Virtual Organization Structure
Today we live in full of technology world. And we can’t imagine our lives without gadgets and Internet. The appearance of the Internet involved many consequences for mankind. Perhaps, the biggest contribution was made to communication. People received an opportunity to communicate with each other faster, simpler and safer. All you needed was an email account and the connection to the World Wide Web. There were no such things as Viber, Facebook and What’s App 20 years ago. With the advent of these services communication between people have become the most convenient ever. Most of us can’t live without such benefits. We spend hundreds of hours reading news, chatting with friends, watch videos and listen to music. This means, that in future all our lives needs may depend on technology. The new era of 21st century opened numerous possibilities and creates brand new organization called virtual.
But let’s return for 20 years back. With the emergence of World Wide Web system, business and big companies saw the potential of such service. They realized that they could use global spread of the Internet for their interests. Companies began to create their own cites, such as Samsung.com as a manufacturer or amazon.com as an e-store. In a short period of time appeared dozens of virtual organizations. Everyone who had connection to the Internet could visit such cites. Over the years this tendency only grows.
“Virtual organizations work only through the Internet and they need information technology to maintain their work. Communication is an imperative factor in a virtual organization. Virtual organizations consist of many international workers, so it involves difficulties such as different languages, culture. The collaboration between members can also be difficult because this virtual organization involves face-to-face communication. So, we can observe that there is a lack of multiple interactions in virtual organizations” (Lee 23).
But, different challenges like an operating system or just computer’s hardware or software may spoil the efficiency and productivity of the virtual organization. Information protection and security are serious challenges too, because all the data, that virtual organization transmitted in most cases is digital.
In this essay we try to explain the appearance of virtual organizations through the social theory and compare structure of such organizations with metaphors. Theory explains why social structure evolves over the time and shows the implications of what have happened since the initial of Web use. There is structuration theory that helps to understand social changes and gives an explanation of virtual organization.
Take as base Gidden’s structuration theory in which he divided virtual organization structure into 3 groups: establishment, virtualization and institutionalization. Establishment or formation is a system in which virtual organization is formed. The main focus in this group makes on participating members. Organization becomes practicable in virtual community because technology connect members thanks to information and communication. We viewed virtual organization as something much more wider where the traditional information technologies support and develop company’s administration, member’s activities, their role. Virtual organization can’t survive without close collaboration of members. That is the most important feature of establishment niche.
Next crucial level of virtual organization structure is virtualization. It’s format where such organization grows into the new condition. Here virtual company integrates and this integration can provide better communication means and connection between members, improve relationship among them and other companies. Also virtual organization continues to use information technologies as main source of taking profits from communication between members.
The last chain in structure of virtual company is institutionalization. It’s framework where the social mechanisms begin and flourish. Here virtual organization establishes its own norms, culture, value system, beliefs. Culture is a main element in any organization regardless of the type and status. Still, virtual organizations have to be even more aware about this level as they establish a common capacity between the teams, which is from confident workers around the world. So, such organizations should find a way to cope cultural differences, which cover different working approaches (such as conditions and deadlines) and living (nicety for instance). As a result, virtual companies should respect differences between the team. So, there are social mechanisms and members of the company constitute the part of it. This is very complicated process which forms during the development of the company and establishment on the world market.
So, to sum it up, if we review connection of metaphor with the structure of virtual organization, we see that metaphor describes the connections between the different members of a virtual organizations (i.e., an entity or a team). The source here is relationship while the target is the communication between companies. The participants’ level of interaction hangs on the degree of cooperation, it can be permanent or temporary. After analysis we see that structure of the virtual organizations is incredible complicated theme. There are a lot of difficulties and challenges for companies to maintain productivity of workers and interaction between them.
Works cited
James. J. Lee., 2010. Seattle University, USA, International Journal of E-Business Research,
6(4), 13-25, October-December
