PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to discuss the limitations of existing approaches for guaranteeing the quality of a joint output in temporary enterprise networks such as virtual organisations and to identify possibilities for future research on solving this problem.Design/methodology/approachThe paper works towards the analysis of requirements for managing quality in temporary networks such as virtual organisations. Afterwards, it discusses the problem and thus the limitations of existing approaches to guarantee quality of the joint output of such networks.FindingsThe review shows that in temporary networks, individual organisations often do not have the right concepts to control inter‐organisational information exchange within the network. Nevertheless, inter‐organisational information exchange gain is important, because it influences the quality of the network's joint output. Existing approaches to define communication structures to support information exchange on the inter‐organisational level do not seem to be sufficient and represent a risk in guaranteeing the quality of a joint output.Originality/valueThis paper explores new directions in quality management from an inter‐organisational perspective in temporary enterprises networks. The findings contribute to supporting the need for the further development of existing approaches to competence management in order to address quality aspects in temporary enterprise environments. This work contributes to the theoretical demand for interlinking quality management with highly dynamic collaborative relations. This point of view goes beyond the internally focused perspective with the goal of integrating converging quality management processes with an inter‐organisational perspective.

Enterprise Collaboration (EC) is a widely discussed subject. Due to this fact a variety of different opinions can be formed mainly based on the scientific discipline behind it. From our understanding Enterprise Collaborations are based on inter-organisational relationships between network members. The analysis and support of those relationships was one of the main objectives of the COIN IP project. In the first year of the project the main objective for the Baseline Enterprise Collaboration (EC) Services team was to consolidate and harmonise results from previous RTD projects concerned with Enterprise Collaboration. As a scientific result EC Baselines Services are able to support most dynamic enterprise collaborations, like Business Ecosystems, by harmonisation of individuals and organisations profiles under the same model.

The potential of an Enterprise Network is the ability to design and to realize innovative, customized products by selecting and integrating for each order the worldwide leading partners. To exploit this potential, it is too late to configure the network and to search for partners on the basis of an already specified bill of material: Co-operation has already to start with the product-idea, where possible contributions to the planned end-product must be identified while concretizing the bill of material. Only in this way, the network is able to benefit from the expertise of all potential partners and to ensure that the expertise of the planned consortium is also synchronized with the needed capabilities for the requested end-product. In the proposed paper, a method to support the building of consortia within Enterprise Networks on the basis of open product designs will be highlighted. The method starts from an endproduct and collects possible contributions from potential collaboration partners.

The paper discusses organisational challenges single companies face while joining collaborative enterprise networks (EN). Following an organisational design approach in organisational differentiation and integration in EN, organisational challenges are identified. Based on steps for designing and implementing quality management systems (QMS), an initial reference model is given as potential basis for future concepts to overcome those organisational challenges.

The actual situation is that partners in virtual organisations rely upon a great variety of tools, which are not integrated, difficult to use and often ineffective. High costs are sustained to train the people and acquire tools of different make as required by the OEMs. The objective of the proposed paper is to present a conceptual model of an integrated engineering environment specifically tailored to the needs of the suppliers operating in a design network. The focal point is to show how monitoring and control of projects in virtual organisations can be supported. Therefore a Quality Control Management (QCM) concept will be presented that is able to provide several services in order to trace and control project processes and performance in an effective, integrated, easy to understand and user-friendly way. The approach presented in the proposed paper is basing on the work carried out by the European funded research project E4 (Extended Enterprise management in