Organizações virtuais

Virtual and conventional organizations

Organizations were always partly shaped by the available technologies. The industrial revolution generated two dominant organizational forms, the bureaucracy and its effect in the multidivisional organization.
These were based on organizational patterns of communication with a vertical downwardly directed flow of command and an upwardly directed stream of information.
The informational revolution has made possible new organizational forms that are embedded in digital information and communication technologies. Communication is a vital element of any organization, but it is crucial in virtual organizations (Monge 1998).
Technology, organizational structure and communication patterns are increasingly closely linked (Koza 1998). That is one reason why in recent years much talked and written about virtual organizations. The coordination of this new organizational form is made possible by the use of information and communication technologies to the constraints of time, space and organizational stability to overcome. There are new virtual organizational forms used to create a new repertoire of Internet-related communications.

The new paradigm of the organization of labor: work and collaborate at any time and from anywhere - local or virtual - space. A virtual workshop is a space in cyberspace where workers apart from their managers and their activity. For many people this is already a reality, and it is expected that this new form of work in the future on an ever wider scale will spread.

This profound change in the methods not only set new challenges for employers, managers and employees, but also to researchers who have to try these new organizational forms to identify empirically and theoretically to conceive. The challenges created by the physical separation of workers and managers associated with teleworking arrangements such as virtual teams. Many managers ask themselves: "How can I manage my employees if I cannot see