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A Virtual Organisation (Va) is a form of collaborative network that is formed when multiple independent enterprises join together to share theirs skills, costs, resources and knowledge, in order to respond to a new business opportunity. Normally,' such enterprises use information and communication technologies (lCT) for collaboration and cooperation. Selection of partner enterprises to form the va is the most important activity in the creation phase of the VO life cycle. Various approaches to solving the problem of partner selection have been proposed in the literature. The problem has been studied from various dimensions including multi-attribute decision making (MADM), project management, agent-based systems and mathematical programming. Most of the work has its roots in manufacturing industry. The majority of the existing work only explores the partner selection at an individual level, i.e. selecting a suitable partner from a group of potential partners to perform a particular task or role. However, the impact of a potential partner on the overall va or network has not been' considered as an important dimension to the problem, and the impact of characteristics or attributes of a potential partner on the process in which it is involved has not been analysed in detail. To overcome this problem, a Process Performance Evaluation Framework (PPEF) has been proposed. It consists of two parts: a performance model and a performance evaluation methodology. The performance model defines various dimensions and performance indicators that can be used to evaluate the process performance at individual process level as well as overall va level. The performance evaluation methodology is based on system dynamics modelling to model and predict the performance of a particular set of business processes, business rules, participating partners and resources, collectively called the Process Configuration. Each different process configuration presents an alternative set of partners that may become part of a future va. The proposed system dynamics approach for modelling the business processes helps in the evaluation of alternative process configurations by predicting the impact of each partner's contribution on the overall process. The system dynamics model of the future va, which represents the key business processes and their relationships, also provides a feedback structure of various variables that affect the performance of the VO as a whole. Therefore, by simulating the dynamic model of the VO, the performance of each of the alternative process configurations can be evaluated from a holistic point of view. The process configuration predicted to achieve the highest level of performance can be selected as the most suitable VO configuration. Partners in the selected process configuration are thus the most suitable group of partners to form the virtual organisation.

The primary objective of this study is to analyse aspects of university/industry collaboration in the Korean context, focusing on Engineering Research Centres (ERCs) and Regional Research Centres (RRCs). There were three main questions that were posed in this study: What has been happening with respect to university/industry collaboration since the Centre Programmes were established? How have the Centre Programmes affected university/industry collaboration in Korea? How can the programmes be made more viable in the future? In order to answer these questions, this study first conceptualised academic-industry collaboration and explored major components in the process of university/industry collaboration to provide a theoretical framework to evaluate the performance of university/industry collaboration. Based on this framework, an empirical examination of surveys and interviews was conducted for the purpose of analysing various aspects of university/industry collaboration. These aspects included: the participants' perceptions of university/industry collaboration; their motivations for collaboration; collaboration mechanisms; collaboration performance; and success factors, barriers and the assessment of the collaboration process. The survey results show that there has been a big change and development in university/industry collaboration in Korea since the Centre Programmes were initiated. The Centre Programmes have contributed to improving the collaboration culture between academia and industry which has been one of the weak points of the national innovation system of Korea. Among other things, the 'selectivity and concentration' policy has resulted in a synergistic effect in the teamwork among academics and the management of university/industry collaboration. There are, however, many differences between now and then in terms of the research environment of academic faculties and industry. This study suggested several policy measures for improving the management of Centre Programmes in the future.

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