Title: The strategic virtual corporation: bridging the experience gap

Authors: Christoph Lattemann, Soren Kupke

Addresses: Corporate Governance and E-Commerce, University of Potsdam, August-Bebel-Str. 89, 14482 Potsdam, Germany. ' Corporate Governance and E-Commerce, University of Potsdam, August-Bebel-Str. 89, 14482 Potsdam, Germany

Abstract: As the knowledge drain in virtual organisations is much more significant than in traditional companies, an |experience gap| between virtual corporations and traditional organisations may emerge over time. Hence, the often postulated advantage of the |best-of-everything| organisation turns to a disadvantage. As a consequence, virtual corporations have to develop strategies to minimise the drain of experience in between their different projects. On an analytical base, this contribution depicts a new organisational concept for efficient project-based collaboration among value-creation partners to cope with problems such as knowledge drain, financial drain and inefficient learning processes in virtual organisations. Referring to the theoretical concepts of virtual corporations, Porter|s value chain and the approach of the resource-based view, a new approach for the collaboration among business partners can be derived, which combines the advantage of loosely coupled organisations with traditional forms of collaborations. The new organisational concept is named |Strategic Virtual Organisation|.

Keywords: virtual enterprise; experience curve; experience gap; strategic virtual corporation; project-based collaboration; value creation; knowledge drain; financial drain; inefficient learning; value chain; resource-based view; web based communities.

DOI: 10.1504/IJWBC.2007.013770

International Journal of Web Based Communities, 2007 Vol.3 No.1, pp.4 - 15

Published online: 27 May 2007 *

Full-text access for editors Full-text access for subscribers Purchase this article Comment on this article