2.+Background+and+History

=History =  Since the early 1990s the concept of “virtual organizations,” as a particular form of cooperative networks, has been introduced. Despite Mowshowitz (1986) using the term “virtual organization” in 1986 for the first time, the academic world paid little attention to this new organizational network approach. Only since Davidow and Malone published their book The Virtual Corporation in 1992 as well as the landmark Business Week article of Byrne in 1993 about virtual corporations was published, have academics around the world become interested in this topic. (Franke, 2002) Camarinha-Matos and Afsarmanesh (2005) says Emergence of the virtual enterprise / virtual organization paradigm falls within the natural sequence of the restructuring processes in traditional industrial paradigms that is enabled by advances in information and communication technologies. In parallel with the outsourcing tendency, another transformation observed in large companies is their reorganization as a “federation” of relatively autonomous departments. The idea of virtual enterprise (VE) / virtual organization (VO) was not “invented” by a single researcher, rather it is a concept that has matured through along evolution process. Some of the early references first introducing the terms like virtual company, virtual enterprise, or virtual corporation go back to the early 1990s, including the work of Jan Hopland, Nagel and Dove, and Davidow and Malone (Malone, 1992, Introna et al., 1999). Since then a large but disjoint body of literature has been produced mainly in two communities, the Information and Communications Technology community and the Management community. || || Camarinha-Matos and Afsarmanesh (2005)
 * The emergence of virtual enterprise / virtual organization paradigm can be seen as another step in the systems integration process. In the context of industrial companies, systems integration can be addressed and instantiated at different levels of complexity and abstraction (Fig.1).
 * Cell level – when basic resources (robots, NC machines, conveyors, etc.) and their local controllers need to be integrated in order to build a cell dedicated to a specific function or a set of functions (assembly, painting, inspection, etc.).
 * Shop-floor level – when various cells, transportation subsystems and warehouses are integrated within one manufacturing system.
 * Intra-enterprise level – when the objective is to integrate all areas of the enterprise, including not only the shop-floor but also other departments e.g. marketing, planning, engineering, etc. and their interactions.
 * Inter-enterprise level – when cooperation among various
 * enterprises is envisaged. The manufacturing processes or complex services are not performed by isolated companies.

=References =

[|Brief Historical Perspective For Virtual Organizations]

[|Managing Virtual Web Organizations: Issues and Challenges]

Virtual Organization: [|Toward a Theory of Societal Transformation Stimulated by Information Technology]

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