March 1, 2001 - Virtual Organizations, Part III After looking at aspects of virtual organizations such as leadership, communication, and motivation in Virtual Organizations Parts I & II, the issue now is: How do virtual organizations affect international organizational behavior?
Some key questions are:
- Are new management skills required to manage virtual organizations that are international or global?
- Do differences of culture, communication, motivation, leadership, and other organizational behaviors intensify as a result of the creation of global virtual organizations? Or, are the same skills needed but simply adapted to the new technologies and structures that are used in traditional or domestic virtual organizations?
- What then are the differences between traditional international and global business and virtual international or global business?
Perhaps a more important question is:
- Do global virtual organizations create more convergence of cultures, permit different cultures to interact more efficiently, or possibly have unintended negative influences on cultural cooperation?
Web Exercises
- Does the existence of a web site for a business instantly change that business to an international or global business? For example, if a business is located in Paris, France, and it develops and maintains a web site that is accessible anywhere in the world, does this previously local business--it has never sold anything outside of Paris--qualify as an international business? Take a look at some web sites to consider the implications they might have for virtualization and internationalization.
- Locate a web site outside your own national culture. What accommodations, if any, does the site make for different cultures? How effective is the communication with the site in your language? Are you able to find the information or order the products that the site provides? Can the products that the web site offers be modified to fit your needs?
- Using either your home computer or computers at your university, try to create a virtual organization with members of your class. What rules and roles are necessary to make a rudimentary virtual organization work? For example, does it require the role of manager? Is it necessary to establish goals for the organization or will goals emerge as interaction occurs?
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