Number: ABSTRACT - 007-0079 Title: "The Impact of Virtuality on Supply Chain strategies"

The transparency provided by information technologies (IT) allows companies to reposition themselves in the chain and collaborate dynamically with other companies with the purpose of optimizing their position in the business. Thus, this article explores through two cases studies the phenomenon of inter-firm collaboration and aims to analyze the supply chain strategies that have been adopted by the players in the network based on the IT. The case studies has focused on a neutral third party that is the portal site and coordinates the network and aligns the incentives for all players belonging to the network enabling information starts to flow more quickly along the supply chain. The results obtained in this research can contribute to understanding of the concepts and principles of the role of the neutral third party in a value network and formulate the role of the neutral third party that coordinates the network. Key-words: supply chain, virtual, internet. INTRODUCTION The extension in which companies deal to the marketspace has become a matter of competitiveness in the current economic scenario and organisations have faced the challenge of creating value not only in the physical world but also in the virtual one. Thus, Internet and other technologies emerge as powerful tools that allow the process of value creation in the virtual world. However, this depends on how companies would explore this capacity made feasible by those technologies. In this context, “virtualization” has become a new way of structuring companies that can improve efficiency and effectiveness in organisations. According to Tapscott (1996) instead of thinking of New Economy companies as Internet companies or dot-coms, think about them as companies that use the Internet infrastructure to create effective b-web–based business models. In that context, is very important the companies think about the electronics hubs. The electronics hubs can assume the role important when discuss about the supply chain. The traditional supply chain suggests a sequence of information flow and material movement that is well-ordered and sequential. Increasingly, this model does not reflect the complex, fastpaced global movement of materials and information. Today, information and materials no longer flow in simple linear fashion from supplier to customer. The flow of information resembles more a complex web of exchanges rather than a chain. Material and information often loop around the enterprise or the world several times before the finished product arrives at the customer's doorstep. According to Gunasekaran & Ngai (2004) Supply chain management (SCM) is the 21st century global operations strategy for achieving organizational competitiveness. In that context, companies are attempting to find ways to improve their flexibility and responsiveness and in turn competitiveness by changing their operations strategy, methods and technologies that include the implementation of SCM paradigm and information technology (IT). Specifically the objective that study is to analyze the process of IT adoption by the companies up to the current situation, investigating companies’s reasons for investing in the IT, what processes changed, what alterations transformed the coordination of organizational activities and the new kinds of relationship with focus in Supply Chain.