 2004).

Figure 24 shows the categorization of collaborative engineering communities,adapted from (Gronau, 2004).

In addition to several services provided by standard groupware, a system forcollaborative engineering communities requires functions for dealing with manydifferent challenges of concurrent engineering in VOs. Table 11 gives an overviewof the challenges identified by (Gronau, 2004).

Figure 24: Categorization of collaborative engineering communities

Collaborative Engineering Communities

Indentityof participant

Intensityof interaction

anonymous nickname known authenticated

information

communication

coordination

co-operation

collaboration

Homepages Intranets

Newsgroups

Groupware

Portals

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Enabling technologies

5.3 Computer Supported Cooperative Work

The previous discussion of technologies can be defined under the collective termComputer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW). While some authors considerCSCW and groupware as synonyms, others claim that groupware refers to thereal computer-based systems, and that CSCW focuses on the study of tools and

Table 11: Challenges in concurrent engineering

Interaction Challenge Description

Communication Information exchange

Networking and distribution

Product Data Model

Semantics

The development engineers need easy access to all the information needed for their development task.

Information has to be exchanged across company borders. Firewalls, limited bandwidth and unreliable connections must be covered.

Different tools in different companies may lead to incompatible models. The semantic of the models may also vary between the companies.

Team members may use different ontologies and terminology for their communication.

Coordination Setting up the team

Planning and scheduling

The different competencies and capabilities must be taken into account when setting up a virtual team.

Dynamic process generation requires project management tasks to be fulfilled, considering for instance available resources at what time and the profiles of the people involved.

Collaboration Collaborative modeling

Collaborative decision making

Teaming and sharing

The modeling tools must support multi-user work in addition to private vaults for individual work.

Reasoning and negotiation must be assisted in an efficient way, and decisions must be communicated to all participants.

The teams are defined dynamically according to the requirements of the actual development phase. The infrastructure for information exchange must be set up quickly to share and manipulate design information.

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techniques of groupware as well as their psychological, social and organizationaleffects. The differences between these two concepts are expressed in thefollowing way:

“CSCW is a generic term, which combines the understanding of the way people work in groups with the enabling technologies of computer networking, and associated hardware, software, services and techniques.“ (Wilson, 1991)

There is a unity in the literature on the main challenges of CSCW in VOs asenabling the members to build trust and a shared understanding. Thesechallenges are related to the concept of social capital, described by (Riemer &Klein, 2003). While individual excellence, in terms of human intellectual capital, isthe foundation for a VO, social capital is a necessary complement for collaborationin a VO to succeed. Figure 25 shows how (Riemer & Klein, 2003) see therequisites for successful collaboration in a VO.

Individual training and learning form the human capital, and the group formationconstitutes the social capital of the organization. These two concepts complementeach other and form competence, ability and motivation in the organization,thereby making the conditions for successful collaboration.

Technology for protecting, maintaining and developing the human capital isavailable today in many different systems, as described in section 5.2. Socialcapital, on the other hand, is a major issue for many researchers. There has beena lot of different contributions to the topic of trust and staffing in VOs, and amongthe most recent and interesting publications are (Kasper-Fuehrer & Ashkanasy,2001; Harvey et al., 2004; Jarvenpaa & Shaw, 1998; Norman et al, 2004; Panteli,2002; Panteli, 2003; Shin, 2004; Skyrme, 1999).

Figure 25: Successful VO collaboration

SuccessfulCollaborationAbility

WillingnessMotivation

CompetenceIndividualtraining &learning

Hum

an c

apita

l

Domain knowledge

Management skills

Social skills

Soc

ial c

apita

l

Shared understanding

Norms, obligations

Trust

Groupformation

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Enabling technologies

A way to support trust in virtual environments is related to the concept of acontract. This is discussed by (Perrin, 2004) among others, proposing a model forcontracts in VOs. Trust and contract management are also the key elements of theframework that is being developed in the TrustCoM project described in section4.2.

The importance of the social issues is verified by analyzing case studies in theliterature. The results of the empirical studies of (Rittenbruch et al., 1998) and(Bosch-Sijtsema, 2002) stress the importance of CSCW supporting and coveringthe challenges of concurrent engineering presented in Table 11.

As indicated by (Handy, 1995), physical presence of people help foster trust inorganizations. Hence, some of the most valuable technologies in VOs are thoseenabling virtual presence of team members, for instance video conferencing,instant messaging and mobile communication.

5.4 Ubiquitous and Mobile computing

Ubiquitous computing is the term for integrating computation in the environment,rather than having computers which are distinct objects. The concept was foundedby the late Mark Weiser, who provided his visions of the future (cf. Weiser, 2002).It is sometimes also referred to as pervasive computing.

One of the ultimate goals of ubiquitous computing is to enable devices to sensechanges in their environment and automatically adapt and act according to thesechanges based on our needs and preferences. This future environment is referredto as proactive computing1, and it is predicted to be the next era of computing. Asthe number of devices in our surroundings increase, it will become impossible tointeract directly with each one of them.

The vision of this future scenario requires a lot of developments in technology,machine learning and artificial intelligence. However, one of the first steps is tointegrate lots of sensors and actuators in the physical environment. This is one ofthe main research issues in ubiquitous computing today. It is focused aroundproviding high bandwidth at any location, and arranging for ad hoc networking.

5.4.1 Ad hoc Networking

A mobile ad hoc network (MANET) is a self-configuring network of mobile routersconnected by wireless links. The union of these forms an arbitrary topology, whichmay change rapidly and unpredictably. Table 12 shows the properties of ad hocnetworking, adapted from (Thonet, 2004).

1. Intel’s Exploratory Research: http://www.intel.com/research/exploratory

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These networks either work in a standalone fashion, or may be connected to theInternet. This configuration is also known as packet radio networks, meshnetworks, parasitic networks, and guerilla networks. (Thonet, 2004)

There are several different small-scale architectures available for ad hocnetworking:

• Low power sensor networks (ZigBee1).

• Small size networks, cable replacement (Bluetooth2).

• Small to medium-size, mobile networks (WLAN3).

Large-scale architectures are being developed to enhance the implementation ofad hoc networks:

• Ubiquitous sensor networks (“Smart Dust”, cf. Satyanarayanan, 2003)

• Integration of multiple technologies.

5.4.2 Mobile computing

Mobile Computing is, according to (Forman & Zahorjan, 1994), “the use of aportable computer capable of wireless networking”. When looking at the trendstoward VOs (section 3.6), concepts like pace and globalization are mentioned.These trends, along with mobility and flexibility, characterize the workplace today.

Table 12: Properties of ad hoc networking

Property DescriptionSelf-organization The network does not rely on a static infrastructure.

Network management is not centralized but distributed across the nodes.

Co-operation Each node acts like a relay allowing data to be forwarded on a multi-hop basis. Nodes need to be “fair with each other”.

Flexibility The network is formed on demand and grows upon need. Nodes can join and leave the network anytime and anywhere.

Self-healing Re-routing is automatically performed when the network topology changes. There should not be any single point of failure.

1. ZigBee: http://www.zigbee.org2. Bluetooth: http://www.bluetooth.com3. Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN): http://www.wlan.org

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Enabling technologies

Mobile computing offers, along with ad hoc networking, the ability to workanywhere, anytime. Nomadic computing, as this often is referred to, enables moreefficient workers, and creates new work processes. In the literature, these workersare called mobile workers, road warriors or remote workers.

5.4.3 Summary

Ubiquitous and Mobile computing are important enabling technologies in thecontext of this report. Microprocessors, sensors and tags combined withcontinuous Internet connectivity, make objects intelligent and interactive, andenable what is referred to as Silent Commerce1. Radio Frequency Identification(RFID) is the one of the main enablers of an intelligent environment, whereeveryday objects are turned into intelligent actors through the use of RFID tags asa sort of advanced barcode. This technology is expected to revolutionize the waywe collaborate and interact with the environment, and creates new opportunitiesand applications for collaborative business environments. Direct or indirectsupport to work processes from the surroundings, can make them more efficient,create a safer work environment, and possibly be a way to interconnect the actorsin VOs.

1. Silent Commerce: http://www.rfida.com/nb/silent.htm

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Part III Own contribution

Problem elaboration

6. Problem elaboration

This chapter contains an elaboration of the problem definition for this researchcontribution.

6.1 Introduction

Through a creative analysis of different scenarios, new organizational forms willbe compared to the VO taxonomy. By challenging the way we look at VOs today,the contribution can make progress in this field of research. The work will berelated to scenarios of everyday collaboration, and features a comparison to theVOs depicted in the literature, and their characteristics. More precisely, theanalysis is the result of transferring the discussion of VOs from a businessperspective and applying it to more mobile and informal ad hoc collaborationenvironments.

6.2 Scenarios

This section elaborates on the problem definition for the latter part of the report,and describes the work processes of this contribution.

Apply the knowledge of VOs to mobile environmentsThe overall focus in this contribution is to relate the concept of VOs to the contextof the report, mobile work, and how work processes in mobile computingenvironments can be improved and assessed.

Analyze the work processes in these environmentsScenario analysis is used to describe the environments with respect to actors,activities, roles, and rules for co-operation. This part also evaluates the role oftechnology in the environment, and describes how the users interact with thetechnological facilities.

Analyze the new organizational forms related to the VO taxonomyThe characteristics of the organizations in these environments are compared tothe VO characteristics extracted from the literature. The analysis is discussed inrelations to the VO taxonomy, and experiences from work in VOs are applied tomobile computing environments.

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Problem elaboration

Enabling technologiesThe scenarios are analyzed with regards to enabling technologies, and adiscussion of how technology can improve and assess the work processes isprovided. The role of technology is evaluated not only as a supporting tool, butalso as being an actor and part of the organization.

Describe future trends of collaborationFuture trends are discussed according to the results of the scenario analysis, andenabling technologies. This part focuses on challenges and issues that need to befurther examined in research, and describes opportunities for more efficient workprocesses in future mobile computing environments.

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7. Scenarios

This part of the report presents different scenarios from everyday life, identified forthe discussion of VOs. The selection is a set of scenarios that, at first sight, give aresemblance to the description of a VO, based on its characteristics.

7.1 Introduction

The scenarios are described with regards to actors, roles, activities and goals. Adiscretional comparison between the scenario and the VO characteristics is alsoprovided, along with a discussion of enabling technologies for each scenario.

When discussing the VO characteristics in the scenarios, a reference to thespecific characteristics are provided in parenthesis. Due to the mobile anddynamic nature of the scenarios, and the actors for the most part beingindividuals, the following characteristic are considered fulfilled and omitted fromthe VO discussions: small sized partners (OC1).

The description and analysis of the following scenarios are basically based on ourknowledge of the domains. However, we have performed qualitative studies forsome of the scenarios to provide a better approach to the domain and a credibleand realistic description.

7.2 Traffic accident

This scenario is related to the course of events at the scene of a traffic accidentwhen organizing a rescue operation.

7.2.1 Description

The organization of the rescue action is initialized either by one of the involved,possibly injured, an eyewitness, or the first person to arrive the site of theaccident. The line of actions starts when this initializer evaluates the condition ofthe patients and performs an emergency phone call. This involves the rescueparty in the organization, and the following procedure of operation is a worked inline of action.

7.2.2 Participants

The scenario involves the following actors: the injured persons, the rescueinitializer, the coordinator at the emergency call center, the policemen blocking theroad to prevent more accidents and leading the on-site operation, the firemen

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putting out any fires and helping to release the injured from the car wreck, theambulance personnel medically treating the injured, spectators and eyewitnesses.

7.2.3 VO comparison

This organization is working towards a common goal: rescue the injured, bringthem safely to the hospital and save lives. Secondary goals involve: investigatingthe accident, clearing the scene, and handling the spectators and news reportersin a good way (see section 7.3). The life time of this organization is temporary(OC15), starting with the identification of the scene and ending when the injuredarrives at the hospital. The independent actors (KC2) with core competencies(KC1) and different areas of responsibility are brought into the organization at themost sensible time (OC10) to make it run smoothly and achieve their commongoal. The participation of spectators and eyewitnesses make the boundaries of theorganization vague or fluid (OC2).

The line of action in these emergencies is well-known to all the actors in theorganization. All members are aware of their responsibility, and the co-operation isbased on trusting (OC6) that the other actors do their best to complete themission. Due to the spontaneous establishment of the emergency organization,the actors may never have cooperated with one another before, thus having semi-stable relations (OC3). They all have shared loyalty (OC9) to the desire of savinglives, and to certain extent shared ownership (OC7) in the organization. Theirattendance in this organization has only partial mission overlap (OC17) with theirnormal activities, with the exception of the coordinator at the emergency callcenter. Equality of partners (OC16) is not as explicit in this organization as in manyothers. Although the actors are highly dependent of each other, the police controlthe progress at the site of the accident and decides when to transport the injuredto the hospital in agreement with the ambulance personnel. Since the police,along with the ambulance personnel, have the highest influence on the outcome ofthe situation and the success of the operation, they are considered the corepartners of the organization. Shared leadership (OC8), to a certain extent,corresponds to this organization as the leadership shifts among the participantsover time. First, the initiator takes control and leads the operation until theemergency call center takes over the leadership. They request assistance fromthe police who take leadership of the operation.

The organization is active from the time that the initiator makes the phone call tothe emergency call center (KC4). Thus, the actors are geographically dispersed(OC12) for the major part of the time the organization exists. The organization ofthe actors also leads to a clear distinction between the strategical and operationallevel (KC6). The coordinator has an overview of the needs, while the actors at thesite of the accident fulfill the needs. Through an abstraction, the organization canbe viewed as customer based (OC14) as it changes with the needs of the patient.

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This type of organization also lacks some of the VO characteristics. It is notdependent neither on innovation (OC11) nor opportunism (OC4), and the actorscan not directly be considered as having shared risks (OC5) in the organization.There exists a hierarchy (KC5) in the organization, and due to the formalcomposition there is a kind of organization chart (OC13) for this scenario. Thecore partners can be referred to by the collective term emergency unit, howeverthe organization do not have one identity (KC3).

7.2.4 Roles and rules

In this scenario the roles are almost completely defined in advance. The actorscontributing with their core competencies on the site of the accident, are highlytrained personnel with drilled skills for handling this kind of operation. The specialcase in this scenario is the role as the initiator. This person is normally expected toknow the procedure of first aid and where to call for assistance. This is an abstractset of rules that is considered common knowledge. However, the stress related tothis scene, often result in a improvised handling of the situation, and a pragmaticbehavior towards the rules. For instance, in Norway there are three differentemergency phone numbers (110, 112, 113) directed to respectively the firedepartment, the police and the ambulance service. When the initiator is reportingthe accident, he often mixes the phone numbers together, possibly calling thepolice instead of the ambulance. This requires the technology to provide an easytransfer to the correct department. In the US, this problem is covered by offering asingle emergency phone number that is common for all departments, 911.

7.2.5 Technology

The fact that the actors are geographically dispersed for the major part of theoperation, require a highly reliable communication system and a comprehensiveuse of information and communication technology to enable the coordination ofsuch an essential operation. Today the coordinators use a system for handling thephone calls and distribute messages to the other departments that are needed inthe organization. The emergency centers are equipped with a kind of intercom tothe emergency vehicles, to organize the rescue operation and coordinate therequired resources.

Today the emergency phone call from the initiator is usually conducted with amobile phone. In the future, the mobile technology arrange for majorimprovements and efficiency in handling this kind of scenario. Services fordetermining the location of the mobile phone are continuously being developedwith more accuracy, helping the coordinators in determining the actual position ofthe accident. Several mobile phones are also equipped with a camera, enabling aphotographic portrayal of the scene, helping the coordinators determine the extentof the accident. Sensors can provide valuable context information about theenvironment, and behave as roadside assistance in case of traffic accidents.

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7.2.6 Discussion

The organization in this scenario has many similarities with a VO. However, itlacks two key characteristics (KC3, KC5) in addition to one of the denoted primarycharacteristics (OC11). The alliance includes a set of core partners, and inreference to the models of virtuality it has most resemblance to the star-alliancemodel.

7.3 Crime scene investigation

This scenario is related to crime scene investigations, and the work processes andactors involved in solving a crime or identifying the course of events related to anaccident.

7.3.1 Description

The organization is established when a crime or an accident is identified. Thisscenario discuss the events that are part of the investigation towards achieving thegoal of solving the crime, and it starts when the injured are transported away fromscene or the casualties are declared dead. The police are responsible for leadingthe operation at the crime scene, and in addition to securing the scene, they haveto handle any spectators or representatives from the media that may show up.Anything that could disturb, or anyone who can interfere with the investigationmust be taken care of along with important witnesses and the relatives of theinvolved. The tasks that are part of the crime scene investigation includecordoning the scene, combing the ground, examining potential evidence,interviewing eyewitnesses, clearing the area. According to the extent of theaccident or seriousness of the crime, external resources and partners are broughtinto the organization.

7.3.2 Participants

The scenario involves the following actors: the police leading the operation,criminal investigators combing the area and photographing the scene,eyewitnesses, spectators, news and media representatives, crane vehiclepersonnel to help clearing the site, and a headquarter team of experts analyzingthe details of the investigation.

7.3.3 VO comparison

The life time of this organization is temporary (OC15), from the actual identificationof the crime until the offending party is convicted and the crime is solved. Theorganization that is formed at the crime scene is a dynamic network (OC10) ofindependent partners (KC2). To a certain extent they all have core competencies

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(KC1) towards solving the crime, and their participation in this organization hasonly partial mission overlap (OC17) with their normal activities. The police and thecriminal investigators are the core partners (OC16) of this organization.

Shared loyalty (OC9) is a complex issue in this organization. The eyewitnessescan possibly make a false statement, requiring the investigators to take this intoaccount in their investigations. Thus the issue of trust (OC6) has a special positionin this scenario. The media and news reporters represent the opportunism (OC4)in this scenario as they are dependent on innovation (OC11) in the form of makingheadlines and publish breaking news. This often leads them to smarten up thestory and portray made up stories from the incident, possibly interfering with theongoing investigation. This part of the organization is customer based (OC14) asoffering news to the people, while the rest of the organization can be consideredcustomer based as revealing the truth behind the incident, to the relatives and thesurrounding world.

The organization has vague or fluid boundary (OC2). A question that arises iswhether all of the individuals present at the crime scene are really part of theorganization, as some appear to work against the common goal of solving thecrime. This uncertainty of the partnerships in the organization is a major argumentagainst the characteristic of the organization having one identity (KC3).

Most crime scene investigations consist of a field team as described above, andanother team of experts working geographically dispersed (OC12) from the scene,assisting the operation and processing the details from the crime scene. The latterteam can also influence the strategical level of the operation based on thecollected evidence and identifying the essential information required for makingprogress in the case. One of their tasks is also to map the situation by creating akind of organization chart (OC13). The communication between the distributedteams is strongly based on Information Technology (KC4). The core partnerstherefore have shared leadership (OC8) in the organization, and there is a cleardistinction between the strategical and operational level (KC6).

Some of the core partners may have worked together on many cases. However,taken into consideration the diversity of the actors in this scenario, the participantsmust be considered having semi-stable relations (OC3). The trust issues,mentioned earlier in this scenario, are handled by following strict routines forconducting and evaluating the interviews.

This organization does not completely fulfill all the VO characteristics. Sharedrisks (OC5) and shared ownership (OC7) are not characteristics of thisorganization, due to the diversity of actors and their possibly conflicting interests.

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7.3.4 Roles and rules

In this scenario the roles can divided in two groups, those who contribute to theinvestigation and those who may interfere with the investigation. Like the trafficaccident scenario, this is also a scenario with a set of predefined roles. The role asoperational leader is shared among the entities that are empowered with thisresponsibility. The investigators have different roles according to their field ofexpertise, although their common task is to gather information about the incident.The most interesting role is their interaction with eyewitnesses and suspects. Thisis usually executed as an interview with strict routines for securing the legalprotection of the interviewee. In some countries, the investigators are allowed tocreate setups in order to provoke the suspects into revealing themselves. This isillegal in Norway, but may occur to some extent in certain heavy crimeenvironments. It is also considered illegal to interfere with the investigation on anylevel. This is advantageous to the work of solving the crime, as people tend toassist the investigation and contribute with observations and testimonies.

7.3.5 Technology

At the crime scene, the investigators use different technological facilities foranalyzing the course of events leading to the incident, for instance cameras,measuring instruments, voice recorders, mobile phones and laptop computerscommunicating with the geographical dispersed team of experts. This is aninteresting area of technological research, concentrated on equipping the fieldinvestigators with the best tools for examining the ground, and providing a secureand reliable communication with the headquarters. Sensors can also here providevaluable context information about the environment, and behave as roadsideassistance in case of traffic incidents, or elsewhere in the case of a crime sceneinvestigation. This information can possibly describe the course of events, andsolve the crime. For instance, they can determine the exact time of the crime, andgive information about how many persons that were present at the time of thecrime.

7.3.6 Discussion

The organization is this scenario has a lot in common with the previous scenario. Itlacks two key characteristics (KC3, KC5) in addition to one of the denoted primarycharacteristics (OC11). This scenario is to a certain extent considered acontinuation of the traffic accident or similar scenarios, and will be discussedjointly in the end of this chapter.

7.4 Voluntary communal work

This scenario is related to the distinctively Norwegian phenomenon “dugnad”, orsimilar to voluntary communal work in English. This kind of collaboration is usually

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performed in voluntary organizations, for instance school bands or athletic clubsfor children and youths.

7.4.1 Description

The work to be performed can vary to a great extent, for instance painting theexterior of a building, cleaning and renovation of office space, guard duty orassembly-line work. The engagement of the volunteers results in a group ofindividuals with different core competencies. However, the assignment of tasks isusually performed in the way that the initiator, normally taking the role ascoordinator, asks the group for volunteers to each specific task. The result is anefficient distribution of work, but possibly with many participants not finding a usefor their competencies.

7.4.2 Participants

The scenario involves the following actors: the initiator, the voluntary workers andrepresentatives from the employer. The initiator is a representative from thevoluntary organization, usually a board member. His responsibility is, in the caseof a school band, to send out an inquiry to the parents of the musicians, askingthem to participate in a voluntary effort to earn some money for the school band.The goal is to get hold of enough income to provide the band with the necessaryresources to continue its voluntary work.

7.4.3 VO comparison

The life cycle of this organization is temporary (OC15), starting with the initiativeand task specification and ending when the job is finished. The organization isconsidered having one identity (KC3). However, the participants may have built uprelations over time through the same sort of voluntary work. Their relations witheach other are nevertheless considered semi-stable (OC3). The concept ofvoluntary work is interesting in the way that it requires shared loyalty (OC9) amongthe participants. The co-operation is based on trust (OC6) even though the actorsare not working geographically apart (OC12), but it is likely to assume that someof them know each other quite well in advance. As mentioned in the description,the participants have different core competencies (KC1) that are not always madethe most of in this organization. It is also necessary that each participant sharetheir qualifications with the group, thus enabling the group to take advantage oftheir qualities.

The first part of the life cycle in this organization involves defining the tasks to beperformed and the necessary qualifications. Thus, the organization has adistinction between a strategical and an operational level (KC6). The process ofrequesting volunteers is mostly carried out through the use of ICT (KC4), howeverthis is not essential.

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The organization has equality of partners (OC16) since they are all working on avoluntary basis, and there is no organization chart (OC13). The participants canbe viewed as independent actors (KC2) with partial mission overlap (OC17) fromtheir normal work. In the organization, there is no hierarchy (KC5) and the tasksare performed with shared leadership (OC8) among the participants. In the case ofa school band, the children are members of the organization, while the parents areparticipating in the voluntary organization to provide the resources. This type ofwork gives the actors shared risks (OC5) and shared ownership (OC7) to the workthat is performed and the organization as a whole.

To a certain extent the organization can be characterized as dependent oninnovation (OC11) and opportunism (OC4) based on the fact that it exploitsopportunities of work to earn money. The tasks are mostly custom defined by theemployer for this kind of organization, thus considered customer based (OC14).However, this is in an abstracted notion of the characteristics and different fromthe product development often related to VOs.

Although the participants may change tasks during work, the organization is notconsidered a dynamic network (OC10), since the involved workers just swap taskswithin the same group. Thus, the boundaries of the organization are notconsidered vague or fluid (OC2).

7.4.4 Roles and rules

The roles in this scenario are not evident, except from the role as coordinator. Thisrole involves setting up the organization and defining the tasks. The otherparticipants are generally self-appointed to tasks based on motivation andcompetence. All the actors act in accordance with the rules denoted by thecoordinator. The rules normally exist as an abstract contract within theorganization on how they should work and behave towards the other participantsand the tasks to be performed.

7.4.5 Technology

The process of setting up the organization is the only part of the life cycle wherethe actors are geographically dispersed. The requests for voluntary participationamong the parents in the school band are mostly distributed through mail, e-mailor by phone. These are mainly the technologies used in this scenario. However,there are possibilities of enabling the organization with several other technologicalservices. For instance, ICT can be used to register the volunteers automaticallywhen they respond. Another idea, related to this process, is to employ a systemfor distributing a list of tasks to be performed and the required competencies. If themain task is large with many subtasks, the coordinator can use projectmanagement software to manage the work progress. After the work is done, it iscommon to communicate the results to the organization. This can be done by

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publishing a notice in a newsletter to the members, or via a webpage with internalmember access.

7.4.6 Discussion

The organization in this scenario has all the key characteristics of a VO, and theonly primary characteristic partly fulfilled is (OC12). This organization has manysimilarities with the Sigma organization discussed in section 3.9, and can beconsidered a VO.

7.5 Experts in Team

This scenario is related to the interdisciplinary course “Experts in Team”1, that is amandatory part of the Masters Degree at the Norwegian University of Science andTechnology (NTNU).

7.5.1 Description

The students work in group of five persons towards a goal of their own choicewithin their appointed subject. The group is part of a village, consisting of a staffand other groups sharing the same subject. The course is meant to challenge thestudents in collaborating with people with other professions or technicalbackground, different manners, and contradictory understanding of the subject.

7.5.2 Participants

The scenario involves the following actors: the students performing the tasks, thecourse staff coordinating the deliverables, and the partners appointed by thegroup.

7.5.3 VO comparison

The life cycle of this organization is temporary (OC15) and is determined by thescope of the course. The core competencies (KC1) of the students create thefoundation for their effort towards achieving their goal. The group is a network ofindependent actors (KC2) with semi-stable relations (OC3) and partial missionoverlap (OC17) from their normal student activities as the course is a fourth of theeducation in a semester. The organization appears as one identity (KC3) in theschool environment.

Most groups work on problems related to innovation (OC11) and ideas dependenton opportunism (OC4), thus in many cases characterizing the organization as

1. Experts in Team: http://www.eit.ntnu.no

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customer based (OC14). Their work is evaluated both on the innovative results,and their analysis of the group dynamics. There are several interesting dimensionto view upon in this scenario. One of the most important issues is shared loyalty(OC9) and trust (OC6). The popularity of this course is very varying among thestudents. This results in a wide difference in the level of ambition the studentsbring into the organization, and further affects their shared risk (OC5), theevaluation of their work in terms of a grade. They all have shared ownership(OC7) to the reports that are prepared as the result of their work. While writing thereport, the students are often geographically dispersed (OC12), requiring ICT tocollaborate and to communicate internally in the organization (KC4). However,parts of the education and work in this organization are set to a certain day of theweek for the whole village. This means that most of the work is carried out in a co-located setting, with personal contact among the participants.

The equality of the partners (OC16), here in the sense of having the samequalifications for accomplishing the course, leads to other interesting properties.The students have shared leadership (OC8) and most often definitely no hierarchy(KC5). However, it is normal to create an organization chart describing the roles inthe group (OC13). The composition of the organization is almost made forconflicts to arise. One of the main intentions of the course is to challenge thestudents by establishing organizations with unequal professional background.

The organization has a distinction between the strategical and the operationallevel (KC6). Some of the strategic level is given by the course staff and the initialproject description for the village, and the rest is planned by the group to achievetheir goal. The operational level is entirely carried out by the students, andexternal experts are occasionally brought in as partners, to some extent makingthe organization a dynamic network (OC10). However, the boundaries of theorganization are not considered vague or fluid (OC2).

7.5.4 Roles and rules

The allocation of roles in the organization is worked out by the students in theinitial phase of their work. It is interesting to note that due to the equality of thepartners, and the individual desire not to be too prominent in the group andaccordingly become unpopular among the other participants in the organization, itis common for the group not to assign a leader. This works very well for someorganizations. However, the majority suffer from vague decision making.

In addition to the rules denoted by the course staff, the group must form anagreement on co-operation in which they describe how they will work together andrules for how certain behavior will be dealt with. This kind of contract between theparticipants will enhance the collaboration in the group and lead to greater respectand trust in the group.

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7.5.5 Technology

In this scenario, ICT is essential for producing the reports, and to a great extent,the foundation for communication between the participants. The technologiesused in the group are mainly a shared workspace, e-mail, instant messaging andmobile phones. Because of the flat structure in the organization, and the refusal tomaking decisions, it can be helpful to employ decision supporting tools. Inconsequence of the extensive use of mobile phones among the students, amarket opportunity emerges for mobile decision support. This is related to the factthat a great deal of appointments in organizations involving students and youths,are negotiated through a series of SMS1 messages or phone calls to allparticipants. A way to make this procedure more efficient is to send a broadcastrequest that the participants can vote over.

7.5.6 Discussion

The organization in this scenario has all the key characteristics of a VO, but doesnot complete fulfill the primary characteristics (OC12) as the group is co-locatedmost of the working time. It is very similar to the previous scenario of voluntarywork, but the fact that the actors are obliged to participate in the organization is aninteresting dimension to the organization. The scenarios will be discussed jointly inthe end of this chapter.

7.6 Traffic

This scenario is related to an arbitrary segment of normal traffic. It contains adiscussion on how each actor behaves and adapt to the traffic.

7.6.1 Description

Describing traffic as an organization is a complex matter. Thus, this scenariodescribes a segment of traffic and the possible actors in this organization. Theboundaries can be set by geographically limit area of operation for the scenario. Inthat respect, the organization is established when a vehicle enters the area, andends when there is no traffic in the area. The superior goal of the participants inthis organization is to get from A to B in a secure and effective way. This requireseach actor to follow a set of rules and cooperate with the other actors in order tohandle any situation that may arise. There are often a great diversity of actorsappearing in this organization, each with a set of individual goals in addition to thesuperior organizational goal.

1. SMS: Short Message Service

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7.6.2 Participants

The scenario involves the following actors: regular drivers, professional transportworkers, pedestrians, cyclists, emergency vehicles, police patrols, public transportand taxies.

7.6.3 VO comparison

The organization in this scenario is temporary (OC15), based on the geographicaldelimitation as initial condition. The organizational boundaries are still consideredvague or fluid (OC2) and there is no organization chart (OC13). It is a highlydynamic network (OC10) of independent actors (KC2), to a great extent havingcore competencies (KC1) towards operating in this organization. There is adistinction between a strategical and operational level (KC6), respectivelyplanning the best route and then carrying out the plan. For almost every actor thestrategical planning of the route is a dynamic process changing continuouslyaccording to incidents in the traffic or for instance input from technological facilities(KC4). The exception is public transport, which usually follows a predeterminedroute, and is also the only actor that has complete mission overlap in addition tothe professional transport worker. The rest of the actors are considered havingpartial mission overlap (OC17).

Trust (OC6) and shared loyalty (OC9) are main issues in this organization. Inprinciple, every participant in the organization act according to the general trafficrules. These rules involve special exceptions and regulations for certainprofessional actors, for instance public transport or emergency vehicles. Thus theorganization is characterized as having core partners (OC16). However, the majorpart of the organization, consists of regular drivers, cyclists and pedestrians.These are the most unpredictable participants in the organization, and the largestloyalty issue of this scenario. Many drivers interpret the rules as they want, andbehave inexcusable in the traffic, endangering the other participants. For instance,driving on a red light or driving in a drunk or intoxicated condition. Thus, they allhave shared risks (OC5) in the traffic.

As each participant should know their rights and responsibilities, the organizationcan be considered having shared ownership (OC7) and shared leadership (OC8).This is more precisely described with analyzing a specific traffic situation:

Consider a road intersection with four perpendicular roads, no traffic light, and four regular drivers arriving at the same time. They are all planning to continue straight on, resulting in a situation where all drivers has give away restrictions.

Adjusting the notion of geographical dispersion from separate buildings, toseparate vehicles, this organization is considered geographical dispersed (OC12).

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The situation depicted above, requires one of the drivers to take initiative to go on.While doing so, the group of drivers at the intersection must collaborate and agreeto an abstract contract among them, deciding the course of events. Thesedecisions are usually made based on experience or convenience, as the grouphas semi-stable relations (OC3).

There is a sort of formal hierarchy in this organization. However, if thegeographical area is narrowed, this organization usually consists only of regulardrivers, and with that the organization is characterized in equality of partners(OC16) and no hierarchy (KC5).

The professional traffic actors are customer based (OC14), of which the taxies areconsidered offering mass-customization, and are also dependent on opportunism(OC4). The VO characteristics, that do not closely fit this organization, aredependency on innovation (OC11) and the characteristic of one identity (KC3),although the organization is referred to as traffic in a collective term.

7.6.4 Roles and rules

The is a wide diversity of roles in this scenario, police patrols managing the traffic,professional actors working in the traffic, and regular drivers more or less casuallypresent. They all act according to a set of rules, and are expected to know theirrights and responsibilities as a results of their training. However, individuals actingpragmatic towards the rules, as a results of cultural differences, driving under theinfluence of alcohol, or simply by choice, may call for pragmatic actions by theindividuals nearby in order to adapt to the situation and prevent an accident.

7.6.5 Technology

The use of technology in this scenario is mainly related to facilities for providingthe driver with information about the traffic situation. This is used on a strategicallevel in determining the best route from A to B, and can typically involve trafficbroadcast messages over the radio, SMS services for locating police patrols alongthe road or car computers including road maps and navigation systems. The driveruses the different technologies as input when making the decision on which routeto choose. There are also car navigation systems providing suggestions on whichway to go based on the shortest route on the map.

In the future one may see computers analyzing the traffic in real time, taken intoaccount accidents, traffic lights, rush hour traffic, and the density of traffic ingeneral. This offers individual guidance, as opposed to broadcast messages overradio that may lead all the traffic to another route, increasing the traffic density atthe suggested available road. Automatic traffic management and control areavailable today through traffic lights, and to some extent by using dynamic andelectronic traffic signs.

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Making intelligent vehicle applications is an active research area nowadays.Different types of embedded sensors provide a rich set of context information inthese intelligent vehicles, like positioning and obstacles sensors, and sensorsindicating road and weather conditions. Additional driver assistance can beprovided by accident warning, or security distance warning. One of the goals ofproviding car-to-car communication is automatic co-operation between thevehicles to assist the driver in critical situations. It can also provide interactionbetween remote cars. These technologies also open for a sort of “black-box”logging, like we see in airplanes today. This will help the investigations related totraffic accidents in determining the course of events prior to the incident.

An automatic traffic management and individual route guidance are technologiesthat can improve the traffic flow and prevent traffic jams. Thus, making the trafficmore secure and more efficient, and accomplish the superior goal of this scenario.

7.6.6 Discussion

The organization in this scenario has the highest degree of virtuality in the notionof substitutability and autonomy of virtual links. However, it lacks the keycharacteristic (KC3), and the primary characteristic (OC11). This naturally gives aresemblance to the first two scenarios, which should be correct as they all, to acertain extent, operate within the same domain.

7.7 Summary

Table 13 presents an overview of how the VO characteristics correspond to eachscenario. X denotes that the characteristic applies for the scenario, with theexception of OC15, OC16 and OC17 that have a special annotation described inthe table. The primary characteristics (see Table 6) are indicated with bold face.

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Based on the analysis, the five scenarios presented in this chapter can begrouped into two main categories: structured scenarios, and ad hoc mobilescenarios. Table 14 shows the classification of the scenarios.

Table 13: VO characteristics in the scenarios

Characteristic Traffic accident

Crime scene investigation

Voluntary communal work

Experts in team Traffic

KC1 Based on core competencies X X X X XKC2 Network of independent organizations

X X X X X

KC3 One identity -- -- X X --KC4 Based on Information Technology

X X X X X

KC5 No hierarchy -- -- X X XKC6 Distinction between a strategical and an operational level

X X X X X

OC1 Small sized partners X X X X XOC2 Vague/fluid boundaries X X -- -- XOC3 Semi-stable relations X X X X XOC4 Dependent on opportunism -- -- X X XOC5 Shared risks -- -- X X XOC6 Based on trust X X X X XOC7 Shared ownership X -- X X XOC8 Shared leadership X X X X XOC9 Shared loyalty X X X X XOC10 Dynamic network X X -- X XOC11 Dependent on innovation -- -- X X --OC12 Geographical dispersed X X -- -- XOC13 No organization chart and meta-organization

-- -- X -- X

OC14 Customer based and mass-customization

X X X X X

OC15 Lifespan of co-operation: temporary (T) vs. permanent (P)

T T T T T

OC16 Balance of power: Equality of partners (EP) vs. core partners (CP)

CP CP EP EP CP

OC17 Mission-overlap: partial (PM) vs. complete (CM)

PM PM PM PM PM

Table 14: Classification of scenarios

Structured scenarios Ad hoc mobile scenariosVoluntary communal workExperts in team

Traffic accidentCrime scene investigationTraffic

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7.7.1 Structured scenarios

The structured scenarios distinguish themselves by applying to the VO model inits traditional form. However, they are special by the fact that the actors participatevoluntarily, and work non-profit to serve the organization. It resembles theorganization of collaborative engineering communities, for instance open sourcesoftware development. The organization can be considered a team-based VO,working on projects. It has equality of partners with partial mission overlap, thusclassifying the organization as a “soft VO”.

Challenges and issues related to enabling technologies for these traditional VOsare discussed in Chapter 5. See also the description of Sigma in section 3.9.

7.7.2 Ad hoc mobile scenarios

The ad hoc mobile scenarios are the most interesting in the context of this report.The analysis shows that they are less dependent on innovation and opportunism,and have a higher degree of dynamic organization. They do not have onecommon identity, and the presence of core partners leads to a hierarchicalstructure. However, due to the large amount of lateral communication, thisstructure relates to the model of an adhocracy presented in section 3.5.1.

The organization can be considered a type of VO, under the definition of a networkof independent partners with complementary core competencies working towardsa common goal, based on ICT and formalized co-operation. This applies to theintegrated VO model presented in Figure 13. The characterization of ad hocalliances as VOs is useful in the way that we can employ the mentality of thetraditional VO into the new environment, using the experience to create adequatesolutions and facilities to improve the work processes.

Ad hoc alliances demand more flexible technologies and ubiquitous services, dueto their operation in a nomadic environment. Emerging technologies areconstantly being developed to fit the requirements of these mobile workingenvironments, mainly focusing on providing high bandwidth and securecommunication from any possible location. In our opinion, the opportunities ofimproving the work processes in these organizational environments depends ondeveloping and employing an adequate knowledge management. The use ofcontext information and arrangements for ad hoc knowledge sharing are essentialto make these organizations more efficient.

For instance, in the case of the traffic environment and incidents related to it, trustis established through the social status of the core partners. The uniforms andprominent vehicles signal authority, and their competencies are printed in theother actor’s minds through the common comprehension and knowledge of theirresponsibilities. This knowledge is the foundation of successful collaboration,because there is an openness of the intentions and goals of each partner toward

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Scenarios

their participation in the organization. The challenge is to provide the sameknowledge sharing in alliances where the skills of the partners are not well-knownto the rest of the organization in advance.

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Scenarios

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Extension of the VO taxonomy

8. Extension of the VO taxonomy

This chapter contains the results of the creative effort, and presents the extensionof the VO taxonomy based on this contribution.

8.1 Ad hoc alliances

The study of the scenarios presented in this report is mainly related to mobilescenarios and ad hoc alliances. This is done intentionally to challenge the way wediscuss VOs. This approach has a finer granularity than most of the literaturereviewed in the state-of-the-art part, as the focus is on individuals rather thancompanies and organizations.

The discussions in the previous chapter conclude that some scenarios of ad hocalliances can be considered a type of VO. This interpretation of the VO leads tosome changes in the evaluation of VO characteristics, for instance emphasizingthe dynamic network characteristic, and to some extent de-emphasizing theimportance of organization for innovation and opportunism.

Mobile Ad Hoc VOs (MAHVOs) are temporary dynamic networks of independentactors with complementary core competencies, working towards a common goalin a nomadic environment. The co-operation is based on Information andCommunication Technology as the main facilitator for sharing knowledge andfostering trust.

In the notion of MAHVOs, it is important to distinguish between VOs that operatein mobile environment e.g. remote workers, and alliances that are formed ad hocin a nomadic environment. The latter is the one depicted in this research. Thegeographical dispersion of the actors in MAHVOs is limited to almost situatedaction. However, it has the same challenges towards trust between theparticipants, and uses information and communication technology in the processof forming an organization with shared loyalty.

These VOs are much more complex than the traditional VOs explored in theliterature. The fact that they emerge and operate in a nomadic environment,demands for a more flexible coordination of activities. We see a transition fromexplicit coordination e.g. traditional management, or even use of information andcommunication technology, to organizations with implicit coordination e.g. abstractcontract management in the road intersection described in the traffic scenario(section 7.6.3). Challenges and issues related to accountability, dependability, andusability of implicit coordination in MAHVOs will be further examined, and appliedto example working environments, in the next chapter.

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Extension of the VO taxonomy

8.2 Characteristics

The work of studying VOs has identified a new characteristic that is common for allVOs depicted in the literature. In our opinion, team-work is essential for asuccessful collaboration in VOs, and should be considered a primarycharacteristic of these organizations. This result in a definition of virtual teams asbeing a subset of a VO dynamically assigned to specific tasks or projects. Theformation can be performed by management or by technology acting as adecentralized broker, based on knowledge of the competencies of the availableactors.

Decentralized broking is an even more virtual form of alliance than the models ofvirtuality presented in section 3.8.1. It is an extension of the Virtual Broker, wherethe environment autonomously adapts to multiple users and organizational units,acting as a broker in terms of forming the organization and coordinating roles andactivities. It is a new way to look at the organizational structure of VOs, adapted tothis type of ad hoc alliances. Figure 26 presents the concept of a decentralizedbroker in regards to the models of virtuality previously discussed.

This model aims to describe how the environment, with own intelligent sensors orcomputers participating as actors, supports coordination of activities in the VO.The environment partners with known structures of ad hoc alliances, modeled as astar-alliance, and contributes both as regular actors, and as suppliers in the sense

Figure 26: Decentralized broker

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Extension of the VO taxonomy

of supporting formation, knowledge sharing, and coordination. According to therole and influence of the surroundings in the VO, the environment can also insome cases be considered a lead actor, possibly taking initiative to the formationof a VO, e.g. car-to-car communication (section 7.6.5), and the visions ofubiquitous and proactive computing (section 5.4).

The participation of the technological actors in the organization may also bedisbanded, either because there is no longer a need for technological support, orpossibly due to disrupting signals and loss of connection. The role of each actorcan change from actor to lead actor and back again, and also be disposed whenits intentions and goals have been fulfilled. The different roles may appear again inthe organization as so fits the activities and work processes, like in the traditionalVOs.

This dynamic characteristic of the organization demands for a management ofwhich actors that are to be included and disbanded from the organization. Ascomputers in the environment has part of the coordinating responsibility, they haveto take into account the needs of the organization and the competencies of theavailable actors. Furthermore, they need to take actions and apply roles based onan opportunistic model to make the work processes as efficient as possible.

This identifies new challenges to the enabling technologies in VOs, in regards toco-operation and competition. Two computerized actors are cooperative if theyhave complementary roles, which means that they make more profit workingtogether than by working individually. Conversely, the actors are consideredcompetitive if they have the same role, which means that the profit created by theone actor is negatively affected by the appointment of the other actor. Anopportunistic model and machine-learning of behaviors and strategies cancontribute in meeting this proposed challenge.

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Extension of the VO taxonomy

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Future trends

9. Future trends

This chapter describes some thoughts about the future of Mobile Ad Hoc VOs, andapplies the discussion to an example business scenario.

9.1 Technology

Emerging technologies are enabling new ways of interacting with oursurroundings, and may foster new ways of creating smart/intelligent environmentsthat are able to autonomously adapt to multiple users simultaneously based onuser preferences, and information and service needs (both stated and unstated).Such environments may enable co-operation and coordination between actors indynamic environments in new and unpredictable ways. Situated work can bebetter supported because of the ability of the environment to sense users, actions,wishes and requirements.

This affects the work processes in MAHVOs, as objects and software arebecoming actors and part of the organization. The intelligent objects cancontribute with valuable context information to the organization, and possibly takeactions on our behalf. The interaction and team-work in organizations consisting ofboth humans and computers, demands an innovative way of coordinating theactivities. A transition from explicit to a more implicit coordination is required toenable efficient work processes in these environments.

9.2 Working environments

The future working environments have a high demand of trust, and some of themain challenges are penetration of acceptance and privacy concerns. Peoplemust learn to accept and trust the computer’s position in the organization, andgradually adapt to this new environment. To foster trust in these intelligentenvironments, experiences from work in VOs can be examined and applied to theorganization. The computers take roles previously held by humans, and must behandled in a similar way.

The computers may take part in the coordination of activities, supporting theimplicit model of coordination as a de-centralized broker. They can help theprocess of restructuring the plan of activities, according to unexpected changes inthe course of events. For instance, consider a large construction site withhundreds of workers and a large amount of activities taking place at the sametime. The time limit of operation is already squeezed, and sudden events,unexpected or identified during risk analysis, may demand radical change in thesequence of activities. Computer systems can automatically analyze the situation,and suggest the best line of action in co-operation with the computers in the

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Future trends

organization. Subsequently, communicating the changes of activities to all theinvolved actors with an individual set of activities to be performed for each actor.

In this process of coordination, the system needs to have focus on accountability,dependability and usability. The relevance of these issues are further discussedbelow.

AccountabilityAll actors, including computers, must be aware of their responsibilities and roles inthe organization. Communication and understanding of their role and intentions forparticipating in the organization are essentials for a successful collaboration.

DependabilityThe actors have shared risks in these environments, and are dependent of thesystem to not put their safety at risk when performing operations in theorganization. It is also important to ensure that the non-human actors in theorganization have shared loyalty towards the goal of the operation.

UsabilityThe use of computers in these work environments are only making the workprocesses more efficient if the usability is adequately developed for the user andthe environment. Context information can increase the usability by providingindividually adapted information, and arranges for a more customized coordinationapproach to each actor in the organization. Blue-collar workers are often notcapable of operating regular mobile units, because their hands and other sensesare focused and involved in carrying out their work. This demand for new andalternative ways of communicating.

At the construction site or other work environments, there will be a more frequentformation of MAHVOs. For instance, when new partners enter the organizatione.g. subcontractors, they will participate in several ad hoc VOs to get theappropriate information about their responsibilities and roles in the organization.At the same time, their participation in the organization must be communicated toall actors that will cooperate and interact with them. The same applies tocomputers entering the organization.

These complex organizations and working environments need to be furtherexamined through research and development of prototypes, and the studies ofVOs can hopefully be an important resource in the future research on mobile andnomadic work.

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Part IV Evaluation and conclusion

Evaluation and discussion

10. Evaluation and discussion

This chapter presents an evaluation of this contribution and a discussion ofpossible improvements to our work.

10.1 Evaluation

The work of mapping the area of VOs is an extensive task. It has been focused ongaining an insight into the concept by examining a large variety of issues related toVOs, and then applying this knowledge to a more specific research contributionthrough the use of scenarios. The main reason for this approach was to get anoverview of the contemporary research in order to identify challenges andresearch propositions for further work.

The process of exploring the large amount of literature on VOs has been a majorpart of this project. The research method, described in section 2.1, has proven tobe efficient in the way of finding the right resources for the study on VOs.However, this approach continuously identified new contributions to use in ourresearch, and made the work on state-of-the-art an iterative process. The outlineof this part has thus gone through several iterations to address the researchquestions. The large amount of references has been a challenge to deal with, buthas given me valuable experience on mapping a domain like VOs.

The own contribution to this research has created a link between VOs and ad hoccollaboration. The extension of the VO taxonomy is valuable to the research onmobile work processes, and will hopefully bring new ideas and synergy effectsbetween the areas of mobile computing, knowledge management and VOs.

The research method used for the contribution, has proven to be appropriate forthis kind of analysis. The structure of the scenarios is a pragmatic implementationof the formalized methods for scenario analysis in requirements engineering. Inthat way, the scenarios has served as sorts of mind benders, and referencemodels for the described environments in the work of comparing them with the VOcharacteristics. Due to this use of the scenarios, and the complexity of theorganizational forms, there are not provided models of the scenario alliances.

10.2 Discussion

The extent of the work on this project has been limited by the time constraints andthat it is carried out as an individual report. However, we consider the work to beconsistent and in accordance with good research practice. The selection ofcharacteristics could have been narrowed down or modified by performingempirical studies on contemporary VOs, but this was not prioritized due to the

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Evaluation and discussion

project constraints. The discussion of enabling technologies could also have beenmore in depth, however this was intentionally de-emphasized. We wanted to focuson the issues and work processes of this type of organization rather than just onthe technologies supporting them, as this is heavily covered by the other projectreports within our research community. In this way, we could present an interestingview on the concept to complement the contributions of the fellow students andresearchers.

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Conclusion and further work

11. Conclusion and further work

This concludes the study of VOs and the contribution on mobile work processes.The challenges and research propositions identified throughout the project aredescribed as further work.

11.1 Conclusion

The objective of this report was to map the state-of-the-art situation of theresearch on Virtual Organization, and provide an analysis of mobile scenarios inrelation to the concept of VOs.

State-of-the-artFirst, the research questions, that were the foundation of our work on VOs havebeen addressed and answered throughout the presentation of the literature study.Furthermore, we have identified challenges to these organizations by conferringcontemporary research initiatives and discussion forums available on the Internet.We have also provided an overview of enabling technologies as a result of thedescription of work processes and trends towards VOs, and a discussion ofchallenges towards the use of technology in VOs.

Own contributionSecond, the report provides a scenario analysis with the goal of extending ournotion of VOs, and contribute to the MOWAHS project on mobile work processes.This work resulted in an extension of the VO taxonomy, including mobile ad hocalliances in our notion of virtual collaborative networks. These results will serve asa springboard for further work in this domain.

11.2 Further work

The further work in regards to this report can be aimed in several directions. Thissection presents research propositions to continue the study of VOs as mobile adhoc organizations.

Intelligent work environmentsFurther exploration of technologies enabling intelligent environments are neededin research. It is interesting to evaluate the opportunities of creating value inmobile work environments, and discuss in more detail the impact of intelligentobjects as actors in work environments.

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Conclusion and further work

Activity theoryThe study of MAHVOs can be further discussed in regards to activity theory,resulting in models of ad hoc collaboration, and a better understanding of theactors and roles in such organizations.

Evaluation of emerging technologiesThis report can be supplemented with an evaluation of the emerging technologiesin ubiquitous and mobile computing, and a more detailed discussion on the role ofeach technology in MAHVOs.

Empirical studies of work environmentsEmpirical studies of different work environments are natural continuations of thisreport. Analysis of specific business organizations and work environments canidentify new opportunities for employing intelligent objects and computers ascooperative actors in the organization. This work can result in a requirementsspecification for the use of technology in ad hoc collaborative organizations.

Knowledge sharing in nomadic environmentsThe study of MAHVOs can be further discussed in regards to knowledge sharingand knowledge management, and develop adequate procedures of maintainingefficient information flow in ad hoc organizations operating in nomadicenvironments.

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Part V Appendix

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Projects

Appendix A: Projects

This appendix gives an overview of ongoing projects in the NetworkedOrganizations Domain. The list provides the project acronym, title and homepage.

ALIVEWorking group on Advanced Legal Issues in Virtual Enterprise.http://www.vive-ig.net/projects/alive

BAPBusiness Architect Project.http://www.business-architect.de/

BIDSAVERBusiness Integrator Dynamic Support Agents for Virtual Enterprise.http://www.ceconsulting.it/ve/bidsaver.html

CE-NETConcurrent Enterprise Network of Excellence.http://www.ce-net.org/

CIMOSACIM Open System Architecture.http://www.cimosa.de

COVECO-operation infrastructure for Virtual Enterprises and electronic business.http://www.uninova.pt/~cove

e-COGNOSMethodology, tools and architectures for electronic COnsistent knowledGemaNagement across prOjects and between enterpriSes in the constructiondomain.http://www.e-cognos.org/

E-COLLEGAdvanced Infrastructure for Pan-European Collaborative Engineering.http://alfa.iele.polsl.gliwice.pl/~pawlak/E-Colleg/E-Colleg-index.htm

eLEGALSpecifying Legal Terms of Contract in ICT Environment.http://cic.vtt.fi/projects/elegal/

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Projects

EU-projectsLinks to 200++ projects.http://cic.vtt.fi/links/euproj/

EXTERNALExtended Enterprise Resources, Network Architectures and Learning.http://research.dnv.com/external

FETISH-ETFFederate European Tourism Information System Harmonization - EngineeringTask Force.http://fetish.t-6.it

GENESISGlobal Enterprise Network Support for the Innovation Process.http://www.cetim.org/genesis.html

GLOBEMENGlobal Engineering and Manufacturing in Enterprise Networks.http://cic.vtt.fi/projects/globemen/

GNOSISGNOSIS Virtual Factory: model-based distributed manufacturing.http://www.vtt.fi/aut/tau/gnosis/

ICCIInnovation co-ordination, transfer and deployment through networked Co-operation in the Construction Industry.http://cic.vtt.fi/projects/icci/

ICSSIntegrated Client-Server System for a Virtual Enterprise in the Building Industry.http://cib.bau.tu-dresden.de/icss/

inteliGridInteroperability of Virtual Organizations on Complex Semantic Grid.http://www.inteligrid.com/

ISTforCEIntelligent Services and Tools for Concurrent Engineering.http://www.istforce.com/

KM ForumThe European Knowledge Management Forum.http://www.knowledgeboard.com/

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Projects

MASSYVEMulti-Agent Manufacturing Agile Scheduling Systems for Virtual Enterprises.http://www.gsigma-grucon.ufsc.br/massyve/

NGMSNext Generation Manufacturing Systems.http://www.cam-i.org/ngms.html

NIMCubeNew-use and Innovation Management and Measurement Methodology forR&D.http://www.nimcube.com/

OSMOSOpen System for Inter-enterprise Information Management in Dynamic VirtualEnvironments.http://cic.vtt.fi/projects/osmos/

ProDAECEuropean Network for Product and Project Data Exchange, e-Work and e-Business in Architecture, Engineering and Construction.http://www.prodaec.com/

PRODCHAINDevelopment of a decision support methodology to improve logisticsperformance in production networks.http://www.prodchain.net/

PRODNET IIProduction Planning and Management in an Extended Enterprise.http://www.uninova.pt/~prodnet/

PROMINENCEPromoting Inter-European Networks of Collaborating Extended Enterprise.http://www.eu-prominence.net/

PSIBProcess and System Innovation in the Dutch Construction Industry.http://www.psib.nl/

SARAValue networks in construction.http://akseli.tekes.fi/Resource.phx/rapu/sara/en/index.htx

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Projects

satineSemantic-based Interoperability Infrastructure for Integrating Web ServicePlatforms to Peer-to-Peer Networks.http://www.srdc.metu.edu.tr/webpage/projects/satine/index.html

SPIDER-WINSupply Information Dynamic Exchange and Control by Web-based InteractionNetwork.http://www.spider-win.de/

SYMPHONYA Dynamic Management Methodology with Modular and Integrated Methodsand Tools for Knowledge Based, Adaptive SMEs.http://www.symphony-village.com/

THINKcreativeThinking network of experts on emerging smart organizations.http://www.thinkcreative.org/

TrustCoMA Trust and Contract Management framework enabling secure collaborativebusiness processing in on-demand created, self-managed, scalable, and highlydynamic Virtual Organisations.http://www.eu-trustcom.com/

VDAVirtual Destination Application.http://www.cetim.org/vda.html

VLVirtual Laboratory.http://carol.wins.uva.nl/~netpeer/projects/VirtualLaboratory/VirtualLaboratory.html

VOSTERVirtual Organisations Cluster.http://voster.vtt.fi/

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