E-Commerce and V-Business

8

Defining the virtualorganization

Lucas Introna

Introduction

… the only constant in today's world is exponentially increasing change. (Huey, 1994).

Never before in the history of business have organizations been subjected to as much change – or so some argue. The drivers of this change are both complex and various. Stewart (1993) suggests that there are four large, unruly forces of revolution: the globalization of markets; the spread of information technology (IT); the birth of the information economy; and the dismantling of hierarchy. These forces are simultaneous and inter-reactive. Not only have these forces threatened the very survival of many great corporations such as IBM (Chesbrough and Teece, 1996) and General Motors (Drucker, 1994), ...