Tools and capabilities for becoming virtual

Critical capabilities for successful virtualization are vision, leadership, management capability, staff capability, staff motivation, information and communications technology (ICT), ICT governance, work processes, a communicative environment, a sound business case, and planning. While all are important, thoughtfulness and reflection are required to understand what they mean, how to weigh up their relative influence and how they should be approach. This chapter contains observations derived from examining and extrapolating data gathered during a longitudinal research project in which we monitored a development aid organization's attempt to use knowledge management systems to increase its level of virtualization, and comparing these with the experiences of other organizations and theorists as recorded in the literature.