Building the Virtual Organization with Electronic Communication

tance of the appearance of the commercial web site. This is because the user will need to have less direct contact with the product/service provider as the agent will take on the role of mediator between the user and the commercial organisation. One implication of this which may have significant impact on electronic commerce is the shift in emphasis that it suggests from the appearance, or form, of web pages to the web page content accessible by the agents. This content is often invisible to user of the sites as it is embedded in the source code for the pages. Some attention is clearly paid to this already as it is this content that simple search engines use to locate sites of interest. As agents become more sophisticated, however, the importance of considering the structure and provision of this information will increase. Yet, it seems that most effort and expenditure in developing web presence for electronic commerce is expended on the obvious appearance of the site. A closer understanding and appreciation of the structure and workings of agent technologies may be a first step for organisations wishing to differentiate themselves and attract the knowledgeable users who currently form the majority of their potential customer-base. It may even be advisable for web service providers to tie together their strategies for encouraging electronic commerce with the development of agents systems for users which are made freely available and are frequently updated. This might satisfy the often disparate goals of supporting users in finding what they want and helping commercial organisations offer their products and services to their target markets. Modern electronic communications has made it possible for business organizations to achieve most of the benefits of vertical integration without the significant investment of capital (Palmer, 1996). A " virtual organization " is a collaboration of business partners to achieve some overall objective. Because of electronic communication technologies, multiple business entities can act in concert, as if they were actually parts of a single wholly-owned business organization (Williamson, 1993). This provides many of the advantages of being a smaller firm and a larger firm at the same time. (Byrne, 1993). Use of information technology and electronic communication systems may be the key to developing future competitive advantage (Porter and Millar, 1985). Figure 1 graphically depicts a virtual organization with two " virtual " elements. tegrated CAD/CAM system. Electronic systems that were linked between …