Krasnova A.I., Gud D.V.

Ukraine

ENTERPRISE ECONOMICS AND CHANGES IN PRIORITIES OF ENTREPRENEURSHIP IN THE XXI CENTURY

 

Nowadays we can observe that the foundations of traditional economics and business principles have been changing evolutionary. A new form of market economy, a virtual economy, which allows the realization of economic transactions in electronic space, has appeared.

According to the experts in the next few years, major companies in all sectors of the economy will move from conventional to electronic business. This process has affected every sector of economy in most European countries, all sides of production, financial services, healthcare, retail, entertainment, telecommunications and etc. Of course, traditional business will coexist with electronic, but in the nearest future most of enterprises will develop a new strategy using prospective methods of work.

E-business takes advantage of the Internet to empower traditional businesses and create new organizational forms of business. Thus a new working model of operating business must be worked out using new information technologies and innovation methods. Nowadays such models are defined as virtual organizations.

The main objective of the article is to describe advantages and disadvantages of new virtual organizational form which is defined as virtual enterprise.

Virtual organization is a network of business cooperation, covering the main business of this organization and its external environment, using modern information technologies and telecommunications.

Business virtualization covers three main categories of phenomena:

•                virtual market - the market of goods and services which is based on communication and information facilities of global networks (Internet);

•                virtual reality - displays simulation of real development and production in cybernetic space, being as a tool and environment;

•                virtual organizational forms.

Virtual enterprise is a temporary or permanent set of geographically distant individuals, groups, organizational units or entire organizations, which operate in the production process with the help of information technologies, including electronic communications.

The core model of virtual enterprise is information technologies that play an important role in all organizational aspects.

It enables to use the model in each industry, manufacture production, which leads to get a product both in the form of services and as a commodity product.

Generally, the partnership in the virtual structure occurs for a specified period or until the specified result. In other words, partnership is only temporary and, for example, at certain stages of product life cycling new partners may be involved in a network or previous may be excluded.

Main features of virtual forms of organization are:

•                open distributed structure;

•                flexibility;

•                autonomy and narrow specialization of network members;

•                high status of information and human integration.

A key advantage of virtual forms is an opportunity to choose and use the best resources, knowledge and abilities with the least amount of time. This advantage follows the main pros of virtual enterprise:

•                possibility of reducing total costs;

•                opportunity to satisfy customer needs;

•                opportunity to adapt to environmental change flexible;

•                opportunity to reduce barriers to enter new markets.

Along with the newly listed benefits, virtual enterprises have some disadvantages:

•                lack of practical social and material support of its partners because of the abandonment of traditional forms of long-term contractual and regular employment;

•                danger of excessive complication arising from the heterogenity of company members, open networks, the dynamics of self-organization and virtual enterprises.

Such companies as Digital and IBM are situated in different regions of the world like virtual electronic office towers where service is carried out immediately after receipt. Now many companies, especially those which are busy supplying products and services to the market, close their offices and completely use the virtual system of links, saving significant amounts of these funds. In order to ensure flexibility and to avoid various movements many companies create virtual teams in which employees fit the best. Sometimes there are several teams whose offices operate in a virtual manner, as well as teams of Ford in Europe and the USA.

Summarizing the above, we can say that the virtual economy is scientific progress of the second half of the 20^th century.

On the one hand, humanity gained in their hands a tool that has truly fantastic features: ability to pass information in the blink of an eye at any distance, to increase productivity and make life more comfortable. On the other hand, the development of the virtual economy led to such forms of capital flows that can create huge financial pyramid with great speed, conduct speculative operations with goods, money, securities, etc.

Thus, the virtual economy in all its varieties and forms shows a strong upward trend of modern economy.