Overcoming Location Boundaries: Virtual Enterprise

Based on the considerations in Chap. 1 and in particular Fig. 1.2 , Chaps. 5 and 6 were primarily concerned with the potential of technologies for the coordination of service provision, which is leading to an increasing dissolution of existing corporate boundaries both internally (cf. Chap. 5 ) and externally (cf. Chap. 6 ). Strict hierarchies are dissolving in favor of flat, modular structures; traditional corporate boundaries are blurring into network-like corporate connections. This trend is reinforced by the question of the location of service provision. This can be physical, location-based, as mostly observed on traditional companies, or – on the basis of new technologies – location-independent. As a result, so-called virtual organizational arrangements emerge, which have already been briefly discussed in Chap. 6 . They further reinforce the effect of dissolving corporate boundaries. This aspect of the dissolution of place as well as its conditions and implications for current and future organizational forms of service provision based on the division of labor are the focus of this chapter.