**8. Conclusions**

390 New Research on Knowledge Management Models and Methods

Organizations that promote collaboration within them and in their extended environment, that contains different actors from economic/business environment, are identified by the name of collaborative organizations, presenting the following specific features (Skyrme,

collaborative – from the business philosophy, the strategy adopted and all the

IT represents an indispensable sustainer of collaborative organizations, of collaborative environments in general [Harmon, Rosen, Guttman, 2001]. These represent (virtual) communities which, even if they are not subordinated to a business objective, adopt the

Strategic demarches are scheduled in order to achieve this objective, at the level of different research networks specialized in setting up visionary studies – business models evolution collaborative enterprises related (Figure 9). The focus on collaborative business processes orientation dictates identification and configuration of the collaborative technologies

Fig. 9. Strategy to evolve to the collaborative enterprise model (CE-NET Consortium, 2004) Portal technology that permit building a fundament for a collaborative virtual environment based on knowledge was imposed, the presented approaches being an innovative scientific

1. Business perspective 2. Work-place perspective

3. Social perspective

**5. IT perspective** 

4. Potential-clients perspective

6. Legal environment perspective

(interconnected environments)

1. it is important for the organizations to have the capacity of underlying and putting forward tacit knowledge pieces (individual or collective ones, belonging to an informal group, being the result of some accumulated practical experience; they can be categorized as being "contextualized", non-fundamented, less accessible, difficult to describe and maybe unconscious) through their integration within organization functions. We refer to an organizational learning process sustained by KM and

centered on collaborative formation of organizational competences & knowledge;

**7. The place of our debate within the european research programs** 

2003):

operational activities; team-work oriented;

 client and partner centered; adaptable to changes;

agile from the strategic point of view.

capable of sustaining these processes.

demarche of the IT perspective indicated in figure 9.

We consider that:

collaboration and elaborate knowledge management principles.

It is obvious that inside every collaborative environment, starting with small work-groups or practice communities (of interests, scope, action, etc.) and ending with the collaborative environment, there is a strong fundament based on knowledge and a powerful interdependence between collaboration and knowledge management. Collaborative communities represent organizational manifestation forms that wish to remain competitive in the competitive environment. Being entirely or partially transposed into the virtual environment, they have to adopt a malleable business strategy, to take fundamental decisions based on knowledge regarding consumers, suppliers, stockholders, investors or even competitors.

Collaborative systems, tools and technologies sustain work teams, communities and collaborative enterprises, portal type IT platforms proving their efficiency as infrastructures of those environments:


Some Collaborative Systems Approaches in Knowledge-Based Environments 393

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8, Volume 3, August 2006

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Southhampton

Collaborative enterprises represent the solution for companies, which wish to remain competitive in the business environment. Being entirely or partly transposed in the virtual environment, they have to adopt a malleable strategy, to make decisions based on knowledge, which regards the consumers, suppliers, shareholders, investors or even competitors. Many innovative companies have long appreciated the value of knowledge management to improve their processes, products and customer service and to create competitive advantage. Research studies show that by managing the knowledge of their customers, corporations are more likely to sense emerging market opportunities before their competitors, to constructively challenge the established wisdom of "doing things around here", and to create economic value for the corporation, its shareholders and its customers.

In our future work our attention will be focused on optimizing the technical architecture of the referred portals, studies that will be made by the research interdisciplinary team of the on-roll grant1. But, paradoxally, the success of any portal-based collaborative environment (any new technology-enabled business model) relies, more than ever, on people's ability to build relationships based on mutual trust. Further research will also refer how to manage business relationships between people, within or without groups, and within and between organizations according to a knowledge management approach. Future research streams will include work in intercultural communication and collaboration, temporal coordination, and trust in virtual teams.

For Romania, as well as for the countries were these approaches are not familiar, the relevance of the collaborative enterprise concept results from the engagement of the states in the evolution of the informational society – knowledge society. It would be risky to assume, that given the differences with highly developed countries, the collaborative (knowledge based) enterprise would represent, on national scale, only a future problem or an exaggerated sophistry.
