Hassan, T M and McCaffer, R (2003) Virtual Enterprises in Construction: ICT, Social and Legal Dimensions. Journal of Construction Procurement, 9(1), ISSN 1358-9180
Abstract
The advances in Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) is giving rise to new types of inter-networked organisation. These organisations are virtual in concept, highly flexible, and rely on network technologies. Typical examples of such "virtual enterprises" (VE) are those formed to execute construction projects and generally, large scale engineering projects. The vision developed by eLSEwise (European Large Scale Engineering Wide Integration Support Effort) project, funded by the European Commission, based on a series of workshops supported by questionnaire surveys, concluded that the attributes required for more competitive European Large Scale Engineering (LSE) are best supported by this VE concept. Although ICT is the main enabler for VEs to develop and flourish, research to date has overlooked the social and legal dimensions and implications associated with the business processes of such enterprises. Structured gradual migration routes are imperative to gain acceptance from the society at large to adopt such new ways of working. The legal dimension investigated in this paper showed that there is a lack of solid contractual basis which govern the electronic exchange of information and documentation within and between such virtual enterprises. Work is underway to overcome these shortcoming by developing software tools for contract configuration and negotiation through a recently funded EU project led by the authors.
| Item Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Uncontrolled Keywords: | large scale engineering, construction, virtual enterprises, information and communication technology, elsewise |
| Index terms: | workshop, migration, virtual enterprise, dimension, negotiation, society, information and communication technology, survey, documentation, integration, construction project, configuration, questionnaire |
| Subjects: | production management, communities and social development, demography, construction type, professional development, systems engineering, information systems, conflict resolution, organizational analysis, computing systems, data collection methods, health monitoring assessment and metrics |
| Topics: | Construction Technology, Stakeholder Management, Information Management, Research Practice, Organizational Design, Urban Studies, Digital Applications, Engineering Principles, Project Management, Health and Safety |
| Descriptive scope: | 4 PCEA |
N.B. Descriptive scope is a count of how many of the five facets of empirical research are indicated by the words used in title, abstract and keywords. It is not intended as a judgement on the research; merely a count of the kind of word we would expect to indicate Phenomenon, Concepts, Theoretical framing, Empirical techniques, Analytical techniques. If all five are present, then a code of “5 PCTEA” will indicate this. If you feel the coding for this record is questionable, we welcome discussion around the terms we matched or the way we categorized them. The facet you would expect may not be coded, or a facet may be coded inappropriately. This can also bear on a larger question, of which facets should be treated as defining in construction management research. Please get in touch, and we will look at it. More details here