Abstract
The new economy is the result of the information revolution, of shrinking and ever more powerful computers, and the emergence of an efficient, ubiquitous and invisible communications infrastructure. It is characterized by three distinctive attributes: it is global, it favors intangible things—ideas, information, knowledge, relationships, and it is intensely inter-linked. As more and more organizations prepare to “go digital”, only few of them really seem to recognize what implications this transition will have on their business processes and on the organization as a whole. The transformation involves much more than setting up a digital infrastructure and requires even more than the ability to enter into a virtual collaboration with other partners. Organizations need to become “smart”, i.e. knowledge driven, internetworked, dynamically adaptive to new organizational forms and practices, learning as well as agile in their ability to create and exploit the opportunities offered by the digital economy. The article considers technologies and trends towards inter-operable tools for organizational agility and flexibility based on distributed business operations. The European Commission has been supporting these developments through its various research programmes since the early 1980s. Besides the notable research and technological development (RTD) achievements, important progress has also been made in the area of standardization and through consensus building between the research and business communities in Europe. It is further recognised that technology alone will not be able to sustain the creative potential of the digital economy if the socio-economic, the legal and regulatory frameworks are not adequately taken into account.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
ACTS (1998) Advanced Communications Technologies and Services Programme, http://www.uk.infowin.org/ACTS/ AIT (2000), Advanced Information Technology (AIT), http://www.ait.org.uk/
Banahan, E. and Banti, M. (1999) Report on Workshop on Legal Aspects of Virtual Organizations, Brussels, 30 November 1999.
Burns, T. and Stalker, G. (1961) The Management of Innovation, Tavistock Institute, London.
Camarinha-Matos, L. M. and Afsarmanesh, H. (eds) (1999) Infrastructures for virtual enterprises. Networking industrial enterprises. IFIP TC5 WG5.3/PRODNET Working Conference for Virtual Enterprises (PROVE' 99), Porto, Portugal, 27-28 October (1999), Kluwer Academic Publishers, Boston.
Damoradan, L., Hansen, J. R., Hassan, T. M. and Olphert, C. W. (1999) Impact of large scale engineering products and processes on society-The ELSEWISE view, in eLSEwise: European Large Scale Engineering Wide Integration Support Effort, Engineering Construction and Architectural Management, Special Issue, 6(1), ISSN 0969 9988, pp. 63-70.
Doz, Y. L. and Hamel, G. (1998) Alliance Advantage. The Art of Creating Value through Partnering, Harvard Business School Press, Boston.
Ducroux, F. (1999) The IT Integration Supporting the Extended Enterprise, in Wognum et al., (1999), pp. 137-145.
Dyson, E. (1998) Release 2.1. A Design for Living in the Digital Age, Penguin Books, London.
Esprit (1989) The Review of ESPRIT 1984-1988. The Report of the ESPRIT Review Board, European Commission, DG XIII-Telecommunications, Information Industries and Innovation, Brussels.
Esprit (1997) European Strategic Programme for Research in Information Technologies, Building the Information Society, Workprogramme (1997) European Commission, DG III-Industry, Brussels, http://www.cordis.lu/esprit/
Fan, I.-S., and Filos, E. (1999) Concurrent Engineering: Esprit-supported R&D Projects in a World-wide Context, in Wognum et al., (1999), pp. 177-189.
Filos, E. and Ouzounis, V. K. (2001) Virtual organizations.
Technologies, trends, standards and the contribution of the European RTD programmes, International Journal of Computer Applications in Technology, Special Issue: “Applications in Industry of Product and Process Modelling Using Standards”, forthcoming.
Foy, N. (1980) The Ying and Yang of Organizations, Grant McIntyre.
French, W. L. and Bell, C. H. (1990) Organizational Development, Prentice-Hall, New York.
Gibon, P., Clavier, J.-F. and Loison, S., (1999) Support for electronic data interchange, in Camarinha-Matos & Afsarmanesh, (1999), pp. 187-208.
Goldman, S. L., Nagel, R. N. and Preiss, K. (1995) Agile Competitors and Virtual Organizations. Strategies for Enriching the Customer, Van Nostrand Reinhold, New York.
GROWTH (2000) Competitive and Sustainable Growth (GROWTH) Programme, Workprogramme 2000, European Commission, DG Research, Brussels, http://www.cordis.lu/growth/ <http://www.cordis.lu/growth/>
Handy, C. (1997) The Hungry Spirit, Hutchinson, London.
Handy, C. (1999) Understanding Organizations, 4th edition, Penguin, London.
Imai, K. and Itami, H. (1984) Interpenetration of organization and market, International Journal of Industrial Organization, 2 285-310.
IMS (2000) Intelligent Manufacturing Systems Initiative (IMS), http://www.ims.org/
IST (2000) Information Society Technologies (IST) Programme, Workprogramme 2000, European Commission, DG Information Society, Brussels, http://www.cordis.lu/ist/
Jardim-Gonçalves, R., Sousa, P. C. and Pimentão, J. P., Steiger-Garcão, A. (1999) Furniture commerce electronically assisted by way of a standard-based integrated environment, in Wognum et al., (1999), pp. 129-136.
JCMC 2000, Journal of Computer-mediated Communication, http://jcmc.huji.ac.il/, in particular volume 3, issue 4, http://jcmc.huji.ac.il/vol3/issue4/
Julia-Barcelo, R. (1998) Proposal for a directive establishing a common framework for electronic signatures: An overview, in Timmers et al., (1998), pp. 63-70.
Kalakota, R. (1998) Joined at the bit. The emergence of the E-business community, in Blueprint to the Digital Economy. Creating Wealth in the Era of E-Business. McGraw Hill, New York.
Kelly, K. (1998) New Rules for the New Economy, Fourth Estate, London.
Meinköhn, F. (1998), Electronic trade of intangible commodities: A technological and legal challenge, in Timmers et al., (1998), pp. 82-86.
Mills, D. Q. (1991) Rebirth of the Corporation, John Wiley & Sons, New York.
Mintzberg, H. (1980) Mintzberg on Management: Inside our Strange World of Organizations, The Free Press, New York.
Mitrovic, D., Hunter, I. and Male, S. (1999) Characteristics of networked enterprise in global construction, in Wognum et al., (1999), pp. 447-454.
Moniz, A. B. and Urze, P. (1999) Socio-organizational requirements for a VE, in Camarinha-Matos & Afsarmanesh, (1999), pp. 77-94.
Nonaka, I. and Takeuchi, H. (1995) The Knowledge-Creating Company. How Japanese Companies Create the Dynamics of Innovation, Oxford University Press, New York.
Ouzounis, V. K. (2000) Emerging Technologies, Standards and Trends for Virtual Enterprises, Report to the European Commission, Information Society Directorate-General, C2.
PDM Enablers (1997) PDM Enablers White Paper to the OMG in Response to OMG Manufacturing Domain Task Force RFP1 Joint Submission, <http://www.omg.org/docs/mfg/97-09-01.doc/>
Polanyi, M. (1966) The Tacit Dimension, Routledge & Kegan Paul, London.
Stewart, T. A. (1998) Intellectual Capital. The Wealth of Organizations, Nicholas Brealey, London.
Telematics (1998) Telematics Applications Programme website, http://www2.echo.lu/telematics/
Till, R. (1998) Electronic commerce: Business opportunities and case studies, in Timmers et al., (1998), pp. 237-244.
Timmers, P., Stanford-Smith, B. and Kidd, P. T., (eds.) (1998) Electronic Commerce: Opening Up New Opportunities for Business, Cheshire Henbury, Macclesfield.
Toffler, A. (1981) The Third Wave, Pan Books, London.
VO-Net (2000) VO-Net is focused on theoretical and empirical research related to Virtual Organizations, Virtual Teams, Network Organization and Electronic Commerce; http://www.virtual-organization.net/
Williamson, O. E. (1975) Markets and Hierarchies. Analysis and Anti-Trust Implications, The Free Press, New York.
Wognum, N., Thoben, K.-D. and Pawar, K. S. (1999) Proceedings of ICE'99, International Conference on Concurrent Enterprising, The Hague, The Netherlands, 15-17 March 1999, Nottingham: University of Nottingham, ISBN 0 9519759 86.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Filos, E., Banahan, E. Towards the smart organization: An emerging organizational paradigm and the contribution of the European RTD programs. Journal of Intelligent Manufacturing 12, 101–119 (2001). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1011296325760
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1011296325760