INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY IN VIRTUAL ENTERPRISE

There is a common belief expressed in the subject literature that information technology (IT) is critical contingency factor for virtual organization. Therefore Our interest was to investigate the relation between the intensity level of IT use and the level of the organization virtuality. In that purpose we elaborated a tree of features describing virtuality and categorized IT tools into two groups taking into considerations the functions which they play or can play in virtual organization and the range of their influence to cope with cooperation of distributed partners. The research sample included 45 firms, mostly small and medium, belonging to six branches. The firms had been chosen according to pre-selection criteria, confirming that they construct a network to run their operations. Some indicators were elaborated to measure the level of virtuality and intensity of use of IT. Next correlation was checked between these two levels. In this paper we present what we have found about the relation.