Consists of an aggregation of companies from diverse industries with well defined and focused competences with the purpose of gaining access to new markets and business opportunities by leveraging their resources and enlarging the universe for partners’ search and selection.
Published in Chapter:
Environments for VE Integration
Maria Manuela Cunha (Polytechnic Institute of Cávado and Ave Higher School of Technology, Portugal) and Goran D. Putnik (University of Minho, Portugal)
Copyright: © 2008
|Pages: 9
DOI: 10.4018/978-1-59904-885-7.ch066
Abstract
Most definitions of virtual enterprise (VE) incorporate the idea of extended and collaborative outsourcing to suppliers and subcontractors in order to achieve a competitive response to market demands (Webster, Sugden, & Tayles, 2004). As suggested by several authors (Browne & Zhang, 1999; Byrne, 1993; Camarinha- Matos & Afsarmanesh, 1999; Cunha, Putnik, & Ávila, 2000; Davidow & Malone, 1992; Preiss, Goldman, & Nagel, 1996), a VE consists of a network of independent enterprises (resources providers) with reconfiguration capability in useful time, permanently aligned with the market requirements, created to take profit from a specific market opportunity, and where each participant contributes with her best practices and core competencies to the success and competitiveness of the structure as a whole. Even during the operation phase of the VE, the configuration can change to assure business alignment with the market demands, traduced by the identification of reconfiguration opportunities and constant readjustment or reconfiguration of the VE network to meet unexpected situations or to keep permanent competitiveness and maximum performance (Cunha & Putnik, 2002, 2005a, 2005b)