What is a Virtual Organization?

With the advent of technology & its popular use, the business environment has changed like never before. This has given rise to the concept of ‘globalisation’ as well as innovations by means of dispersion through ICT (Information & Communications Technology), mass customization and agility & extension of products.

Hence the need was felt for collaborative working systems wherein people within an organization as well as people of different organizations who were working together on a project could interact, pool skills and share information & knowledge for distributed business processes which were owned by one or more organizations acting in partnership. This led to the rise of a new form of an organization known as “Virtual Organization”

So, a Virtual Organization, simply put, is the assembling together of resources by conventional companies to perform a business process & even fronting the market as one organization with common means of communication or electronic channels.

Characteristics of a Virtual Organization

• Electronic Linkage: Technology plays the foremost role in a Virtual Organization. Employees are linked together electronically which makes their work easier & faster.
• Integration: The combination of the core competencies & distribution of resources among real time organizations without relocation or physical duplication of work places makes integration an important characteristic of a virtual organization. It allows 1 project to be distributed to branches or companies internationally & still offer an integrated product.
• Remote Working: Working from different locations along with flexibility in work is a new concept in work practices. It also allows unification of different workers as part of a single organization.
• Knowledge Workers:Experts can be selected from all over the world and accessed through networking. This has given rise to the new concept of ‘knowledge workers’ and can help form a world class team
• Virtual Working Environment:People working in virtual organizations are linked by a communications network