The virtual enterprise as a new organizational paradigm has three fundamental features: dynamics of network reconfiguration, virtuality, and external entities as environments for enabling or supporting the virtual enterprise integration as well as reconfiguration dynamics. The field of knowledge on this topic is highly fragmented due to the in existence of a transfer of knowledge between regions, developers, and researchers.
The Encyclopedia of Networked and Virtual Organizations documents 249 of the most relevant contributions authored by over 400 of the world's leading experts to the introduction of networked, dynamic, agile, and virtual organizational models; definitions; taxonomies; opportunities; and reference models and architectures. These volumes pool the existing works, approaches, solutions, and needs of the virtual enterprise research community to create a repository of the main developments regarding the virtual organization, compiling definitions, characteristics, comparisons, advantages, practices, enabling technologies, and best practices.