A Journey Towards the Processual Understanding of Virtual Organisations

Abstract

Virtual reality has been gaining increasing attention as an emergent and highly significant form of work organisation. Discussions on the significance of virtual organisations and how information technology can help organisations to transform themselves away from their traditional physical boundaries have improved our understanding of what virtual organisations are, or what they are not. However, little is known of the process of organising that enables this transformation and virtual functioning. In this paper, we suggest this is in part because the interpretation of organisation used to interrogate the phenomenon derives from a normative scientific approach geared to understanding the world in static terms. The implication is that traditional conceptualizations of the virtual organisation concern themselves more with the nature of organisation itself, in terms of traditional physical and temporal boundaries, rather than the organising processes that drive virtual organisational emergence and form its unique character of being virtually boundless and spaceless. In order to overcome these difficulties, the paper identifies key elements that may be said to constitute the virtual organisation and, using an understanding of the organising process derived mainly from the thinking of the philosopher Alfred North Whitehead, re-presents them in process terms. We suggest that such a repositioning of virtual organisation within a process world-view may go some way toward enabling a deeper understanding of the nature of virtuality and its implications for new and emerging forms of work organisation.