Virtual Organization

Virtual Organization is a group of manufacturing companies located in different places, working together in a distributed environment to achieve a particular objective, substantially remodeling its involved activities , focused on the generation and use of knowledge which takes place between intense communication processes corresponding to certain standards and using substantial new information and communication technologies.

It is not the same thing that most of us thought it is in the first place, isn't it ? When most of the people talk about a Virtual Organization they actually think of a Virtual Business or maybe something else.

The term Virtual Organization, released in the 90's, began to be used with a relatively high frequencey only in recent years. Connotations and meanings of this concept differs appreciably from one specialist to another.

A Virtual Organization is established and it is based on several precepts:

• begins with identifying by a company or a group of companies, usually small, an opportunity of innovational nature, which involves a considerable amount of knowledge and other kind of resources that can only be provided by several firms;
• complementarity of the firms involved, which allows obtaining a synergistic effect on the generation of new knowledge;
• speed in decisions and actions of the companies involved is a Sine Qua Non for its capability to identify and capitalize the opportunity;
• acquisition of economic mass that facilitates obtaining profitability, even when there is a big competition;
• basis for carrying out activities on a fluid organization, which is able to adapt to specific participants along with the effective focus to achieve the forecasted objective;
• optimizing the use of knowledge and other resources involved in the project, given the fact that participating firms share the infrastructure they own, the knowledge, risks and business profits;
• completion of activities that result in new competitive products, on the one hand because of the intense processes of generation and use of knowledge and, on the other hand, because of various processes to reduce costs due to the technical and special skills possessed, plus a rational labor division between partner companies.

Considering what we presented, we can think of a Virtual Organization as a type of evoluted Cluster which possesses specific characteristics determined by its focus on production activities, the high share of innovative processes and the use of advanced informational and communication technologies.

Virtual Organizations will probably proliferate as their foundations are experiencing a rapid growth, causing them to obtain competitive performances on the domestic and international markets