Professor:
Roger Alan Pick
Office: Bloch 237
Phone: +1
(816) 235-2336
FAX: +1 (816) 235-6506
E-Mail: pickr@umkc.edu
Hours: Monday, Tuesday 6:00 - 6:30 pm, by drop-in, and by appointment.
Textbook: Lynda M. Applegate, Robert D. Austin, and Deborah L. Soule, Corporate Information Strategy and Management: Text and Cases, 8th edition, McGraw-Hill Irwin, 2009, ISBN-13 9780073402932.
Overview: This course seeks to train future leaders of the Information Systems / Information Technology functional area. We will survey a variety of topics concerning information technology management in the twenty-first century. There is a bias towards addressing issues that concern senior executives at large firms. Nearly all of our case studies come from actual administrative situations. Instructional techniques will include lectures, case discussions, and a limited amount of small group work.
General Objectives:
Specific Objectives :
Prerequisite: This should not be your first computer course. We recommend either work experience involving computering in a business context or at least one prior course in computer science or in information systems.
ADA: If you have any questions about a disability or desire accommodation under the Americans With Disabilities Act, please contact the Office of Disabled Student Services at 235-1083.
Attendance: You are responsible for everything covered or handed out in class. The easiest way to meet this responsibility is to come to class every time.
Class Cancellation: Although I do not anticipate the necessity of this, it is possible that it may be necessary to cancel class due to inclement weather. This class will meet if UMKC is open; conversely, if UMKC is closed, this class is canceled. Students who are unable to attend class during bad weather when the class has not been canceled should send email or call and leave a message on the professor's voice mail system indicating this. If class is canceled due to any reason, all activities scheduled for the canceled session will take place during the next class meeting including exams. Furthermore, all course plans will be pushed back by one week, and we will have our second exam during finals week.
Grading: Each exam will be worth 100 points. Each case discussion will be worth 10 points, with the lowest two dropped.
Exams: There will be two open-book and open-note essay exams. Essay examinations will be graded based upon both the answer and the amount of reasoning and facts given to support the answer. You are expected to do each exam on your own without assistance from anyone. Use of e-mail, chat, or similar facilities during an exam will result in a zero grade for the exam. Each exam will be comprehensive.
Cases: There will be twelve case discussions. Most are based upon actual busines situations; Preparing for these case discussion is crucial to your success in this class. The individual class participation grade is based upon the case studies. After each case discussion, I will note who was present, who spoke at all, and will subjectively judge whose participation was excellent. Students who never participate in class should not be surprised to learn that their class participation grade will seriously lower their overall grade in this course. If you are unsure how to begin participating, you can get started by looking at the financial situation of the firm (when the case provides the data), at the competitive situation of the firm (when the case provides the data), at the firm's website (when the case is not fictional or disguised), and at the discussion questions given in the textbook just above the case, the rhetorical questions that appear at the end of many cases, or the questions in the course schedule below. The lowest two class participation grades will be dropped. I plan on posting the discussion grades on the Blackboard site.
Makeups: The fact that two class participation grade will be dropped takes into account the likelihood that over the course of a semester illness or a business trip will force you to miss class a time or two. If you miss one case discussion, figure that will be one grade that will get dropped. If you miss two or more, I will allow you to turn in written thoughtful responses to the preliminary case questions as well as your overall analysis of the case; this will substitute for your being absent only.
On Effort: Just as is the case with salary determination in most workplaces, grades in this class will be determined by your performance rather than by your effort or needs.
Cooperation: No form of cooperation during exams is allowed. You may not claim others' work as your own. If academic dishonesty is detected, you will receive a zero on the exam, and your case will be referred to the Vice Provost for investigation and possible disciplinary action. Please note that the term paper in this class must be submitted via Blackboard, and it will be automatically scanned for similarities to others' work, both published and unpublished. If you use someone else's words, be sure to place them in quotes and cite the source.
Incomplete: I am permitted to give incomplete grades to students who have been unable to complete the work of the course because of illness or serious reasons beyond their control. This work must be completed within one calendar year to avoid the incomplete grade lapsing to an F. You should bring up problems in advance when you can do so.
Administrative Note: Keep every graded paper returned to you until you receive your final grade report from the university.
ON-CAMPUS COMPUTER ACCOUNT: If you do not already have a UMKC lab / e-mail account, you are required to obtain a userid. You will need this in order to use UMKC Library databases from off-campus. Please do this during the first two weeks of classes.
M of IS Emphasis: For information & announcements about the Management of Information Systems emphasis area within the UMKC MBA degree, visit the file located at http://p.faculty.umkc.edu/pickr/mismba.htm.
Finally, all aspects of this class will be handled logically, sensibly, and with understanding of your situation. This syllabus will not be followed blindly in defiance of common sense; exceptions can and will be made according to good judgment. If there is a change in course policy, it will be announced and explained in class and the online version of this syllabus will be amended.
Lecture outlines will be posted on the Blackboard site. This will typically happen a few minutes before class.
| Date | Topics | Reading Assignment All chapter or page references refer to the textbook by Applegate et al. Unless noted otherwise, scientific papers will be loaded in .pdf format on the Blackboard site. |
Case Assignment All chapter or page references refer to the textbook by Applegate et al. All cases are based upon actual managerial situations unless noted otherwise. |
| 8/23 | MIS Issues, Practice Case (a fictional case to be handed out and read during class), Syllabus (to be handed out and reviewed during class). | ||
| 8/30 | Leadership of the MIS Function | Paper by Gilbert, Pick, and Ward to be handed out prior week. | Case I-1 (IBM) What factors led to IBM's problems in the early 1990s? What did Gerstner do? Evaluate his performance as a turnaround manager. Can IBM become great again? |
| 9/13 | Issue 1: Aligning IS Organization with Enterprise & Issue 5: Strategic Planning | Chapter 9 | Case 3-2 (Volkswagen) Who should set IT priorities at Volkswagen of America? What do you think of the new priority-setting process? |
| 9/20 | Issue 1: Aligning IS Organization with Enterprise | Chapter 10 | Case 3-3 (AtekPC - disguised case) What is a PMO? What are the challenges in implementing a PMO? |
| 9/27 | Issue 2: Competitive Advantage | Chapter 1, Chapter 2, and Reading 1-1 | Case 1-2 (Amazon) What is the role of information technology in Amazon's business strategy? |
| 10/4 | Issue 6: Organizational Learning | Chapter 3, Reading from Financial Times to be handed out in class week before. | Case 1-4 (Boeing) Is e-Enabled Advantage a sustainable advantage? If so, for how long? If not, are there any steps Boeing could take to make it sustainable? |
| 10/11 | Issue 8: Role and Contribution of IS Issue 9: Is Effectiveness & Productivity | Chapter 4 | Case 1-5 (Royal DSM) What is the situation at DSM as of 2000? Do you have any advice as the firm goes into the new millenium? |
| 10/18 | First exam | ||
| 10/25 | Issue 7: Information Architecture | Chapter 5 | "Selecting a Hosting Provider" - fictional case to be handed out prior week. You will be assigned to take the viewpoint of either WBC or IEC. What is the business situation of your assigned client company? How does that affect hosting requirements? What selection criteria do you recommend? Choose the best hosting provider. Justify your recommendation. |
| 11/1 | Issue 11: Telecommunications & Issue 13: Security and Control | Chapter 6 | Case 2-3 (Ford) & Reading 2-4 (Dell) Prepare this case by comparing and contrasting Ford versus Dell. Compare the experiences that you (or your friends or members of your family) have had buying a new car and compare those to the experience of buying a computer online (if you've never done this, go to www.dell.com and explore how online computer buying works); what do you think explains the differences? What challenges does Ford face that are not also faced by Dell? How should Ford deal with those challenges? To what degree should Ford emulate Dell's business model? |
| 11/8 | Issue 14: Multivendor Integration | Chapter 7 | Case 2-1 (CareGroup) How could the operational outage at CareGroup been prevented? Was the situation handled appropriately? Moving forward, what changes should they make? |
| 11/15 | Issue10: Software Development & Issue 12: Applications Portfolio | Chapter 8 | Case 2-2 (iPremier - fictional case but everything that happened to iPremier has happened to somebody) How well did the iPremier Company perform during the attack? If you were Bob Turley, what might you have done differently during the attack? Were the company's procedures deficient in responding to this attack? How might they have been better prepared? What should they do to prepare for another such attack? In the aftermath of the attack, what would you be worried about? Was the preoccupation with stock price appropriate? What actions would you recommend? |
| 11/29 | Issue 4: End User Computing | David, Schuff, & St. Louis, Managing your IT total cost of ownership, Communications of the ACM 45, 1 (January 2002) pp 101 - 106. | Case 2-6 (Cisco) |
| 12/6 | Second exam | ||
| 12/13 8:00 - 10:00 pm | Final Exam Period | Professor plans to attend ICIS. | Please reserve this date and time as a backup final exam period in case we have a class cancelled during the semester. |
The latest version of this syllabus will be located online at http://p.faculty.umkc.edu/pickr/mis5558/.
Besides this syllabus, this course is conducted under the regulations of UMKC as described in the current catalog. In case of conflict among these two documents, the UMKC catalog dominates.
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