IHRM and Virtual Organization Meaning and Features of Virtual Organization

A virtual organization is a temporary or permanent collection of geographically dispersed individuals, groups, organizational units, or entire organizations that depend on electronic linking in order to complete the production process. Virtual organizations do not represent a firm’s attribute but can be considered as a different organizational form and carries out the objectives of cyber diplomacy.

Unfortunately, it is quite hard to find a precise and fixed definition of fundamental notions such as virtual organization or virtual company. The term virtual organization ensued from the phrase “Virtual reality”, whose purpose is to look like reality by using electronic sounds and images. The term virtual organization implies the novel and innovative relationships between organizations and individuals. Technology and globalization both support this particular type of organization.

Virtual can be defined as “not physically existing as such but made by software to appear to do so”, in other words “Unreal but looking real“. This definition precisely outlines the leading principle of this unconventional organization, which holds the form of a real (conventional) corporation from the outside but does not actually exist physically and implicates an entirely digital process relying on independents web associates. Thus, virtual organizations are centred on technology and position physical presence in the background. Virtual organizations possess limited physical resources as value is added through (mobile) knowledge rather than (immovable) equipment.

Virtual organizations necessitate associations, federations, relations, agreements and alliance relationships as they essentially are partnership webs of disseminated organizational entities or self-governing corporations.

Planning, recruitment, development, maintenance, retention, and socialisation are the common HR issues that ensure right HR tor right job. These also control and regulate the antecedent conditions of performance. Virtual organisations are staffed by highly proficient workers who are left to do their own things and produce highly competitive products or services.

Jobs in virtual organisations being knowledge-based are assumed to require greater skills, have greater variety and offer better quality of working life (QWL). From HR point of view, virtual organisation has both sides of the coin. The one (positive) side is greater job autonomy and more financial stability, which are the most sought-after things by the workers in any organisation. This is so because of the reduced commuting, lunches and the clothing costs.

The employee selection is a very crucial area in virtual organisation. The reason being people have to work in a virtual set up. Hence, there are certain requirements need to be met to work in virtual organisations.

The important ones are:

• Self-guided and motivated because employees are left to ‘do their own thing’
• Knowledgeable about the organisational procedures
• An effective communicator
• Adaptable
• Familiarity with the job
• Result-oriented

Features of Virtual Organization

Information is power. The absence of information and knowledge renders virtual teams to emas­culate and ineffective. Information technology, i.e., seamless web electronic communication media does not allow happening this and keeps the organisation going. According to Pattanayak, following are the salient features of virtual organisations:

Technology:

New technology has transformed the traditional ways of working. In particular, the worlds of computing and telephony are coming together to open up a whole new range of responsi­bilities. Computer Telephony Integrations (CTI) will usher in a new revolution to the desktop. The CTI has traditionally been used in all call centre applications.

E-mail Integration:

Integrating Short Message Service (SMS) into the existing e-mail infrastruc­ture allows the whole organisation to take advantages of SMS products such as ‘Express Way’.

Office System Integration:

SMS technology can greatly enhance the existing or new office systems, e. g., phone messages can be sent via SMS rather than returning it in a message book.

Voice Mail Alert:

SMS technology added to the existing voice mail system builds an effective method of receiving voice mail alerts.

Mobile Data:

This enables a laptop to retrieve information anywhere through the mobile phone network. Mobile data communications revolutionize where and how work is done. In the past, corpo­rate information has been inaccessible from many places where it is needed. One’s ability to link laptop to mobile phone keeps one connected to his/her virtual organisation from anywhere.

Advantage:

Virtual organisations offer the following advantages:

1. It saves time, travel expenses and eliminates lack of access to experts.
2. Virtual teams can be organised whether or not members are in reasonable proximity to each other.
3. Use of outside experts without incurring expenses for travel, logging and downtime.
4. Dynamic team membership allows people to move from one project to another.
5. Employee can be assigned to multiple, concurrent teams.
6. Teams’ communication and work reports are available online to facilitate swift responses to the demands of the (global) market.
7. Employees can accommodate both personal and professional lives.
8. Virtual teams allow firms to expand their potential labour markets enabling them to hire and retain the best people regardless of their physical locations.

Disadvantages:

1. The lack of physical interactions with its associated verbal and non-verbal cues and also the synergies that often accompany face-to-face interaction
2. Non-availability of paraverbal and non-verbal cues such as voice, eye movement, facial expression, and body language which help in better communication.
3. Ability to work even if the virtual teams are miles apart and the members have never or rarely met each other face-to-face.

But the fact remains that despite these drawbacks; virtual organisations have become a reality and are growing in popularity. By now, several successful cases of virtual organisations abound in our country. It is the explicitly designed ‘Group Ware’, computer based system to support virtual groups, enables the virtual organisations to work in order to achieve a common goal.