Technology is the enabler for the virtual company but it still depends largely on people. People interact to process the inputs received from the virtual company network, they add value and generate the next output. Their independence, freed of traditional restraints of employment and company culture, makes them more responsive to external stimuli - quickly assessing and acting on new ideas or relationships that enter their virtual office in the virtual company. The management of these interactions will define the effectiveness of the virtual organisation. The advantage of the traditional business is that you can meet face to face around the water cooler. In the virtual company you may never meet in person and as there are no geographic boundaries you may need to address cultural barriers to communication that are invisible to the e-eye.
By 2010 the environment will be even more conducive to the virtual company. The future virtual meeting in which people can see and interact with each other freely and fully will be a far cry from the stilted and sometimes unreliable teleconference of today. People will have the different social skills needed in a total e-environment. Global cultural integration will smooth out the sharp distinctions that exist between countries and continents today. The structure of financial institutions and the legislature will have caught up with a world in which the Head Office moves around in the brief case of the Chief Executive and the points of manufacture, sale and delivery hang somewhere, ill-defined, in hyper space.
Copyright Partnership Sourcing Ltd 2001. All rights reserved.