Abstract: In recent years the concept of the virtual organization (VO) has received a great deal of attention in both the business press and academia. While a fair amount of research has focused on the virtual organization, very little agreement exists on how to define it, or even approach it as a concept or an organizational form. It is impossible to relate or compare the research that has been done under various definitions of the VO without a common framework to relate them to one another. It is difficult to build a coherent research stream in virtual organizations, without a framework in which to place the research. The purpose of this paper is not to develop another definition of the virtual organization, but rather to provide a definitional framework for the virtual organization which can assist researchers in relating the work done on VO’s using various definitions.

Keywords: Virtual Organizations, Framework, Virtuality, Outsourcing

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Recommended Citation: Reinicke, B. (2011). Creating a Framework for Research on Virtual Organizations. Journal of Information Systems Applied Research, 4(1) pp 49-56. http://jisar.org/2011-4/ ISSN: 1946-1836. (A preliminary version appears in The Proceedings of CONISAR 2010)