Virtualizing interorganizational collaboration: case Shippalette Oy, a design microenterprise

Abstract

Luxury cruise ship building industry is looking for opportunities to increase capacity to build new vessels at an ever-increasing rate. Interior design is one area of expertise in shipbuilding that still today, instead of automation, relies heavily on the creativity and analytical thinking of knowledge workers. This study aims to increase knowledge on virtualization of collaboration in design work, enabling a capacity increase in interior design.

The problem of inadequate capacity in design work is mainly related to human resources. The building project of a luxury cruise ship is an effort of a network of companies. All the professionals specialized in interior design work are not located geographically in the same locations with the building projects. By virtualizing interorganizational collaboration, the barrier of physical distance between participating companies could be lowered or removed.

This thesis looks at the problem of limited capacity from the perspective of ShipPalette. Is is a microenterprise offering subcontracting services, such as coordination and sourcing of interior design, to shipyards. The entrepreneur of the case company is highly committed to virtualization of work, but alone the microenterprise can do only little in the business network. The partner companies need to be encouraged to participate in a mutual effort.

Strategic information systems (IS) planning process for networked microenterprises is formed as a theoretical framework for developing virtual collaboration. The model emphasizes straightforward and simple approach to organizational development, making the model usable for microenterprises. In interorganizational collaboration, and in a networked industry in general, the influence of business environment is significant. Consideration of both internal and external factors are central to the theoretical framework.

Action research is applied as a primary research method in this thesis. The researcher of this study is employed by the case company and utilizes observations in collection of material for the study. Research is done alongside action. Semi-structured interviews are used to deepen knowledge about the organization and backgrounds, but also to gather information about network partners. The study starts by completing an extensive literature review in the topics related to virtualization and to the specific context of the case company.

Condsidering a significant IS project ongoing at the same time at Meyer Turku shipyard, a major customer of ShipPalette, specification of actual tools was left outside of this study. The most important finding of the research is that the greatest barrier to virtualize collaboration is the work-related culture. Findings in earlier literature are therefore supported. As a new aspect, this thesis contributed to IS research by presenting ways to manage and ease organizational change. By sharing correct and essential information about virtualization even a microenterprise can encourage an entire network to develop its ways of working.