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Abstract
In the aggressive and competitive business environment of today, enterprises are expected to achieve competitive advantages in synergy, under the format of reconfigurable global networked structures, such as the virtual enterprise (VE) organizational model, integrating the optimal resources (products, operations, services) for each of the functions that the enterprise undertakes, in order to produce a product that meets the market requirements. The literature shows that several Internet-based tools can be used to enable some activities of VE integration. However, as we demonstrate, these do not support the reconfiguration dynamics required by this organizational model. Alternatively, the authors propose the market of resources (MR) as an environment to fully support VE integration, coping with its intrinsic requirement of high reconfigurability. Based on a demonstrator developed for the MR and on cost models traducing VE integration, one for the (traditional) Internet-based tools and the other for the MR, to support an analytical simulation, the paper validates the thesis that the traditional tools cannot support agility and dynamics, presenting the MR as a VE enabler, and identifying the domain of situations where the utilization of the MR reveals increased efficiency in terms of search and selection time and cost—designated as opportunities domain.