Advanced Series in Management Managing Imaginary Organizations

Until recently real people worked in real locations to conduct business, whether in large corporations, or smaller businesses. These papers consider the implications for managers directing staff who work outside the physical confines of a location using telecommunication technologies. Traditionally, organizations have consisted of collections of people who physically gather together in one place to carry out some kind of coordinated activity. Today, however, business is increasingly relying on "virtual" processes in which people engage in internet-mediated interactions that often span the globe. These processes create intangible "imaginary organizations" that exist largely as a concept in the minds of electronically interacting individuals. As more and more high value-added work is performed by knowledge workers interacting through electronically mediated networks, however, managers and management researchers must evolve new concepts for monitoring, interpreting, assessing, and managing activities carried out in such virtual settings. This volume presents an important multidisciplinary approach to understanding these new kinds of imaginary organizations and their processes. Close reading of the papers in this volume should reward the reader with new insights into the inner workings of the new kinds of virtual organizations and processes that are gaining increasing prominence in business.