Virtual Organizations: Some Uses and Abuses in Political and Organizational-Design Discourses

This paper explores the contemporary fascination with seemingly new, benign and transcendent virtual organizations. The paper extends Gerlach and Hamilton's (2000) investigations into virtuality within the genres of business restructuring and science fiction. The paper unravels a purposeful, enveloping consciousness that masks both neo-liberal fictions and post-modern fantasies dominating the virtual organization discourse. This paper proposes that practical examples of de-physicalized, technologically-transcendent virtual organizations crucial to this virtual consciousness do not exist or are fundamentally different from expectations. The paper proposes that the presumed new epoch of global capitalism based on the productivity unleashed by virtual organizations is illusionary. The paper concludes that once virtual consciousness is penetrated not only is the material and ideological aspects of virtual organizations unmasked but it is possible to locate a pragmatic, conjoint, physicalized type of " virtualised " organization that is not new, benign or transcendental. This type of co-destiny virtual organization (such as terrorist organizations and organised crime) is more reflective of enduring concerns and contemporary purposes fundamental to what organizations make visible or render invisible.