virtual_work_environment

AI & Soc (2007) 21: 184–199 DOI 10.1007/s00146-005-0029-y OPEN FORUM Lauge Baungaard Rasmussen Æ Arne Wangel Work in the virtual enterprise—creating identities, building trust, and sharing knowledge Received: 3 April 2004 / Accepted: 20 October 2005 / Published online: 9 March 2006 Ó Springer-Verlag London Limited 2006 Abstract The emergence of the virtual network enterprise represents a dynamic response to the crisis of the vertical bureaucracy type of business organisation. However, its key performance criteria—interconnectedness and consistency—pose tremendous challenges as the completion of the distributed tasks of the network must be integrated across the barriers of missing face-to-face clues and cultural differences. The social integration of the virtual network involves the creation of identities of the participating nodes, the building of trust between them, and the sharing of tacit and explicit knowledge among them. The conventional organisation already doing well in these areas seems to have an edge when going virtual. The paper argues that the whole question of management and control must be reconsidered due to the particular circumstances in the ‘Network Society’. The paper outlines a suggestion for an exploratory, sociotechnical research approach combining the dimensions of context, subject and action with the twin objectives of contributing to the enhancement of collaborative capabilities in virtual teams as well as improving the insights into the nature of virtual work. Keywords Virtual enterprise Æ Trust Æ Identity Æ Knowledge sharing Æ Scope of control 1 Introduction Since the 1980s, many enterprises have taken steps to downsize and outsource to remain competitive (Davenport et al. 1998; van der Heijden et al. 2002). This development has provoked a crisis of the large, bureaucratic organisation type matching the traditional mass-production. (Castells R7‘‘>1996/2000; Lipnock and Stamps 1997). This type of organising seems to be replaced by more flexible, L. B. Rasmussen (&) Æ A. Wangel Department of Manufacturing Engineering & Management, Technical University of Denmark, Building 423 and 424, Produktionstorvet, 2800 Kgs, Lyngby, Denmark E-mail: lbr@ipl.dtu.dk Æ Tel.: +45-4525-6025 Fax: +45-4593-4467 E-mail: AW@ipl.dtu.dk 185 flatter and leaner structures, dependent on networks in which responsibility and decision making are becoming somewhat decentralized. Therefore, attention is drawn to the different ways in which the organisation of work in virtual enterprises (VEs) could be organised and controlled in another way than the manual work in the industrial production mode. In the first part of the last century organisational theory focused on the particular tasks and actions each industrial worker was supposed to undertake in order to produce goods and services as effectively as possible (Taylor 1911; Gilbreth 1911; Mooney and Reiley 1931; Fayol 1949). In the second half of the last century, it was no longer just the detailed task performance, but the whole interrelated system of tasks and roles that was in focus (Parsons 1951; Blau and Scott 1962; Emery and Triest 1965). From the beginning of the 1980s values and beliefs, also called organisational culture, began to become a study subject (Pascale and Athos 1981; Sayle 1982; Smircich 1983). At the same time, the concept of learning organisation (Argyris and Schon 1978; Schein 1985) was ¨ coined. From the middle of the 1990s the notion of virtual organisation became more and more in focus due to the fast increasing dissemination and implementation of information and communication technologies (ICT) and the increasing globalisation of the World Economy (Castells 1996/2000; Zimmerman 1997; Sieber 1998). Thus during the last century we have witnessed a steady expansion in the scope of the human aspects that are supposed to be subject to management and control: ‘‘...The extension of control was from the actions of a human person at work, to the relationships between human persons, to the beliefs and values of human persons and then to the very mind of human persons’’ (Stacey 2001: 3). The open question is, if this expansion in the scope of control is going to continue with the emergence of the virtual organisations or VEs? Or, on the contrary, the whole question of management and control must be reconsidered and reconstructed in accordance with new modes of production in the ‘Network Society’ (Castells 1996/2000). In this article we do not intent to provide definite answers to this question. The empirical data about work in VEs are still too fragmentary. But we will reflect on organisational and human aspects related to work in VEs. In particular we will focus on three core dimensions of work, which seem to be of special importance, namely identity building, trust and knowledge sharing among the participating members and teams in the VE. Finally, we will suggest and reflect on a specific approach, based on the paradigm of participatory management, which may be helpful to get more knowledge about the work in VEs. Furthermore, the approach may also serve the practical purpose as a method to help members of virtual networks to share identity, trust, and knowledge in order to strengthen social coherence as well as economic competitiveness. 2 The concept of VE Enterprises have always been networking with suppliers, service providers, and distributors. The new information technologies only seems to facilitate faster communication of such networks. Therefore, it is relevant to clarify, if or how it is possible to define the particular features of a VE, as well as the historical reasons for its emergence. Virtuality, when applied to enterprises, implies an 186 organisation of geographically dispersed entities dependent on electronic communication for carrying out their business activities (Jagdev and Thoben 2001). The members of virtual teams, therefore, work across space and time boundaries through links strengthened by webs of communication technologies. Much of the time they will communicate asynchronously as they are working in different time zones. This means that different members of the team may be in action through the full 24 h of the day. In addition, they will communicate electronically rather than face-to-face the most of the time. Virtuality, therefore, implies new challenges to the structuring of work as well as to the members of the virtual teams. Instead of just registering the emergence of VEs as an empirical fact, Castells traces the origin of the VEs to the transition from the industrial to the information society. According to him, there are at least four development aspects, that have given rise to VEs, namely: – – – – Globalization ICT Information Economy Dismantling of hierarchies The rising globalization has increased the need and the possibilities to reach global markets and utilise global resources in order to be competitive. The development and spread of ICTs have made it possible for enterprises to become more responsive to customers by allowing easier and faster assess to and delivery of their material products and services. In addition, they must be able to offer products and services, which more closely match the needs of the customers. The development of Information Economy means that exchange of information and services have increased more rapidly compared to physical goods. Information is an ideal product to trade over the Internet. Therefore, the growth of Information Economy has been stimulated by the network markets as well as encouraged them. Dismantling of hierarchies is caused by a historical development from industrial mass production to flexible, network oriented enterprises. This change emerges as a consequence of a transition through several intermediate forms of organisations of the traditional mass production. For instance, flexible specialization has been invented as a way to overcome market saturation by facilitating high-volume variable production, supplementing economics of scale with economics of scope. The geographical clustering of small and medium sized companies has created new agents of innovation and sources of job creation. In addition, the changes of the work organisation to increase efficiency, represent additional responses to competitive pressures with limited resources together with the measures of ‘lean manufacturing’. Moreover, the growth and change of inter-firm networking point to a shift away from the vertical bureaucracies towards new forms of horizontal corporations, for instance in form of multidirectional networks by small and medium-sized companies in industrial districts, subcontracting under an umbrella organisation. The intertwining of large corporations has becoming another possibility to form strategic alliances and combine resources for the development of high cost innovations. As the horizontal corporation sheds its obsolete organisational structures of the mass production model, the effort to internalise the benefits of network flexibility turns the corporation into a network itself. The actual operating unit becomes 187 the business project, enacted by a network. Castells defines the network enterprise as ‘that specific form of enterprise whose system of means is constituted by the intersection of segments of autonomous systems of goals. Thus, the components of the network are both autonomous and dependent vis-a-vis the network, and may be a part of other networks, and therefore of other systems of means aimed at other goals’ (Castells 1996/2000:171). The network enterprise embodies the culture of the informational, global economy. It transforms signals into commodities by processing knowledge. The successful organisations are those able to generate knowledge and process information efficiently in order to adapt to the variable geometry of the global economy. They must be flexible enough to change their means as rapidly as goals change, under the impact of fast cultural, technological, and institutional changes. And they must be able to innovate, because innovation becomes the key competitive weapon (Castells 1996/2000). Though the profile of VE’s is defined in accordance to its historical emergence, Castells has much less to say about the specific work competences and job profiles, which are needed in these types of enterprises. Castells’ definition of the network enterprise leads to the following key performance criteria for any network, namely its connectedness and its consistency. The former is the structural ability to facilitate ‘noise-free’ communication between its components. The latter refers to the extent to which there exist a sharing of identity, trust and knowledge. These statements correspond to the observations made by Lipparini & Fratocchi (1999: 1) that ‘‘...relational capability represents a distinctive competence for the transnational firm. The ability to access new knowledge ... and to leverage inter-firm relationships and opportunities ... emerges a critical factor for success on a global scale’’. However, pointing out such key performance criteria are only the beginning of a much more complicated issue. The real challenge is how to design approaches, which make it possible to define and continuously improve the work content? We will come back to that question later on. First, we will focus on the literature which have dealt with social and personal aspects of working in VEs. From one perspective, VEs may seem to be an attractive organisational form, because it may reduce risks of being restricted into a specific context and because it may enhance opportunities to seek new alliances in a fast changing environment. Its flexibility implies that it is formed and subsequently dissolved to exploit a particular chance. However, as mentioned by Weisenfeld et al. (2001: 325) the temporary VE co-operations may be embedded in a more or less stable network formed by VE staff. This is parallel to the observation by Nardi et al. (2002:237), that ‘collective subjects are increasingly put together through the assemblage of people found through personal networks rather than being constituted as teams created through organizational planning and structuring’. They document the rise of personal networks at the workplace and term them as intentional networks. They are significant as a defensive reaction in cases of new forms of workplace organisation. In addition, identity and trust between the various nodes or social actors within the VE is frequently mentioned in literature (Holst 2004; Englehardt and Simmons 2002; Alvesson 2001; Cunningham ans MacGregor 2000; Lipmack and Stamps 1997; Handy 1995; Larson 1992). 188 These observations indicate the necessity to include the subjective perspective of work organisation in the transformation of traditional bureaucracies to virtual organisations. The two defining characteristics of these organisations, interconnectivity and consistency, are basically a matter of human interaction and communication by the means of electronic tools. The resort to electronic media only definitely constrains the development of social relations. The limitations of e-mail communication and the disappointing experiences of early e-learning efforts represent convincing examples. Trying to compensate the loss of clues by electronically simulating social spaces have not been able to halt e.g. high drop out rates and faking of personal profiles due to low commitment. The often recommended measure to establish commitment through formal contract (Tange 2004) only underscores the point that the absence of face-to-face clues in VEs poses major challenges to the sharing of identity, trust and knowledge. The relatively high degree of absence of face-to-face clues, as well as the cultural differences between the ‘nodes’ of virtual organisations stress the need to focus on mechanisms that may rebuild or create motivation of sharing knowledge depending on the feeling of a common identity and trust between the different ‘nodes’ of the dispersed individuals, group or departments of different organisational entities. 3 Three core dimensions of work in VEs The issue of social integration of employees in VEs defines continuous tasks of building and strengthening identity, trust and shared knowledge among the staff. In the following sections we will discuss and reflect on these three features of VEs. 3.1 Identity In general terms, identity is a source of meaningful interpretation of human life. Identity building is the process of developing meaningful patterns of interpretation related to one or several cultural settings. The aim of identity building in modern organisations is to combine collective and individual interests in such a way that the organisation improves its capacity to act and react in accordance with changes of external economic, technological and political settings. Identity building is not an easy task. The preoccupation with identity as an issue indicates at least two challenges facing contemporary management in VEs: (1) The involvement of members of the organisation whole-heartedly in the transformation towards a more flexible and dynamic organisation. (2) The challenge to rethinking and redefining the long held notion of an organisation as a discrete unit with clear borders between internal and external activities. Identity plays a critical role in communication. However, identity may become ambiguous, when members of virtual teams are separated by temporal and spatial borders, because many of the basic cues of social interaction are absent. The question is, if members of virtual teams tend to develop an increasingly individualized identity working in temporary and dispersed teams? (Oechsler 2000; Castells 1996/2000). It is not yet possible to provide definite answers to this question. However, VE case studies may give some indications. In the case of ARC International, the employees were struck by the human implications. The loss of the physical headquarter of the company was strongly felt it had always been there, a 189 dependable safe ‘harbor’ for one to meet, relate and find community. Functions and relationships of the staff had to be recalibrated significantly. The way of working had to be revaluated and adapted. These changes felt exhilarating and threatening (Oechsler 2000). Initially, there was a natural, yet unfamiliar, experience of aloneness. Later on, people were reconstructing a sense of relationship and shared identity, ‘we were forced to be more focused and intentional in our relationship with ARC...’ (Oechsler 2000: 38) one statement said. Virtual operations also bring into focus the needs of people to feel valued, as there are no offices to designate status or frequent meetings to support face-to-face connection. The account of the ARC case concludes that staff with high levels of independence, tolerance of ambiguity, and accountability in combination with an organization with a high degree of alignment and commitment to the fundamental purpose, mission and values, are just as well critical factors as technical competences, adequate systems, procedures and protocols for the transition to become a VE. In another case study of a conventional organisation that went through the transformation process and became virtual, Hughes et al. (2001: 63) notes that ‘virtual teamwork...places a particular emphasis on communication and the development of ‘‘awareness’’ skills’. However, they find indications of loss of responsibility, as a culture of ‘passing the buck’ develops. Both case studies demonstrate the significant role of social relationships in the virtual organisation. In a comment to the work of Alice Lam comparing Japanese and British enterprises, Allan Næs Gjerding supports the view that globalisation could enhance innovative dynamism by stimulating the interaction between different cultures in cases where an innovation space for the exploitation of differences is established (Gjerding 1998, 11). Thus, the real challenge is a matter of a certain identity building that allow an appropriate creative response to unforeseen situations rather than a rigid, following-the-rule behaviour. (Rasmussen 2002) Then, the modeling approach is not only a matter of building machine-like structures, but also to empower the social actors to take responsibilities themselves and initiate corrections or changes of the procedures in the VE. In the past, organisational identity building has been devoted to formulate general value systems and try to convince the members and stakeholders to identify themselves with these value systems. However, if one focuses only on attitudes of commitment, the result is often somewhat superficial and unreliable. A proactive capability approach of identity building is more promising, because it opens for transformation and not only assimilation of value systems, strategies, planning, designing and production. We will describe how such an approach can be transformed to operation management later on. 3.2 Trust Virtual teamwork depends on mutual trust. Managers can no longer ‘shop up’ as a mean to ensure efficiency and quality of work. Direct supervision must be substituted by either formalised control procedures and/or self organisation and trust providing a social space for the ‘collaborating agents to share mutual expectations of socially acceptable behaviour’ (Gjerding 1998, 8). Trust may reduce uncertainty by providing what is expected from collaborators, which can contribute to the management of conflict and cooperation. This is of course also 190 a challenge in traditional forms of organisations, but it has obviously increased in big, virtual organisations based on a flexible, temporary and geographically dispersed selection of partners, depending on the particular type of customers. One strategy to solve this dilemma is to develop a still more low-context communication structure based on an increasing automation of routines and formalised standards for every interaction going on in the VE. Just like an engineer designs a machine by defining a network of interdependent parts and arranges them in a specific sequence anchored by precisely defined points of resistance or rigidity, so the managers of virtual business organisations may be tempted to modularise the total network system into functionally discrete subsystems and, if necessary, change the relationships between them. As a strategy for time and cost reductions, such a system approach has proved to be very effective as for instance the Cisco Systems has demonstrated (Castells 1996/2000). But is such an approach sufficient to ensure the collective spirit and thereby the collective outcome of the actions taken by different members of the organisation? The significance of cultural diversity for the building of trust within the VE becomes clear when considering definitions of organisational culture like the one offered by Alveson: ‘The shared rules governing cognitive and affective aspects of membership in an organisation and the means whereby they are shaped and expressed’ (Alveson 2002: 3). Thus, culture serves as a ‘grammar’, by which experiences are interpreted and actions guided. Each organisation develops its own cultural forms as the efforts of management to instil particular social values and behavioural patterns and the social constitution of the company combine. Specifically for technical collaboration, the interacting nodes must enhance their knowledge bases by new technical and organisational capabilities while simultaneously create and agree on the very knowledge by which the enhancement is interpreted and judged. Then, on what basis—beyond the ‘language’ of certified standards—does trust develop between employees in the various nodes of the virtual, networked enterprise? How do they manage to agree on a common understanding of collaboration to enhance their technical and organisational capabilities and of evaluating the achieved innovative performance? An approach based only upon the rationalism of the machine metaphor, by which human aspects tend to be eliminated, will strive to establish the ground rules through elaboration of contracts. Rooks et al. (2000) offers an alternative view, as they show that inter-firm cooperation depends on social embeddedness, by which it is possible to replace costly contractual planning. Lewicki and Bunker (1996) suggest the following forms of trust: – Calculus based trust The members of a team do what they are supposed to do, because they calculate that defaulting may be punished or in other ways be a disadvantage for them. – Knowledge based trust Members of the team trust each other as they know each other well enough to be able to predict each other’s behaviour. – Identification based trust Members of the team trust each other, because they are convinced that they share a common identity of values, intentions and goals. 191 Usually, initial collaboration is based on calculative behaviour. The participants will typically weigh up the benefits of collaboration against working in other teams or alone. With time there is a greater likelihood that the participants have become familiar with each other and identify each other in terms of common values and empathy. However, such a development is not a law of nature. Members of virtual teams, in particularly, often have very little time to develop normal forms of trust. Jarvenpaa and Leidner (1999), therefore, suggest a fourth form of trust, which they name Swift Trust. It is trust based on the assumption that the other participants of the team are trustworphy, because they are imployed in the same VE, or because they have been introduced by a third trusted partner. Thus, trust in VEs may be based not only on interpersonal relationships, but also on the degree to which it is assumed that the enterprise can control its employees as well as on the general reputation of the enterprise. 3.3 Sharing knowledge Usually, knowledge creation depends on interaction. For instance, when members of a team share their knowledge expertise and experiences and unite them in new ways, they are involved in a knowledge creation process. The successful outcome of teamwork in VEs depends on how well the members are able to share and create knowledge across disciplinary, spatial and/or cultural boundaries either asynchronously or in real-time communication. VEs depend heavily on effective knowledge management, because an essential part of their competitiveness rely on the process of building and integrating capabilities of the different ‘nodes’ of the virtual network. The partners in a virtual network must share their knowledge in order to be able to collaborate, while at the same time ensure their own business interests (Lemken et al. 2000). How these continuously active tensions between cooperation and competition are handled, depend on the levels of identity and trust. But the relationships are two-way, because open and fruitful knowledge sharing may enhance the identity and trust building too. Diversity of organisational culture has even more far-reaching implications for learning processes within the VE as well as in interaction with local resource bases. Lam’s study on Japanese and US firms shows that ‘relative to many Japanese MNEs, US firms have developed a greater organizational capacity for coordinating globally dispersed learning and embedding themselves in local innovation networks...’ (Lam 2003: 1). Lam demonstrates that the problems of knowledge sharing and transfer within a global context are amplified because of the greater diversity of knowledge and organisational systems and their socially embedded nature. Lam notes that ‘the different degree of tacitness of knowledge can also cause asymmetry in knowledge transfer’ (Lam 1998: 8), and concludes that contrary to the claim about global convergence, ‘cross-national collaboration can potentially lead to a strengthening of the societal specificity of the knowledge base of the firm, not weakening it’ (Op. cit.: 34). The concepts of low-context and high-context communication coined by Hall (1976: 91) are helpful in elaborating the problems of cross-cultural knowledge sharing: ‘...A high-context (HC) communication or message is one in which most of the information is either in the physical context or internalised in the person, while very little is in the coded, explicit, transmitted part of the message. 192 A low-context (LC) communication is just the opposite, i.e. the mass of the information is vested in the explicit code’. How do VEs relate to HC and LC communication and cultures? In one way, VEs are very much LC oriented, that is making everything formalised and explicit in models and standards in order to preclude misunderstandings in the electronic communication systems. A huge amount of engineering efforts are made to transform context and tacit knowledge to explicit information and knowledge in order to rationalise the activities in virtual organisations and to make secure procedures for management and control. In another way, VEs rely on flexible temporality, on the ability to accelerate or slow down work cycles, on the control of possible time lags and competencies as regards available partners and technology. Time is not managed under a linear, chronological manner of mass production, but as a differential factor with reference to the temporality of the other partners or departments ensured by the increasingly powerful and mobile information-processing machines and the network organisation. Some of this knowledge may be coded in the machines, as for instance in the example of the Cisco Systems, but it is very difficult to code al the tacit knowledge of that kind, because some is difficult or impossible to formalise. Managerial approaches may differ along variables other than those directly originated from national culture. Gann and Salter (2003: 29) focuses on the relationship between forms of governance and knowledge generation, capture and transfer in the project-based firm. Whether the firm is centralist, a tight federation, or it is a loose federation or even separatist, have profound implications for learning. As stated by Sapsed: ‘‘...... ‘knowledge transfer in dispersed teams is not an effortless integration of global diversity transmitted through digital networks, but involves often arduous, recursive work patterns with regular breakdowns in knowledge exchange’’’ (Sapsed et al. 2003: 22). How is it possible to establish communication of explicit and tacit knowledge across company and national cultures? Studies on international technology transfer and learning offer an interesting point of departure in addressing those questions. By defining a concept about dynamic assimilation, Bell (1997) seeks to understand the process, by which the contents of a technology, i.e. formal as well as tacit knowledge, are reconstructed in a new context. As the learning process implies a change of social practice within the organisation, technology transfer becomes equivalent to organisational change. Thus, technology transfer includes much more than just the moving of physical objects and formal instructions. Skills have to be assimilated dynamically in order to ensure that the knowledge, which are built into the machines, are understood to the extent that make it possible continuously to adapt and further develop the technology. During this learning process, formal knowledge is communicated, while at the same time the users as a community of practitioners (Wenger 1999) develop tacit knowledge and practical abilities in relation to the technology. Focusing on institutional learning and the firm as a learning organization, the characteristics of learning can be further elaborated. Even though some explicit knowledge may be open to inspection, the exploitation of that knowledge depends on firm specific capabilities which have to be shared during the process of technical collaboration. An interesting example of how technical and organisational aspects can influence knowledge sharing is demonstrated in the case study of Sigma, a 193 German freelancer network offering training courses and consulting services (Lemken et al. 2000). From the start, Sigma consisted of 20 members knowing each other from former collaboration. Then Sigma underwent a rapid growth to about 200 members in year 2000. An increasing lack of transparency and overview forced the management of Sigma to introduce the Bulletin Board System named ‘SigSys’ to overcome this lack. But due to varying use and technical limitations, this system ‘‘...could not serve as a reliable and effective information distribution means’’ (Lemken et al. 2000: 5). Then a prototype Website ‘Ariadnes Thread’, was created. In difference to ‘SigSys’, which was a group communication mean, ‘Ariadnes Thread’ served as an information base open to all members, However, neither ‘SigSys’ or ‘Ariadnes Thread’ became sufficient tools for knowledge sharing replacing the former personal relationship. Lemken et al. conclude: ‘‘A living tradition of oral and personal information distribution cannot simply be replaced by introducing computer-mediated communication and information systems. As these technical systems provide more anonymous access, mutual information exchange is not granted....To achieve sustained knowledge management all members and levels of an organization must cooperate. This becomes possible when everyone is participating in a process of developing common goals, values and procedures. Knowledge sharing requires mutual trust. By providing transparency about ongoing activities and openness for participation from all members a trustful environment is created’’ (Lemken et al. 2000: 9). In the following section we will discuss, how a research approach may combine context conditions, inter-subjective and action oriented issues of work in VEs. 4 Prospective research issues and methodology Research on work design in the VE is still limited and mostly based on the functionalistic approach. So far, no systematic investigation of virtual work in production and services following a combined functionalistic, interpretive and action research paradigm (Jackson 2000, 2003) has been conducted. While its potential may be well argued, empirical trends of presence, variation and distribution of the phenomenon of virtual work have yet to be established. Reviewing the literature, findings of the case studies of organisational change when going virtual, do offer interesting observations; however no coherent interpretation of this process and its results has emerged. Thus, we suggest an exploratory, pluralistic research design for the study of cases of organisations introducing virtual work processes. Based upon the intersubjective and socio technical key questions identified above, the effort will be to grasp the nature of virtual work, not as a matter of conceptualization only, but focussing on the scope and modalities of VE employees as agents of action in the change process towards building new structures of identity, trust and shared knowledge. An initial criteria to guide the selection of cases could be the complexity of the product and the number of each product produced. This would allow a com´ parison between a VE producing a complete ´ one of a kind solution, and a VE manufacturing more simple products in longer series. In covering the change of 194 practices in the organisation, each case study on VE work would have to cover three dimensions of enquiry. The distinction between context conditions, subjective norms and values, and collective action may be familiar; however, as outlined below, the phenomenon of virtual work implies several new meanings to these three dimensions of work. 4.1 The context dimension: technologies and organisation of virtual work The development of virtual work processes are closely linked to the rapid changes in computer science and programming. Outsourcing of production and services from industrialised to low-cost countries represents a current, major pattern in the growth of virtual work. The context of information technologies, the organisation of the work process, and employment conditions offered combine with labour market structures in various locations to create new jobs. Already, substantial evidence indicates the physical and psychological strain involved in those jobs. Any case study must collect precise accounts of stress, eye strain, and long hours of work, ‘burn-out’ and other work hazards. However, when a virtual work process is analysed, the ‘hidden costs’ need to be covered too. Heinrich Schwarz’ micro-ethnographic study of high-tech professionals in different industries in Silicon Valley show that the VE tends to render invisible a range of additional work activities that are necessary to make these ‘virtual’ forms of work viable. Schwarz identifies three arenas of additional work: – ‘Network’—building and maintaining enduring networks of professional relationships. – ‘Boundary work’—negotiating and constantly redefining the boundaries between work and leisure. – ‘Technology work’—the efforts involved in using up-to-date technology and media in an informed, appropriate, and selective way. Drawing on these accounts, a taxonomy of variables of virtual work could be suggested. The methodology adopted should be a mix of ordinary observation studies, analysis of written material and dialogue workshops together with representatives of the employees (Rasmussen 2003a). 4.2 The subjective dimension: work culture The individual adjustment to the realities of virtual work is part of the formation of social norms and values in the work process. This process also includes motivations, perceptions and tacit knowledge about the work. An informal work culture develops to regulate behaviour and the strategies of managerial control. As observed by Burawoy, this work culture involves elements of adjustment through coping strategies as well as elements of resistance. While workers often will establish games creating moments of relief as well as legitimacy of existing rules and routines, informal social norms and values also contribute to the continuous ‘re-negotiation’ of the employment contract. Disguising own work as work for the employer and other modes of secret obstruction intervenes in the relation between the controlling efforts of management and the actual effort of the worker in the labour process. Thus, the 195 balance between—on the one hand—work being performed at a certain level of intensity, discomforts endured, and autonomy renounced, and—on the other hand—benefits being granted such as job security, opportunities for social rewards and more power in higher positions, changes. The methods adopted to study this dimension will include individual qualitative interviews, focus group interviews and dialogue workshops. 4.3 The action dimension: collective strategies The work culture also involves activities beyond the labour process itself. The extensive personal networking among IT employees and the formal organisation of such networking, as new professional associations emerge, need to be studied in detail. Most IT employees are fairly young, have no history of trade unionism and have no traditional bonds with the labour movement. IT employees seek the exchange with peers, they want to discuss technology trends, identify skills and subjects for further training, exchange experience about the quality of training courses, find out about job opportunities, tips about career development, etc. These issues cannot be raised at their work place. They work extremely long hours within a formal and distanced culture. These professionals are not becoming organised because they feel themselves as victims of exploitation. In fact they like their work, they like the sector they work in and they are very eager to perform and do a good job. These professionals are not communities of people suffering from their work, who want to fight employers. They simply want to advance their careers, try to do the best to hedge against professionals’ risks and have come to recognize that collectively they can achieve more in this direction than they could on their own. An action research approach could try to assert such interests in the design of the work process itself. Dialogue workshops, experimental work organisation experiments, scenario workshops could be the tools in surveying and developing options for creating identity, building trust and sharing knowledge in virtual work. This action research approach should be guided by three principles: (1) participation and empowerment of VE employees, (2) sessions of face-to-face interaction, in addition to electronic communication, to capture rich qualitative data, and (3) a focus on detailed descriptions of virtual work as it is practised. Thus, the combined efforts of the proposed research methodology will be ‘...to see what it looks like ‘‘on the ground’’ and to come to an understanding of just how it works in the lived practice of everyday work’ (Hughes et al. 2001: 63). The results of the methodology suggested above are not limited just to define specific characteristics of the VEs, as the majority of the literature seems to do. Keeping in mind that the continuous, social shaping of working procedures and working life is essential for the efficiency and productivity of VEs, the suggested participatory methods, supplemented by the more ordinary methods of observation and interviews, may help to create a ‘flow’ of productive and engaged communication and learning. Thereby it could ensure a sufficient accommodation and flexibility of knowledge resources and management to interact purposefully in a rapid changing context of the more and more globalising economy. 196 5 Conclusion and perspectives In stead of just registering the emergence of VEs as an empirical fact, in this article the origin of the VEs is traced, based upon Castells’ exploration of the transition from industrialism to informationalism, and in particular the crisis of the vertical corporation. Castells’ claim that VEs are emerging as the basic organisational form of the informational global economy is underpinned by literature discussing various definitions of VE, thus documenting the trend, although its pervasiveness may still be questioned. Virtual enterprise represents an adequate response to current competitive pressures due to its defining characteristics: Interconnectedness and consistency. The two defining characteristics are basically a matter of human interaction and communication. In the VE, the absence of face-to-face clues poses major challenges to the creation of co-intentionality and togetherness, as proven by the disappointments of early e-learning efforts. In the face of ever-growing pressures for improved performance and enhanced shareholder value, many executives instinctively try to exert more and more control over the organisations they lead. During the last century management by control became extended from actions to relationships to beliefs and values and further on to ‘‘...(very mind of human persons’’ (Stacey 2001). However, such an obsession with control may not only be ineffective, it may turn out to be counterproductive. For instance, there are serious risks that identity becomes more and more individualised as formalisation of work procedures are expanding and trust is replaced by legal contracting. Both tendencies may enhance one-way instruction and discourage attempts of sharing knowledge. The consistency and interconnectedness of the cooperation between the different ‘nodes’ of the virtual network may be seriously hampered, if these tendencies are allowed to expand even more in the future. However, another route is possible too. Several companies have experienced, that relinquishing some control turns out to be an effective strategy for responding to a dynamic and fluid environment. By creating infrastructures and cultures that enable employees to communicate effectively in virtual networks, they may gain significant benefits in the areas of innovation, knowledge sharing and response time. Such virtual networks defy many hierarchical practices. They can not be easily controlled, if they are to be effective, because in their most powerful form, they are self- organised in their nature. Members of these networks earn their right to participate by bringing relevant expertise and knowledge to bear. An increasing number of employees are performing their jobs on Web-enabled technology with synchronous or asynchronous communication. As a consequence, they may be able to make more quick decisions together with suppliers, customers and other members of virtual networks. However, it will happen only if the leaders are able to facilitate identity, trust and knowledge sharing. Several participatory tools and methods are available to facilitate collaboration in VEs. In addition to participatory transformation by storytelling workshop other methods like Future Creating Workshops, SWOT, Search conference, interactive planning and so on, can also be applied depending on time and participants (Rasmussen 2003b, 2004). 197 But such approaches presuppose that the leaders provide the conditions necessary for the collaborative, virtual network to flourish. As the example of Sigma demonstrates, the implementation of computer-mediated communication and information systems is not sufficient to ensure identity, trust and knowledge sharing. In addition, the whole paradigm of control must be changed too from the principle of direct supervision to evaluation of results. The leaders of VEs must provide the necessary reward system and infrastructure, which may stimulate the employees’ participation in the formation of a clear vision, a consistent identity, a visible trust and continuous knowledge sharing through the elaboration of a creative learning environment. The defining attributes of the VE are basically of a social and technical nature. While formalisation and software tools may assist the transaction of information, the development of social relations of exchange, learning and innovation may lead to shared knowledge creation. Research is needed to explore electronic togetherness, not as a substitute for conventional personal contacts, but as the development of co-intentionality binding together and integrating the distributed tasks of the VE. A purely functionalistic approach is not sufficient, because it leaves out the inter-subjective key questions. On the other hand, a purely interpretive approach is insufficient too, because it is often more analytically than change oriented in its practical approach. 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