Contenu du sommaire : Stratégie et écosystèmes numériques

Research shows that virtual companies1 of the Net economy have structures, processes and systems whose development and running may be the subject of three main types of analogical correspondence:- by leaders and managers, with the unconscious function of dreams;- by consultants and coaches, with a network of neurons connecting by synapses, with a core and peripheral units;- by theoreticians of company organisation, with the psychological framework itself, organised by Freud itself into three functions (the id, the ego and the superego).

Using Kasper-Fuehrer and Ashkanasy (2004)'s definition of the virtual firms as a weberian model, we consider it as an original organizational form, but also as a modality of realization and performance of ecosystemic enterprises, these firms (Google, Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, etc.) that are trying to develop vast innovating communities in order to impose their technical, processing and organizational standards. Ecosystems' abilities to grow virtual firms within themselves strengthen them.

First researchers have described virtual corporation as a new organization for the 21st Century enabled by the Information and Communication Technologies improvements. But this empirical research based on French educational publishers establishes that the principles of virtual corporation are ancient. In a grounded theory approach, many interviews with executives of virtual corporation draw a representation of dynamic alliances systems, in which publishers are orchestra conductor and broker of a network of numerous specialists (authors, printer, artistic professionals,) designed to realize a project: a schoolbook publishing. This study exhibits two other empirical observations about the virtual corporation (in educational publishing industry). First, it is not due to ICT development. Second, it's goal is not to use the services of best-in-the-world providers (but rather to regenerate creativity).

From a state of the art covering the last fifteen years, the author highlights the detailed nature and the contradictions of virtual organization. Its cooperation and coordination forms, management skills, acculturation and value creation process are deeply analyzed in order to determine and describe the virtual organization key decision making and operational concepts.