CSUCI
Business 550
The Contemporary Firm
Wed, Sep 1, 2010
[updated: Wednesday, September 1, 2010]
"There are five managerial roles; they are to set objectives, organize, motivate and communicate, measure, and develop people."
-Peter Drucker (1909-2005)
Course Outline/Calendar
The following outline describes the details of this course in chronological order.
Week 1: Tue. April 1, 2008
Question: How is success defined in this course?
Question: How is MIS/IT related to other parts of an organization?
- Topic(s): Class Materials, Class Overview, Course in Context
- Supp: Economic Benefit and Cost Drivers
- Supp: Porter's Value Chain
- Supp: Porter's Five-Forces
- Supp: Balanced Scorecard
Week 2: Tue. April 8, 2008
Question: What characteristics distinguish a contemporary ("digital") firm?
- Laudon: Ch. 1, Information Systems in Global Business Today
- Laudon: Ch. 2, Global E-Business: How Businesses Use Information Systems
- HBR: Drucker
- HBR: Carr
- HBR: Ross
Week 3: Tue. April 15, 2008
Question: What are key emerging trends in MIS/IT and how do they impact the organization?
Question: How have recent MIS/IT developments impacted legal and ethical issues in organizations?
- Laudon: Ch. 3, Information Systems, Organizations, and Strategy
- Laudon: Ch. 4, Ethical and Social Issues in Information Systems
- HBR: Porter
Week 4: Tue. April 22, 2008
Question: What does an organization's "infra-structure" ("stuff") look like?
- Laudon: Ch. 5, IT Infrastructure and Emerging Technologies
- HBR: McAfee
- (contingency)
Week 5: Tue. April 29, 2008
Question: What does an organization's "info-structure" ("stuff" + data + people) look like?
Question: How did the networking infrastructure evolve to become so critical?
- Laudon: Ch. 6, Foundations of Business Intelligence: Databases and Information Management
- Laudon: Ch. 7, Telecommunications, the Internet, and Wireless Technology
- HBR: Davenport
Week 6: Tue. May 6, 2008
Question: What are the internal weaknesses (vulnerabilities) and external threats (challenges)?
Question: What is the single most important information systems in the firm?
- Due: Audiocast Report
- Laudon: Ch. 8, Securing Information Systems
- Laudon: Ch. 9, Achieving Operational Excellence and Customer Intimacy: Enterprise Applications
- HBR: Rigby
Week 7: Tue. May 13, 2008
Question: How do we integrate disparate systems and why would we want to?
- Laudon: Ch. 10, E-Commerce: Digital Markets, Digital Goods
- Review: Review of Audiocast Report: (Student-led discussion)
- HBR: Magretta
Week 8: Tue. May 20, 2008
Question: How do we architect, engineer, and construct systems support the sharing of explicit and tacit knowledge in an organization?
- Laudon: Ch. 11, Managing Knowledge
- HBR: Hansen
- Supp: McDermott
- Supp: Project Management (Body of Knowledge)
- Supp: Pinto
Week 9: Tue. May 27, 2008
- Laudon: Ch. 12, Enhancing Decision Making
- HBR: Hammond
- Laudon: Ch. 13, Building Systems
Week 10: Tue. June 3, 2008
Question: How do we reconcile the pace of change of MIS/IT and the pace of change within an organization?
Question: Which elements of globalization and internationalization confront and confound an MIS/IT?
- Due: Research Report
- Laudon: Ch. 14, Project Management: Establishing the Business Value of Systems and Managing Change
- Supp: Social Networks
- Laudon: Ch. 15, Managing Global Systems
- Supp: Christensen
Week 11: Tue. June 10, 2008
- TED Talks (videos) (no class preparation required)
Week 12: Tue. June 17, 2008
- Due: Final Exam
- Review: Review of Research Report: (Student-led discussion)
