CELLULAR GREEN-TEAMS IN GLOBAL NETWORK ORGANIZATIONS

Information technology (IT) and communications technologies are promot ing new virtual forms of business enterprises based on teleworking. Pe rformance issues relating to organisation form, depend much on the per formance and interworking of technology, infrastructure, and working p ractice. The cellular Green-Team approach as practiced at a heavy engi neering Small-to-Medium sized Enterprise (SME) involves daily meetings and noticeboards to plan, monitor and control collaborative working a cross virtual autonomous business units in both office and shop floor environments. Current research involves development of an IT-based ver sion of this system, with emphasis on capture of the qualitative aspec ts of corporate knowledge in parallel with existing Computer-Aided-Des ign (CAD)/Computer-Aided-Manufacture (CAM)/Enterprise Resource Plannin g (ERP)/Finance quantitative systems. In future is planned the impleme ntation of the system in a global network of Green-Teams collaborating on engineering design tasks. This paper describes how such an intrane t (i.e. corporate use of Internet technologies) impacts on organisatio nal delivery of information, operations, structure, strategy, manageme nt style, and employees. Supporting the wider applicability of these f indings, are the summarised results of a 28 company-survey undertaken by the authors.