Virtual organizations through a relational lens

Virtual organizations have often been identified with a strong ICT infrastructure, used to increase organizational flexibility. In these paper we argue that ICT is important, but not sufficient: organizational aspects (roles, rules, methods) are also critical. Flexibility can be achieved acting on organizational relations. The risk must be avoided, however, that an inappropriate relations management decreases organizational controllability. We propose the Organizational Relational Model as a useful framework for organizational analysis and design in virtual settings. Two organizational strategies are proposed. We call the first one the regulated virtual organization. It is based on the enhanced capability to define a-priori rules regulating the relational system. The second one, the collaborative virtual organization, relies on a strong system for admitting actors in the virtual organization.