86. "Virtual Positions, Processes, and Organizations"

ABSTRACT

Recent work has documented a variety of organizational arrangements that bypass the intended restrictions of a bureaucracy. These virtual-like organizational arrangements are viewed as coping mechanisms for adapting organizations to change and to new possibilities created by changing information technology. They are viewed as natural processes for achieving congruency between organizational ends and the available implementing information technologies.

Organizations face the permanent challenge of being able to solve problems more rapidly than the problems change. This paper outlines a basic theory of why such virtual-like organizational arrangements occur. The argument centers on interdependence and how interdependence is affected by available information technology, by the effects of rapid change on goals, and by how environmental changes affect the management of interdependence.

Virtual-like organizations exist within organizations as virtual positions, virtual processes, lateral coordinating mechanisms, and patronage. Virtual-like organizational arrangements also arise among organizations in the form of virtual organizations, industrial districts, strategic alliances, virtual teams, and latent organizations. A virtual-like organizational arrangement creates a commons among its members which survives if the welfare of the commons is ensured. Non-governmental organizations are viewed as a type of virtual-like organizational arrangements.