The Challenges of Interorganizational Management: An Emerging Issue in the Virtual Organization

Abstract

Contemporary business environments and trends for the future suggest that successful organizations of the future must not only be efficient, effective, competent, and competitive within any specific domain or marketplace, but that they must most importantly be flexible and adaptable, able to respond appropriately to change and turbulence in their environmental context. Thus, the challenge for managers would seem at least twofold. Managers must devise structures and strategies for their organizations that enable such flexibility and adaptability to be nurtured to ensure survival. Furthermore, it would seem that managers need to facilitate organisational learning, and thus must actively manage and capitalize on the organisation’s information and knowledge resources. The virtual organization is posited as an ideal organisational form for prospering in contemporary business environments which are characterised by turbulent change, uncertainty, intense competition, and the globalization of business and its markets (Wigand et al., 1997). The virtual organisation ideal is characterised by a number of significant components, such as: