Evaluating Collaboration and Core Competence in a Virtual Enterprise

During the Spring of 2000 and Autumn 2000 and 2001 students with a bachelor’s degree in engineering participated in an estimation which was intended to investigate the possibilities to manage a virtual company by means of collaboration. The test subjects developed a virtual company operating on the Internet with suppliers available on the Internet. The test subjects’ satisfaction and perception of the estimation were solicited. The task was complex, but taking into consideration the test subjects’ background, their degree in engineering, as well as their several years of industrial experience, these students, if any, should have the capabilities to manage the task given and thus provide us with some valuable information about the possibilities of collaboration and virtuality in the Internet.