Virtual organizations: Computer conferencing and organizational design

Computer conferencing systems link groups of users who “meet”; in the virtual space of a computer and interact around a common purpose or topic. These electronically constituted and mediated groups can mirror, cross‐cut, or hive off from existing organizational structures. This article reports a study of organizational structuring processes that accompany the introduction of a computer conferencing system in six industrial organizations. The relationships among technological capabilities and constraints, existing organization structures, managerial intent, and the unanticipated consequences of implementation for structural change are discussed. Employing the same software system in each case, organizational outcomes are radically different.

Earlier analysts have focused on a contingency model of the organization‐to‐technology relationship. Computer conferencing systems, however, confound the distinction between technical and organizational systems; they exist in an overlapping border domain between their two parent systems. This article explores the character of this overlapping domain and proposes the terms “virtual group”; and “virtual organization”; to evoke the special status of groups created through computer conferencing. Virtual organizations are semiotic entities in Weick's [1] sense of equivoque and their essentially ambiguous, interpretable character is important in shaping organizational outcomes. Virtual groups become part of the ongoing process of structuration [2], while also providing a new tool for organizational design.     

Analytic collaboration in virtual innovation projects

Researchers attend to innovation and collaboration issues. Yet, the relevant literature devotes scant attention to the relationship between collaboration effectiveness and virtual innovation team context, while there are clear indications that both subjects relate with growing concerns in today's business setting. This article reviews extant literature and state-of-the art collaboration systems, and elucidate dynamic contextual factors among virtual innovation team members. The results show the antecedents and interrelationship among these factors, suggesting an optimal collaboration model for virtual innovation project teams. This paper documents the empirical observations of a virtual innovation project for advanced textile manufacturing technologies, and examines the due collaboration taking place among different project participants. Understanding the set of contextual factors emerging from virtual innovation projects can help managers classify, and employ the most effective collaboration mechanism for enhancing the corresponding project performance and effectiveness pragmatically.     

建筑工程中工程量清单的招投标与管理策略研究

随着社会经济的不断发展,建筑行业也以惊人的速度发展,但在发展的过程中,出现了因计价方式以及招标制度不完善而引起的问题,过去的计价方式已经不能满足现代建筑工程的需求了,就很难实现工程招标的真正目的.本文分析了推行工程清单招标的重要意义和存在的问题,并根据这些问题提出了相应完善工程清单招标管理的策略措施.     

Cloud Requirements for Facilitating Business Collaboration: A Modeling Perspective

This paper describes how to design systems that support large scale collaboration between enterprises on the cloud. To do this, the paper proposes an innovative modeling method for large scale collaboration. The modeling method identifies the collaborative spaces in the collaboration and describes ways to support the collaboration in cloud environments, including defining knowledge flows across system boundaries.

The modeling focuses on the ability to deploy the cloud to quickly create collaborative environments. Common access to the cloud makes it an enhancer of collaboration, especially across large business networks such as outsourcing or co-design and to support the agility needed in such collaboration. The paper proposes that cloud provides an advantage where it can foster the collaboration needed to maintain sustainable communities and defines the support needed from the cloud for collaboration. This is particularly relevant to smart cities and the greater emphasis on the Internet of things.     

A Repeatable E-Collaboration Process Based on ThinkLets for Multi-Organization Strategy Development

In recent years, multi-organizational collaboration has become more and more important in both business and research. We conducted an action research (AR) intervention with a consortium of Finnish universities that needed to revise its joint strategy. We designed and facilitated a repeatable collaboration process for this multi-organizational strategy development. The process was built using the Collaboration Engineering (CE) approach with thinkLets, which provides expert-level advice for novice facilitators, and it was powered by Group Support Systems (GSS). Our overall impression of CE’s ability to provide valuable design and facilitation support for complex processes is very affirmative. The consortium was satisfied with the intervention, as it saved huge amounts of time compared with conventional strategic work. The process was also seen as more democratic, because the GSS tools enabled equal participation during the session. Our study also provides a ready-to-apply CE process recipe to organizations for revising their strategy. Through this recipe, supplemented with knowledge on thinkLets, the strategy development process may easily be repeated by other facilitators or even practitioners.     

Procurement bidding with restrictions

In many procurement situations with simultaneously offered projects, firms face participation restrictions and can bid only on a subset of the projects. This phenomenon is prevalent in a variety of observed situations such as bidding for private label supplies, business to business procurement or government projects. We show that for the case of n bidding firms where each is restricted to bid on a subset of the offered projects, there exists a symmetric equilibrium in which each bidder has a positive expected equilibrium profit. Prices are bounded away from marginal costs even if all the bidders are homogenous. This results from the fact that there is a positive probability that each firm will find itself in the position of being the sole bidder on a project. While the equilibrium probability of bidding on a project increases with its value, it is interesting to note that the bidding probability on the projects approaches an equiprobable one as the number of bidding firms increases. We find that the equilibrium profits decrease as firms are able to bid on more of the available projects. In contrast, bidder commitment to bid on specific projects increases the equilibrium profits of all firms. We also examine the effect of heterogeneity on equilibrium profits. Greater heterogeneity in the project valuations leads to lower firm profits. On the other hand, heterogeneity among bidders in terms of the number of projects that they are constrained to bid on leads to greater profits for the firms that can bid on more projects (regardless of the mix of the firms in the industry.) Finally, we analyze the effect of uncertainty in project valuations and show greater uncertainty in project valuations (as represented by a mean preserving spread) decreases the equilibrium profits. We conclude with an empirical analysis of bidding behavior that tests the predictions of the theory. We find that the probability of bidding on a particular project is increasing in its value, decreasing in the other projects values and decreasing in the number of bidding subjects. Furthermore, the value of the bids on a project increase with its valuation and decrease with the total number of bidders.

虚拟企业冲突的协调管理

虚拟企业是在信息经济背景下出现的一种全新的企业模式,由于虚拟企业的特殊组织形态,它在运行中较容易产生冲突。本文分析了虚拟企业冲突的特征、冲突发展的基本过程和冲突产生的原因,通过建立虚拟企业生存系统协调度模型来解决虚拟企业的冲突问题,实现虚拟企业冲突的协调管理。     

Electronic decision-making for developing countries

Political, economic and social development requires "good governance" and intelligent decision-making. Development decision centers (DDC) equipped with appropriate information technology (IT) can help to improve development decisions, increase effectiveness and efficiency of public and private administration and support democratization and political stability.DDC provide IT-based facilities for brainstorming, discussion, organization and evaluation of ideas, objectives, strategies, projects, etc. They can be integrated into community information centers or established within government agencies, business corporations, universities and other institutions of higher learning to offer assistance in solving complex development problems that require close collaboration of decision-makers and experts.The paper analyzes political, socio-cultural and economic development problems, and suggests to use appropriate IT and group support systems as an innovative strategy to overcome such problems. It demonstrates the proposed approach by presenting typical steps and results of development planning in a DDC, the author has built up at the University of Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania. This center is believed to be the first in Africa and may be considered as a prototype of a DDC which could become a standard facility in community information centers to help integrate improve effectiveness, efficiency, transparency and accountability of development decision-making.     

The Effects of Electronic Collaboration in Distributed Project Management

Abstact The emergence and widespread use of collaborative technologies for distributed project management has opened up opportunities for off-shore outsourcing and collaborative development. However, most tools and techniques for project management focus on on-site, long term relationships and sourcing strategies at a time when inter-organizational relationships are becoming more dynamic and geographically dispersed. This paper uses grounded theory to analyze data on virtual teams' projects. The analysis uncovers “effects” in the way in which distributed projects are managed. These effects relate to coordination, communication and adaptation to distributed electronic work environments. Following an analysis of these electronic collaboration “effects”, a model for distributed project management is presented.     

Supporting Technologies and Organizational Practices for the Transfer of Knowledge in Virtual Environments

A field study of a global science/technology company provides evidence of the value of both organizational practices and technology tools for supporting knowledge attainment (the combined tacit and explicit knowledge gained in a focal area – in this study we focus on product knowledge attainment) in virtual environments. We present a three-dimensional typology of knowledge management systems. Method of input, form of content, and how the users accrue the benefit of the knowledge help us to argue that organizational practices and technological tools will have independent positive effects on user knowledge attainment. We find attendance at face-to-face community of practice meetings, use of searchable archives, video-on-demand, and full-text search of video-on-demand all positively predict knowledge attainment. We suggest that organizations develop both organizational practices and technical supports for knowledge transfer. An interview with the video-on-demand vendor gives us the context to discuss issues for the support of tacit knowledge in more virtual environments as well as issues of expertise as it relates to support for formal and informal learning.     

Cooperation support through the use of group decision systems

This article considers the development of the group decision support system (GDSS) field both from organizational and technological perspectives. The growing importance of teamwork, lateral coordination, and activities integration inside modern business organizations is emphasized. Technological and knowledge specialization, quick transformation of business environments, reduction of response time, and so on, are some of the reasons that can explain the renewed relevance of teamwork. Also, the development of information technology (IT) is analyzed in relation to the role it is assuming in supporting group activities. Research in the GDSS field is then introduced. A proposal concerning the identification of three different phases in GDSS studies is developed, ranging from decision rooms to distributed systems. Each phase shows distinctive research topics and application fields, together with different organizational goals. Results of these developments are the growth of potential application areas of GDSS tools. These theoretical considerations, together with empirical experiences coming from the study of a real manufacturing environment (an IBM plant where group cooperation plays a fundamental role for production efficiency), constitute the basis for a research GDSS prototype (GROUPS). Prototype features are designed to support executives in facing production‐planning problems through an improvement in communications and in knowledge representation.     

浅议建立和完善高校的招投标制度

随着国家对教育事业投资规模和力度的不断加大,如何安全有效地使用好这些资金,保证所建工程或购置的设备优质价廉是目前高校采购管理工作中必须面对的重要课题。招投标制度是一种高效、科学、有组织、有规范、透明度高的交易运作方式,是以竞争方式通过一系列规范化的运作程序来确定中标方,订立交易合同的制度。     

The Relevance of Organization Theory to the Field of Business and Information Systems Engineering

Information and communication systems (ICS) impact their organizational environment in significant ways; hence, the design, implementation, and use of ICS are inseparably linked to fundamental issues of organizational design and behavior. Current research in the field of business and information systems engineering (BISE), however, is primarily technology- or practice-oriented and concerned with the construction and validation of prototypes, whereas little attention is paid to theoretical insights into organizational phenomena and relationships. In this paper, we argue that paying more attention to organization theory would provide valuable guidance in addressing the close links between ICS on the one hand, and organizational systems on the other. To support our argument, we refer to selected theoretical perspectives and highlight their potential relevance to the BISE field.

A Framework for Adopting Collaboration 2.0 Tools for Virtual Group Decision Making

Decision making in virtual teams is gaining momentum due to globalization, mobility of employees, and the need for collective and rapid decision making by members who are in different locations. These factors resulted in a proliferation of virtual team software support tools for decision making, the latest of which is social software (also known as collaboration 2.0), which includes tools such as wikis, blogs, microblogs, discussion forums, and social networking platforms. This paper describes the potential use of collaboration 2.0 software for improving the process and the specific tasks in virtual group decision making. The paper proposes a framework for exploring the fitness between social software and the major activities in the group decision making process and how such tools can be successfully adopted. Specifically, we use a fit-viability model to help assessing whether social software fit a decision task and what organizational factors are important for such tools to be effective. Representative research issues related to the use of such tools are also presented.     

Executive GDSS: Behavioral considerations at individual,organizational, and environmental levels of analysis

This article emphasizes the importance of behavioral considerations at individual, organizational, and environmental levels of analysis when researching and evaluating the design, implementation, and use of group decision support systems (GDSS) within complex organizations. Discussion is based on interview and archival data collected on an executive level GDSS used within a corporate setting. Issues that are considered generalizable to organizational computing, coordination, and collaboration technologies concern (a) viewing organization participants as strategic, intuitive information processors, (b) understanding the importance of organizational power, politics, and situational constraints on decision making, and (c) appreciating the symbolic value of advanced information technologies to an organization's external environment.     

Logistics Coordination in Dyads: Some Theoretical Foundations for EDI-Induced Redesign

Organizations are redesigning business processes in order to cope with changing organizational environments. Some of these redesigns are enabled by improved information technology. In this article, the redesign of logistics processes in dyadical partnerships is central. By focusing on the operational coordination between partners in the dyad, elements of a theory of logistics coordination are presented. A definition of coordination is given, the cause of coordination is assessed, and the factors that influence coordination are given. Uncertainty is identified as the core concept that causes and is simultaneously affected by coordination. Two process characteristics, "Degree of Freedom" and "Action Variety," are introduced to examine the potential of electronic data interchange (EDI) to redesign logistics coordination. EDI is perceived as a means that supports and intensifies coordination.     

Managing Institutional Complexity: A Longitudinal Study of Legitimacy Strategies at a Sportswear Brand Company

Multinational corporations are operating in complex business environments. They are confronted with contradictory institutional demands that often represent mutually incompatible expectations of various audiences. Managing these demands poses new organizational challenges for the corporation. Conducting an empirical case study at the sportswear manufacturer Puma, we explore how multinational corporations respond to institutional complexity and what legitimacy strategies they employ to maintain their license to operate. We draw on the literature on institutional theory, contingency theory, and organizational paradoxes. The results of our qualitative longitudinal study show that managing corporate legitimacy is a dynamic process in which corporations adapt organizational capacities, structures, and procedures.     

浅议物流工程招投标管理措施

自《招标投标法》实施以来,我国招投标市场发展总体是好的,成为经济生活的重要内容。但也存在一些不容忽视的问题,为整顿和规范市场经济秩序,创造公平、公正的市场经济秩序,应加强和改进招投标工作,进一步规范招投标的活动。     

房地产企业开发成本的控制

目前,房地产开发成本控制方面存在的问题是:成本管理的意识不强,缺乏控制和降低成本的有效措施,没有形成有效的、全员的、全过程的制度和组织保障体系。房地产开发企业要清醒地认识到房地产项目的成本控制是一个复杂的、动态的系统工程,必须在设计、招标、施工和销售各个阶段,建立贯穿整个开发过程的成本控制体系和机制,降低各个阶段、各个环节的成本和费用,以保持开发的可持续性,增强发展的后劲。     

Using GSS to Design Organizational Processes and Information Systems: An Action Research Study on Collaborative Business Engineering

During an action research study a collaborative business engineering approach was developed, applied, and evaluated. Key characteristic of the approach is its focus on the participative design of organizational processes and supporting information systems. Following the approach, various design activities are carried out in close cooperation with groups of stakeholders supported by a Group Support System (GSS). This paper describes and reflects on the execution of these collaborative design activities in a police organization. Lessons learned with respect to GSS and collaborative design are formulated. Key insights illustrate the stakeholders' perception of the group technology and the way in which it facilitated an efficient design process.