Creating a Framework for Research on Virtual Organizations

摘要

In recent years the concept of the virtual organization (VO) has received a great deal of attention in both the business press and academia. While a fair amount of research has focused on the virtual organization, very little agreement exists on how to define it, or even approach it as a concept or an organizational form. It is impossible to relate or compare the research that has been done under various definitions of the VO without a common framework to relate them to one another. It is difficult to build a coherent research stream in virtual organizations, without a framework in which to place the research. The purpose of this paper is not to develop another definition of the virtual organization, but rather to provide a definitional framework for the virtual organization which can assist researchers in relating the work done on VO’s using various definitions.