Virtual Corporations Research Articles

THE POTENTIAL OF VIRTUAL REALITY AND ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE IN MODELING PRODUCT INNOVATIONS OF VIRTUAL CORPORATION

This scientific article explores the characteristics of modeling product innovations in virtual corporations that operate in online environments (without physical offices). The authors note that the proliferation of virtual reality and artificial intelligence in modeling product innovations for virtual corporations holds great potential. According to the provisions outlined, the article aims to determine the potential of virtual reality and artificial intelligence in modeling product innovations for virtual corporations. The research demonstrates that while the key characteristics of effective product innovations for virtual corporations are shaped by advancements in information processing, organizational dynamics, and the development of production systems, virtual reality, and artificial intelligence tools create the potential for their modeling. The practical significance of the research lies in expanding the knowledge about the impact of VR and AI tools on the processes of modeling product innovations and in shaping opportunities for developing strategies for their effective utilization.

Corporate Governance in the Digital Economy

The task of organizing corporate governance of groups of business systems that carry out industrial activities in the Industry 4.0 paradigm and are focused on a single market segment is considered. The subjects of governance are defined as residents of corporate business relations (stakeholders) who provide management or action the business as an investor, owner, lender, etc. The objects of governance are defined as business systems and their groups (business complexes, State corporations) formed as a result of institutional and infrastructural transformations in the primary and aggregated parts of industry. The innovative component (subject), corresponding to the globalization of economic and digitalization of business processes, introduced an information system into the management channel that performs modeling and evaluating the effectiveness of corporate business relations in a virtual environment using digital twins of governance objects. Digital twins are the information components of a virtual corporation deployed on a platform of a decentralized ecosystem. The criterion for the quality of governance is the effectiveness of the corporation, formed in a balanced space of parameters relevant to financial and production indicators. The technology is described and the scheme of the corporate governance system is presented, which complementarily combines the action of business management systems and artificial intelligence (scheduler) of the virtual environment on the groups. It is proposed to extend the mechanisms of corporate governance to the business relations of the parties regulated in the digital institutional environment by electronic procedures.

Convergence of employers’ and students’ expectations in the educational environment of the agricultural university

In the digital age, a modern university is becoming a driver for the development of complex multi-agent ecosystems and a supplier of a new type of human resources, characterized not only by intellectual potential and high qualifications but also by such qualities in demand in the labor market as creativity, critical thinking, the need for continuous learning and “agency”, which is understood as the ability to self-organize and proactivity [1]. The education system and universities themselves face challenges that force us to turn to the once-actual ideas of integration and convergence, which can fulfill the increased need to achieve synergy effects and multiplier indicators that contribute to achieving high ratings in a short time. It is convergent processes that lie at the heart of the developing communicative space of the university today, whose activities are based on the intersection of the interests and expectations of various actors, which are implemented on multi-agent platforms. At the same time, the opportunities that are opening up due to the rapid introduction of digital technologies require restructuring the space of interactions between subjects towards the formation of flexible forms, network models, alliances, virtual corporations, connecting clusters built on the principles of active cooperation, exchange of best practices and developments.

An Approach for Creating Business Model for Using Virtual Tools in Startup Companies

The forms of business organizations follow some steady trends driven by tendencies like the rapid development of IT and the transition of information systems. The application of virtualization and the use of virtual tools by start-up companies are discussed. The article reviews the phases of the business model and software product development. The activities in them are grouped and sample tools for each is listed. Also, the modern form of organization as the virtual office and corporation are reviewed as becoming necessary. In detail, the startup company is reviewed in the form of a virtual corporation with its characteristics. They are classified and areas of application and management issues are discussed. Finally, the coverage of activities with virtual tools is evaluated and summarized.

A New Outline of Corporate Law

This paper continues to investigate legal corporate governance issues. Over the last decade few topics in corporate law have proven as alluring and as elusive as the connection between information technologies (IT), corporate governance (CG) and corporate law. The dynamics of the development of modern law are determined by many factors, one of which is the rapid involvement of IT in all spheres of life. Everything in physical life can become a digital sign. We are in the era of successful small firms whose business models are built on a combination of software platforms, telecommunications technology and commercial transactions conducted outside the firm. IT allows them to remotely carry out various business transactions, including corporate actions, providing participation in the governance of the corporation. The term IT covers a large array of electronic vehicles from software to artificial intelligence. Due to technological development, IT has quickly entered corporate governance structures in a large number of corporations. Some scholars argue that artificial intelligence will also be the new reality of corporate life in the very near future. Several questions are raised in connection with this. For example, do current laws need any changes? What are the prerequisites for modern corporate law. There has been a progressive revision of the fundamentals of corporate law over the last few decades, considering that key provisions of corporate law were created during and after the industrial revolution. I explore two paths of legal research in CG and corporate law: using IT for CG procedures, and an adjustment of CG rules for e-corporations. In addition the question is raised whether a virtual corporation has to have a corporate structure similar to the structure of a modern corporation. This new outline of corporate law is a new understanding of current corporate law.

Implementation of virtual corporation: the challenge of future business in Indonesia

This paper presents a descriptive analysis of the development of virtual organizations in the business. Recently, many commercials activities were carried virtually. Online shops are growing everywhere; furthermore hotel reservations, ticket booking, as well as purchasing process are all done through the cyberspace. In the government, administrative process has migrated to electronic systems such as E-budgeting, E-KTP, E-procurement and online visa application. This era is not excessive if it is said as the era of E-anything. To address the issue, we employed survey based study on APJII survey and other related sources. Furthermore, the data is analysed based on the theory of development of virtual organizations and virtual corporations by using the six social sciences paradigm. This study showed that the Internet users in Indonesia have increased progressively from year to year. Therefore, the e-commerce market in Indonesia is growing rapidly as well. By looking at the growth of Internet users and the reasons for their use, it can not be denied that the internet-based business in Indonesia is a very promising (from the electronic shop, logistics and online transportation (known as online taxi) such as, Gojek, Grab, UBER, etc). One thing that should be prepared is the wise and proper government regulation. The electronic technology-based business activity of course is a necessity, and can’t be inhibited its development. However, if the infrastructure such as the regulation and culture of the community are not ready yet, then it can lead to the social conflict such as a conflict between conventional taxi and online taxi players (Gojek, Grab, Uber etc). We hope this paper will open the horizon and our mind of looking at the emergence of new patterns in business.

Corporate Governance on Ethereum's Blockchain

New blockchain-based technology allows users to form what's called Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAO), which can operate similarly to a publicly-traded corporation. Specifically, cryptocurrency holders can replace traditional shareholders, who can then appoint members of a governing body similar to a board of directors. This governing body can then vote to issue currency to an account holder who can then act similarly to a Chief Financial Officer, who can then pay the salaries of executives, employees, and directors. Because this is all done on using the blockchain protocol, these virtual corporations can operate pseudonymously without government intervention using what's called Smart Contracts (contracts that execute without human intervention).

Walden Paddlers

This case describes the process that entrepreneur Paul Farrow went through to establish his kayak company between 1992 and 1996. After being laid off from a more traditional corporate position, Farrow came across an idea that suited his business skills, experience, and values. The case chronicles the steps he took to be the first in the industry to design and produce an inexpensive, high-performance recreational kayak from recycled plastic materials. Key to Walden Paddlers' $1-million sales in 1995 was the company's ability to forge close alliances with key suppliers and customers while keeping fixed costs down by managing a virtual corporation.

Decomposition based hybrid VNS–TS algorithm for distributed parallel factories scheduling with virtual corporation

The main purpose of this paper is to develop a decomposition based hybrid variable neighborhood search/tabu search (DVT) algorithm for multi-factory production network scheduling problem where a number of different individual factories collaborate despite their different objectives. It is assumed some of the network's factories are interested in total processing cost minimization whereas the remaining factories are interested in the production profits maximization. It is also assumed that jobs can migrate from their original factory to other factories but a transportation time is incurred. Our proposed algorithm comprises of a tabu search and a variable neighborhood search with several local search algorithms. In this hybridization, to improve the search ability of the algorithm, we make use of guiding principles with ordering of neighborhood structures by mixed integer linear programming relaxation. In the proposed algorithm, the parallel search strategy is designed for a scalar bi-objective. Multiple objectives are combined with L1-metric technique then each sub-search procedure evolves separately until a good approximation of the Pareto-front is obtained. The non-dominated sets obtained from our algorithm and original heuristic (algorithm without ordering concept) are compared using three different indices. Furthermore, the problem is modeled as a mixed integer linear programming and solved by improved ϵ-constraint approach (IEA) with CPLEX solver. The results of comparisons between IEA and DVT algorithm showed the proposed algorithm yielded most of the solutions in the net non-dominated front.

Giving Students Real-World Experience via Virtual-Reality Learning

The iMBA program at the Lake Forest Graduate School of Management (LFGSM) allows students to participate in a virtual internship program within a simulated manufacturing company. iMBA lets students work in a virtual corporation with real products, customers, competitors, opportunities, and challenges. This immersion-based, virtual reality learning is considered stickier than passive sit back and observe style lectures as students are more emotionally engaged. Because academic learning and virtual internship occur simultaneously students are able to immediately apply the scholastic concepts, enabling them to more rapidly develop and practice critical business skills.

Organizational design drivers to enable emergent creativity in web‐based communities

PurposeIn the stream of works studying complexity from an organizational viewpoint, literature is focused mainly on describing new organizational forms (holonic organization, circular organization, virtual corporation, …) and on conceptual works identifying new managerial principles to manage emergence (job enrichment, de‐regulation, …). But literature still lacks “actionable knowledge” on management of emergent processes. Therefore, the authors seek to propose an empirical analysis with the aim of finding the organizational design drivers that enable self‐organization. As creativity could be understood as an important precondition for both adaptation and innovation in an age of complexity, the authors focus on creativity emergence process.Design/methodology/approachThe analysis is based on a framework of self‐organization principles. The authors derived it from the literature and used it to empirically analyse open innovation web‐based platforms for creativity. They are deemed particularly important because their open and collaborative innovation process is often self‐organized and their collaboration relationships seem to be loosely coupled. Therefore, they are a good ground to investigate the alternatives to managerial hierarchy and the knowledge‐based organizations associated with emergence and self‐organization.FindingsThe results highlight important organizational design choices to enable self‐organization process: organic structure composed by activity systems to enable reconfiguration; roles enlargement and enrichment and cognitive diversity to enable redundancy; collaboration and participatory decision‐making and social capital and networking to enable interconnection; values adaptation, motivations and rules to enable sharing principle.Originality/valueThe paper contributes to the empirical knowledge on emergence process, translating the principles of self‐organization in managerial actions.

KFTGA: A tool for tracing knowledge flow and knowledge growth in knowledge sharing environment

Knowledge management is an interdisciplinary research area and it has been perceived in different perspectives by researchers and practitioners who come from various backgrounds. Nevertheless, the ultimate goal in knowledge management is to create a learning organization in a knowledge sharing environment. In a knowledge sharing environment, the learning communities are actively involved in building and developing the community knowledge through message postings, resource management and collaborative work besides performing the individual learning. A system, called KFTGA, has been built in this project that is capable to trace the knowledge flow of a pre-defined knowledge domain developed by the community members. Knowledge in this context is in the form of opinion, suggestions, and tangible objects from knowledge sharing activities which are traceable from the textual descriptions. Two salient aspects in KFTGA are having the ability to determine whether the knowledge that flows among the members is relevant to the knowledge context in the community and to trace whether there is a growth in knowledge building in relation to predefined topics. In order to achieve that, this paper describes three mathematical models for computing the relevancy of the knowledge flow, measuring the knowledge growth and examining the variations between documents. Finally, it elaborates how KFTGA can be applied in various knowledge sharing and knowledge flow model predominantly known as SECI model and its extended variations applied in virtual organizations, peer-to-peer team and multinational corporations.

Significance of Lean, Agile and Leagile Decoupling Point in Supply Chain Management

A supply chain is a system, consisting of material suppliers, production facilities, distribution services and customers. These are all linked together through the downstream feed forward flow of materials and the upstream feedback flow of information. Several organizations have adopted the concept of “Lean” to improve the performance and position in the market place and. The “Agile” manufacturing has been recently emerged as a customer demand driven option. It defines as using market knowledge and virtual corporation to exploit profitable opportunities in a volatile marketplace, leanness stands for developing a value stream to eliminate all waste, including time and to ensure a level schedule. Leagile is one suitable way to exploit the both approaches, lean and agile. It requires the selection and setting up of a material flow decoupling point. The positioning of the decoupling point, therefore, depends upon the longest lead-time and at the same time customer is prepared to tolerate this time lag and the point at which variability in product demand dominates. Downstream from the decoupling point all products are pulled by the customer demand, that is why that part of supply chain is market driven. Upstream from the decoupling point the supply chain is essentially forecast driven. This review paper will explore the approaches of lean, agile and leagile decoupling point to suggest the most suitable supply chain practices, processes and procedures. Several factors are needed for lean and agile practices’ success; not only is it necessary to implement most of the technical tools but an organization’s culture needs transforming too.

Embedded Relationships: Implications for Networks, Innovation, and Ecosystems

In today’s dynamic market environment, no single actor has enough knowledge and sufficient human resources to innovate on a globally competitive level. This trend has accelerated the need for a deeper understanding of relationship management in alliances, virtual corporations, and networks to maximize capacity for innovation. We refer to these structures as service ecosystems and propose a framework for investigating how innovation occurs in service ecosystems. Specifically, we review the conceptualization of relationship as it has evolved from the relationship marketing, service and business-to-business marketing, and service-dominant logic literature. Then, we draw on centrality and embeddedness to explicate how actors in these service ecosystems draw on resources from their extended networks for innovation. We propose an embedded relationships framework for investigating innovation as a dynamic and continuous ecosystem of information seeking and information processing. Future research directions are discussed.

Business Continuity Management: A Standards-Based Approach

ABSTRACT Business enterprises are increasingly realizing the importance of business continuity management (BCM). Availability BS 25999 Standard has facilitated a consistent methodology that organizations can follow in designing their BCM System. This paper intends to provide a conceptual understanding of BCM right from BCM Policy to BCM maturity by describing the steps involved in the implementation of BCM Standard – BS 25999 – to ensure business continuity in the event of an outage. The key BCM tasks have been categorized into three phases of business continuity – Pre-event Preparation, Event Management, and Post-event Continuity. This paper also highlights some of the challenges experienced by the author in carrying out Risk Assessment and Business Impact Analysis. The Business Continuity Maturity Model® of Virtual Corporation is provided (with their permission) as a tool to strengthen business continuity maturity or organizations.

Un modèle ancien d'entreprise virtuelle : le secteur de l'édition scolaire

First researchers have described virtual corporation as a new organization for the 21st Century enabled by the Information and Communication Technologies improvements. But this empirical research based on French educational publishers establishes that the principles of virtual corporation are ancient. In a grounded theory approach, many interviews with executives of virtual corporation draw a representation of dynamic alliances systems, in which publishers are orchestra conductor and broker of a network of numerous specialists (authors, printer, artistic professionals,) designed to realize a project: a schoolbook publishing. This study exhibits two other empirical observations about the virtual corporation (in educational publishing industry). First, it is not due to ICT development. Second, it’s goal is not to use the services of best-in-the-world providers (but rather to regenerate creativity).

Virtual company formation for agile manufacturing using ANP and Goal Programming

In the current competitive environment of further product customisation and agile response to customer requirements, stand-alone corporations are having difficulties in excelling without the aid of the specialised expertise and cooperation of other organisations. Temporary cooperation, achieved through virtual enterprises or corporations, may be valuable in satisfying these dynamic market and customer needs and expectations. In an agile manufacturing environment marked by rapid change and specialised activities and products, the success of the Virtual Corporation (VC) depends on the performance and hence appropriate selection of the various constituent organisations that form the VC which are termed as Virtual Constituent Companies (VCCs). This paper discusses one such comprehensive VCC selection methodology using Analytical Network Process (ANP) and Goal Programming (GP). The VCCs within this multi-phased methodology are evaluated on qualitative as well as quantitative factors.

Quanto è innovativa l’impresa virtuale?

Virtual Corporation means a network of independent enterprises that, by using ICT, temporarily share their distinctive capabilities, until they have reached a well-defined goal. Most of the theories on V.C. consider this configuration as congruent with the progressive erosion of traditional organizational boundaries, which today is due in large part to globalization; it must be admitted, nevertheless, that actually, after more than 15 years from the first theorization, V.C. remain only a prototypal object of expensive research projects, but irrelevant at an economic level, also in the field of the new economy. In the book which is object of this critical note, F.M. Barbini – a young researcher in Management Science – analyzes V.C. from an original point of view, adopting the categories of the “Teoria dell’Agire Organizzativo” (Theory of Organizational Action), developed by B. Maggi in the paradigm of the Simonian Bounded Rationality. Barbini offers a lot of useful reflections not only on the V.C. but on the organizations in general; reflections that are of great interest for the sociology too, e.g.: on inter-organizational cooperation and its regulation; relationship between organizational structure and technology; role of the social capital for the development of the enterprises. The main thesis is that V.C. is a potentially innovative configuration; compared with other forms of organizational network it is more dynamic and flexible: therefore, it could fit better situations of high variability and uncertainty. However, the potential of innovation is not automatically derived from the adoption of new management techniques or ICT: it is fundamental that the partners manage and exchange information in a developed way. To this end, it is important the construction of a trustworthy climate among the partners: Barbini considers of fundamental importance to resort to prearranged trade agreements, to guarantee the certainty of the sanctions against unreliable behaviors. From a sociological point of view, this argument seems to be a weak point in his analysis. We suggest that trade agreements are necessary but not sufficient to create trustworthiness; it could be useful to enact formal reputation systems, based on indicators of activity and partners, certifications, circle of trust and other means developed and used, for example, in attesting CSR

Why Not Share Rather Than Own?

Sharing is an alternative form of distribution to commodity exchange and gift giving. Compared to these alternative modes, sharing can foster community, save resources, and create certain synergies. Yet outside of our immediate families, we do little sharing. Even within the family, there is increased privatization. This article addresses impediments to sharing as well as incentives that may encourage more sharing of both tangible and intangible goods. Two recent developments, the Internet and intellectual property rights doctrines, are locked in a battle that will do much to determine the future of sharing. Businesses may lead the way with virtual corporations outsourcing the bulk of their operations. Whether virtual consumers sharing some of their major possessions are a viable counterpart remains an open question.

The strategic virtual corporation: bridging the experience gap

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'.