COURIER EXCHANGE -
DESCRIPTION AND
CRITICAL ANALYSIS OF A
WEB-BASED ORGANIZATION AS INTERFACE FOR A
VIRTUAL COMMUNITY
IN HYPER-COMPETITIVE LANDSCAPES.
by
Thomas Kostrzewa
Coursework essay for
e-business option
"M21 - Web-Based Social Forms" submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of
MSc in E-business and Innovation
Supervisor
Ph. D. Richard Giordano
Birkbeck - University of London
2005
Opening
E-VOLUTION IN AN E-COLOGY?
In order to respond to the emergence of new competitive landscapes , most companies turn to new, more adaptive ways of doing their work. Driven by hyper-competition, change and complexity in today's period of globalisation and empowered by the internet, the ability to collaborate and share resources becomes key in the information age . (Hitt 2000, Bandungfe.net, Chaffey 2002, Castells 1996)
This paper demonstrates how web-based organizations facilitate new social forms of collaboration in a hyper-competitive environment and how novel information processing interacts with social and organizational forms in a reflexive real-time trial-and-error process called co-evolution (Tasaka 1999).
Abduction of Europe
evolution
English: The City of London skyline as viewed towa...It describes the application service provider (ASP) Courier Exchange (CX) as interface and facilitator of an online community and how its symbiotic relationships grounded in social bonding are necessary for a process of constant re-invention, design and change (Nardi/Whittaker).
Introduction
TERMS AND CONDITIONS
The concept of co-evolution this paper uses is derived from Hiroshi Tasaka's "Emergence", a system interacts in a reflexive way within a complex social network (Barabasi 2003).
A web-based organization is a defined group of persons with one or more shared goals meeting and operating only in the internet (one can argue whether inbound/outbound phone calls transform such an organization into a "clicks-and-mortar" entity ).
Interface has many faces. The one applied for this paper is that "the interface is the application"(Leetaru 2004). And therefore not "a finished entity, but rather a point in...