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Electronic commerce enables organizations to form virtual organizations. Shifting between different linkages of the partners for satisfying a need is the major characteristic of the virtual organization, and meta‐management beyond the individual organizational level must be applied in order to optimize the benefit for the entire organizational network. This paper proposes a meta‐management support system to support the meta‐management in virtual organizations. Object‐oriented organization modeling and virtual value chain analysis are used to implement the proposed meta‐management support system.

This paper examines virtual organizations, operating in global cyberspace. This paper uses Armstrong’s (2005) conceptual orientation that mythmaking is fundamental to humanity and Warner's (1994) Neo-Barthesian (Barthes, 1957) methodology of distinguishing between “monster myths” which conceal political motives and secretly circulate ideological positions and her contrasting notion of “educative” myths which are not always delusions but are vigorous ways of leading one to "make sense of universal matters" (Warner, 1994, p. xiii) to recover the purposeful illusions behind the beguiling spells cast by the “modern myths” of virtual organizations. This paper finds that virtual organizations are impractical organizations involving a visible myth that masks the invisible purposes of the hegemonic (Torfing, 1999) control narratives of elites and global corporate capital.

This paper aims to explore the contemporary fascination with seemingly new, benign and transcendent virtual organizations.

The paper extends Gerlach and Hamilton's investigations and critique into virtuality within the genres of business restructuring and science fiction.

The paper unravels a purposeful, enveloping consciousness that masks both neo‐liberal fictions and postmodern fantasies dominating the virtual organization discourse. This paper finds that practical examples of de‐physicalized, technologically transcendent virtual organizations, crucial to this virtual consciousness, do not exist or are fundamentally different from expectations. The paper finds that the presumed new epoch of global capitalism, based on the productivity unleashed by virtual organizations, is illusory. The paper concludes that once virtual consciousness is penetrated not only are the material and ideological aspects of virtual organizations unmasked but it is possible to locate a pragmatic, conjoint, physicalized type of “virtualized” organization that is not new, benign or transcendental. This type of co‐destiny, virtual organization (such as terrorist organizations and organized crime), is more reflective of enduring concerns and contemporary purposes fundamental to what organizations make visible or render invisible.

This paper presents an innovative and critical examination of the collusion between neo‐liberal and postmodern thought and the practicalities, or otherwise, of designing virtual organizations. This paper should also be valuable to those concerned with the “virtuality” of terrorist and criminal organizations and the relationship between the visible and invisible aspects of organization.

The purpose of this paper is to discuss the limitations of existing approaches for guaranteeing the quality of a joint output in temporary enterprise networks such as virtual organisations and to identify possibilities for future research on solving this problem.

The paper works towards the analysis of requirements for managing quality in temporary networks such as virtual organisations. Afterwards, it discusses the problem and thus the limitations of existing approaches to guarantee quality of the joint output of such networks.

The review shows that in temporary networks, individual organisations often do not have the right concepts to control inter‐organisational information exchange within the network. Nevertheless, inter‐organisational information exchange gain is important, because it influences the quality of the network's joint output. Existing approaches to define communication structures to support information exchange on the inter‐organisational level do not seem to be sufficient and represent a risk in guaranteeing the quality of a joint output.

This paper explores new directions in quality management from an inter‐organisational perspective in temporary enterprises networks. The findings contribute to supporting the need for the further development of existing approaches to competence management in order to address quality aspects in temporary enterprise environments. This work contributes to the theoretical demand for interlinking quality management with highly dynamic collaborative relations. This point of view goes beyond the internally focused perspective with the goal of integrating converging quality management processes with an inter‐organisational perspective.

This paper applies new empirically‐based knowledge in the area of constituent market orientation to a seven‐element taxonometric model of virtual organisation. The most effective distribution of resources and management attention in the development of combinations of real and virtual business solutions is identified for each of the seven alternative configurations. The paper concludes with a list of key concepts that offer owners and managers of virtual organisations analytically based heuristics founded on cross‐sectoral empirical research.

This empirical study aims to examine an organizational response to the needs of e‐business, virtual organization, and associated determinants of its successful adoption in the Taiwanese electronics industry.

The research examined a large sample of Taiwanese electronics companies. A research population of Taiwanese electronics companies was drawn from firms listed on both the TAIEX and the OTC markets and included 305 firms. Questionnaires were sent to firm administrators who were asked the degree to which the company had undertaken virtual organizational structuring that was enabled by information technologies.

The findings of this research reveal significant impacts of individual and organizational factors, but no effect for environmental variables on virtual organization adoption.

While the results might provide clues for understanding the adoption of virtual organization structure in the manufacturing sector, there still remains uncertainty in generalizing to service industries. The variety of types of service firms and their outputs makes any generalization to services from this study difficult.

First, information technologies may provide the potential means to implement innovative organization structures, such as virtual organization, to respond to the pressures of change. Second, the adoption and diffusion of virtual organization might transform firms to meet the demands of e‐commerce.

The study identifies factors which may impact on the successful use of information technologies to implement innovative organization structures, such as virtual organizations, to respond to the pressures of change.

In this paper, the prior research on virtual teams was reviewed to assess the state of the literature. The purpose of this paper is to determine why individuals prefer working in virtual teams (also termed liquid workers and part-time workers). Previous researchers have focussed on the benefits that organizations receive if they hire liquid workers, but to date, no research has been conducted to determine the perspective of these liquid workers. The various definitions of virtual teams are discussed and an integrative definition is proposed that suggests all teams may be defined in terms of their extent of virtualness.

A systematic review of the literature on virtual teams was conducted. The data were collected from 12 informants. A thematic analysis was used to analyse the data.

Six main themes were identified, namely, pliability, opportunities, increased earnings, vigour, family and transportation.

This study was conducted in a three-metropolitan city in India and warrants being extended to rural and international settings to gain additional insights and confirmation of the research findings.

It is suggested that organizations who recruit liquid workers will be in a position for substantial cost savings; this is because organizations usually make payment of liquid workers’ wages on an hourly basis. This will help the organizations to schedule the number of working hours depending on their needs.

The current study is novel as there is a paucity of research in identifying the factors behind working in the virtual community in India. This study presents the first research of its kind to the best knowledge of the author, and the findings will be valuable for companies who are looking for cost savings.

Global competition and advances in technology have enhanced the growing trend of virtual teams in order to execute business strategies. Thus, understanding the competencies needed for virtual leadership effectiveness is essential and vital to organisational success. The purpose of this paper is to identify and analyse the required competencies for virtual team leadership and its effectiveness in an organisation.

The study adopted case study methodology to undertake an exploratory study of a manufacturing organisation. Using a questionnaire that was designed following a focussed literature review to identify the specific virtual leadership competencies, structured interviews were conducted face-to-face with 14 respondents from two major virtual team groups. The interviews were designed to elucidate the opinions and perceptions of virtual team members with respect to selected characteristics of their virtual team leaders (VTLs). The responses obtained were analysed using descriptive statistics and thematic analysis.

The study identified the competencies required for effective leadership in virtual teams in order to achieve the organisational project success. The performance of the two VTLs in the organisation was then assessed in the light of these identified competencies. The study also identified transformational leaders as important to be considered when selecting VTLs because they are known to achieve high-performing team. However, the study found that considering the virtual leadership competencies, the two VTLs were found to have not, on the whole, performed well because they are lacking in some of the leadership competencies required for effective leadership in a virtual team and this has led to their organisation not achieving the required success in virtual teams.

The study has implications for organisations’ virtual team project leaders. The identification of specific leadership competencies for virtual team leadership will enable organisations to be more informed when looking for effective leaders in their virtual teams in order to achieve high-performing virtual teams, which will lead to organisational growth and success. The study is expected to enhance the success rate of any typical organisation using virtual teams.

The study would be highly beneficial to both the potential and current stakeholder organisations considering virtual teams to execute business strategies. This study has also added to the body of knowledge by further exploring the leadership competencies needed for virtual teams.

The virtual organization is emerging as a much‐researched phenomenon in the context of inter‐organizational relationships as well as intra‐organizational issues. However, the existing literature on the subject provides multifarious views of virtual organizations, making it difficult to compare findings in research and derive actionable inputs for practice. This paper proposes a multi‐dimensional model with nine possible variants that serves to accommodate and understand virtuality in its various forms, giving greater conceptual clarity on how virtuality can be measured and interpreted in an organizational context.

A review of the literature shows that most discussions on virtuality have not made a clear delineation of its facets.

This paper first identifies the granularity and directionality of virtuality in order to understand virtuality in its different contexts. It then suggests that virtuality should be examined in terms of factors that influence it, the degree of virtuality, and the outcomes of virtuality.

Given the breadth of coverage required to present a model in an area that is as large and complex as virtual organizations, a detailed discussion of the operationalization of the constructs has not been possible.

From a researcher's perspective, this model should aid a better understanding of virtuality whilst providing a framework within which existing and future contributions in this area can be studied. From a managerial perspective, this can be used by organizations to assess whether virtuality is indeed leveraged as a strategic tool or is largely a mere technological phenomenon.

While some modern organisations have established “virtual work teams”, which are said to be comprised of people who are geographically separated and who work across boundaries of space and time using computer driven communication technologies, it is also true that many organisations remain structured around conventional face‐to‐face teams. Increasingly, the conventional face‐to‐face team is endeavouring to increase its productivity by utilising some of the technology and characteristics of the virtual team. In fact, it may not be practical any longer to draw a distinction between conventional face‐to‐face teams and virtual teams, due to the invasive nature of technology throughout most modern organisations.