REASONS DETERMINED THE APPEARANCE OF VIRTUAL ORGANISATIONS

Abstract

In the second part of the XX century and especially during the last few decades the fast development of information and communication technologies (ICT) and the penetration of its technologies into the daily organisational activities as well as the individual lives, at the same time the flattening and networking of organisational structure enabled many scientists (Mews, 1997; Hales and Barker, 2000; Burn et al., 2002), who do research on organisational forms, to understand that ICT has become one of the main reasons to determine the appearance of virtual organisations. In this paper the presumption has been suggested that virtual organisations, as the strain of network organisations, were resulted by the XX century’s evolution where ICT development did not play essential role for their appearance. It was also suggested that network organisations and later virtual organisations were the answer (in some cases even necessary) to the changes of stakeholder (customers and employees) needs.

The result of the changes of stakeholder needs is networking of organisations, which was formed through the flattening of organisational structure, as well as through the growth of outsourcing, the growth of flexibility, the growth of specialisation, the shortening of product life cycle, the downsizing of organisations. The process of organisations’ networking, influenced by the fast ICT development determined the appearance of virtual organisations.