The study of trust and control in a virtual organization has had researchers emphasizing on the importance of trust as a necessary condition for ensuring the success of these mentioned organizations (2001, p.277). Although we have been led to believe that this trust is the backbone of the virtual work environment, the author Michael Gallivan has explored the Open Source Software (OSS) movement and has made a case for the contrary. He states that “various control mechanisms can ensure the effective performance of autonomous agents who participate in virtual organizations”. He goes on to say that effective performance can be produced through control, efficiency, predictability, and calculability of processes can occur in the absence …show more content…
A virtual organization is goal directed and consists of geographically distributed agents who may or may not ever meet face to face. The term “organization” is general in terms of referring to a multitude of different types of entities (Gallivan, 2001, p.281). Gallivan also goes on to make an argument that while many say the only way to manage someone you cannot see is through trust, he argues that by controlling the conditions for collaboration and norms of behavior, any agent can have confidence in other members of the virtual organization, thus obviating the need for trust (Gallivan, 2001, p.283). He goes on in further detail to dissect the OSS movement by distinguishing the concept of the virtual organization as well as examining how members of the OSS can function effectively as a distributed network of agents. Here he uses the work of psychologist Richard Hackman who also argues that there is more group effectiveness than one dimensional measures of productivity. This requires us to look further into the group’s success in delivering a specific product to understand the group performance. He claims that groups must be designed in specific ways and have certain controls to produce effective outcomes. Gallivan then moves to explain that the foundation of this control is spelled out in sociologist George Ritzer’s “McDonaldization of Society”. This McDonaldization theory draws from Max Webber’s views of rationalization, identifying four attributes of modern organizations which include efficiency, calculability, predictability, and control (Gallivan, 2001,p.286). None of these attributes mentions trust in any of their explanations. The author goes on to explain that this is more of a social critique and remains neutral in value. He
Workers are also not being used to their full potential as the majority of the IT budget is going towards them to maintain the current system that they have in place. Carr determines that these problems can be fixed with relative ease by combining three different technologies, Web services, virtualization, and grid computing. The combination will allow for less technology to be wasted and processing power to be used to its full capacity. He tells the reader, this is what the individual will have to do to advance the information technology environment to its fullest potential and continues by listing examples of some of the possible corporations and sources from where this individual could come from, including big computing hardware contributors, information technology hosting operations, an internet extraordinaire and new start up innovators. He concludes the article by pointing out that as dubious as this may be, many other innovations similar to this started the same way and people should not fear to take action on this opportunity, as it will better humanity. I believe that the article provides some good points as it shows us that the
Lin, C., Standing, C., & Liu, Y. (2008). A model to develop effective virtual teams.
Boje, D. M. , Luhman, J. T. , and Cunliffe, A. L. “ A Dialectic Perspective on the Organization
Gibson, James L., John M. Ivancevich, and James H. Donnelly, Jr. Organization: Behaviour, Structure, Processes. 10th ed. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2000.
This paper will provide a hypothetical discussion of how each of the four “worldviews” (post-positivism, constructivism, advocacy/participatory, and pragmatism) might apply to the proposed study. It will refer to the topic paper developed during the class RSH9101B (Research Topic, Problem, Purpose, and Questions) with the assistance of Dr. Kenneth Gossett, class mentor. The portion of the Topic Paper to be used will be the problem statement, which will provide the foundation for this discussion and completion of this assignment. This discussion ultimately will lead to the strengthening of this research and the understanding for the need of better researches to help today’s virtual organizations.
What are the three or four most important drivers of Microsoft’s business model over the past 10 to 15 years that have accounted for the company’s spectacular results?
Bolman, L. G., & Deal, T. E. (2008). Reframing organizations. San Francisco: John Wiley & Sons.
As the theme of my essay I have chosen to find out what our contemporary society must not forget in order to be able to make organizational theory evolve well into the 21st century. For this task I have decided to take a look back to Aldous Huxley’s modern dystopia “Brave new world”, that warned against totalitarian regimes that intended to suppress individuality in order to advance the interest of the state in its time. Even as those regimes might not be a direct threat nowadays we can eerily conclude that some aspects of it are quite accurate for the times we live in. According to Phillip Yancey who suggested that “there is a much more subtle enemy inchoate within each of us - a natural tendency for people to trade autonomy for comfort, safety and amusement.” This for the most people does not set off alarms but I will argue that it is the most basic requirement that has to be met in our day and age in order to tackle the wide range of issues that we face at the crossroads leading to the future, whether we talk about humanity or organizational theory itself. I think the novel gives us the perfect opportunity to draw parallels with our contemporary society, and see what must be corrected within post modernity based on how things evolved over the course of history and from prophetical books like Huxley’s even as at his time it was only intended to be satire. In the World State people are controlled by technologies like genetic engineering, sleep-learning and drugs like soma to satisfy needs and gently induce masses to enjoy their servitude. If one were to describe postmodernism in just a word or two, "skepticism" and "relativism" would probably best capture the overall ethos of its adherents. Deep skepticism about...
Greenberg, P., Greenberg, R., & Antonucci, Y. (2007). Creating and sustaining trust in virtual teams. Business Horizons, 50, 325-333. doi:10.1016/j.bushor.2007.02.005
The virtual organization is a network of independent suppliers, customers, and even competitors, generally tied together by computer technology (Roger, 1991). They share skills, costs, and access to markets. It is tend to have flat structures in which information and decision making move horizontally (Judith R.G, 2002). Through the support of modern electronic system, it becomes possible to link people across formal organizational boundaries (Judith, 2002, quoted in S.G. Straus, S.P. Weisband, and J.M. Wilson, 1998).
“ Organizations are collectivities oriented to the pursuit of relatively specific goals and exhibiting relatively highly formalized social structures” (page 29). The rational system is a group of individuals, bound together as an organization, designed to reach predetermined goals. The rational system models sees organizations as a mechanical model. A machine that has multiple parts that also works individually but also work together for the better good of the whole. All the individuals of the group can be replaced with a new one if it doesn’t meet the standards of
In order to explore the nature of the practice of collaboration, the author has specifically focused on some of the concepts which challenges the individuals involved in collaborative alliance. Two main concepts have been explored to justify the challenges of the individuals. They are (i) Collaborative advantage, and (ii) Collaborative inertia. There exist dilemmas between these two concepts. Both the terms create a dilemma and a question arise of – “If achievement of collaborative advantage is the goal for those who initiate collaborative arrangements, why is collaborative inertia so often the outcome.” [Huxham, C, and Vangen, S. p- 53] These two concepts draw out the reason of what is always taken as granted in collaboration and what actually happens. Such perspectives results in collaborative inertia, even if the goal is to achieve the collaborative advantage.
Hatch, M. J., & Cunliffe, A. L. (2006). Organization Theory: Modern, Symbolic, and Postmodern Perspectives. New York: Oxford University Press.
...ative impact on individual outcomes. Thus the result tells that managerial behavior control is not compatible with virtual team environment.
...tive impact on individual outcomes. Thus the result tells that managerial behavior control is not compatible with virtual team environment.