Cristian Peraboni

Managing the design-manufacturing interface in virtual enterprises through multi user virtual environments: a perspective approach

The interfaces among different organisational functions are often affected by barriers against integration, particularly in the case of design and manufacturing. The relevance of overcoming such barriers – that may become a driver of cost and opportunity loss – grows with the degree of virtualisation of the enterprise. In this paper the authors tackle the problem of lowering barriers between design and manufacturing in virtual enterprises through the exploitation of ICT (information and communication technology), that – in this vision – becomes a key success factor not only for eliciting (tacit) knowledge, but also for fostering social interaction. The paper explores the possibility to use virtual worlds (such as Multi User Virtual Environments) in virtual enterprises for creating suitable digital habitats able to support the higher levels of the semiotic ladder and then lowering the design–manufacturing integration barriers.

Are Online Communities Good for the Civic Audit of Public Spaces, Services, and Officers?

While, the need of assessing public spaces, services and officers becomes, always more urgent and mandatory, a wide literature and extensive field experience show that internal audit by the public sector itself is not sufficient. There is the need to foster the civic accountability byintegrating an independent external evaluation in the audit process. The paper investigates the possibility that online communities provide a suitable framework for carrying on this external audit by supporting the so-called voice strategy in the contexts (such as the public sector) where the exit strategy does not hold. After envisaging the potential advantages coming from involving online communities of users in the assessment of a public space, service or officer, two early pilot experiments carried on to validate this assumption are presented and discussed. They are neither sufficient to validate the assumption nor sufficient to invalidate it, but provides hints helpful to pursue the investigation.