The pandemic context has raised new opportunities for the managerial area of working inside or outside of universities and it has opened new directions regarding the management of academic activities, opening future perspectives to adopt full or partial virtual models. Universities from worldwide that moved most of their teaching, research and administration activities online were able to implement different management models aimed at virtualization and flexibility increase. Exploring the newly discovered potential of the traditional Romanian universities by experimenting lately the remote work at different scales in their academic and administrative activities, the purpose of this paper is to propose a viable model of a virtual university. The central objective of the research is to design a new theoretical approach for a common understanding of a managerial model of a virtual university (MMVU), starting from the dimensions found in the literature and analysed, continuing with the description of each dimension and its role and ending with their integration in the overall proposed model. At the same time, the new MMVU resulted and proposed by the present research integrates components specific to an organization in general with dimensions of a virtual organization (VO), as well as of a virtual university (VU), bringing a new insight on the conceptualization of a VU, build on the conceptual model of a VO. The new resulting model of VU has the potential to open the perspectives both at research level, as well as at operational level, to engage an expansion of online courses in traditional campus-based universities.

virtual university; virtual organisation; model of virtual university; virtual environment