The Course in a Nutshell

Jan 10

Introduction and course overview

This course is about ICTs, organizations and your role in the organization. The course has three primary elements.
First, the readings and lectures where the minimum critical topics for literacy in organization informations are introduced. The readings and lectures will focus primarily on theory, particularly looking at organizations through the lens of economics.
Second, the discussion section. There will be some readings during the discussion section, primarily those that apply to the practical training part of the course.
Third is the practical training. The project is an experience in team management. It includes writing a workplan, implementing the work plan, and filling out an evaluation of your peers. Most of you are attending this University to broaden your horizons and increase your employment-relevant skills. This project, properly executed, will do both. At the end of the project you should have a considerably expanded knowledge of your subject, improved presentation skills, and an extremely cursory introduction to project management. Regular deadlines during the semester are intended to force the groups not to wait until the last moment to complete the project.

What are Organizations

Jan 12 Session 1: Organizational Models Case 1

Questions to consider during reading

There are three models of organizations: individual rational actors, collections of groups or stakeholders, and as groups of political individuals with their own visions and power struggles.

Readings

Allison "Essence of Decision" Tversky and Kahneman, "Rational Choice and the Framing of Decisions" in Rational Choice, Hogarth and Reder, eds., pp. 67-94.

 

Jan 17 Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, No Classes

 

Jan 19 Session 2: Organizational Models Case 2

Questions to consider during reading

Why is IT important in an organization? Are ICTS inherently valuable? If not, how do ICTs illustrate their value.

Reading

John Mendonca, Organizational Impact, The Internet Encyclopedia ed. Hossein Bidgoli, John Wiley & Sons (Hoboken, New Jersey) 2003. Vol. 2, pp 832 - end.

Optional Reading

Carr, Nicholas G., "IT Doesn't Matter"Harvard Business Review, May 2003.

 

Jan 24 Session 3: Organizational Models Case 3

Questions to consider during reading

From where do organizations come? Is it just the cooperation of a many people? Economic forces? Group psychology? Indeed, business are presented in media and academy as distinct and clear opposites. Yet in fact their interaction is quite deep and profound. Government plays a critical role in creating markets.

Readings

Deborah Spar Ruling the Waves pp. 1-22, p.124-289

 

Group formation and project ideas due.
Jan 26 Session 4: Games Companies Plays

Questions to consider during reading

What happens when an organization is broken? How do the people that make up organizations choose to function or fail to function in an organization?

Readings

Frank and Cook, The Winner-Take-All Society Chapter 1 (p. 1-22)
R. Hirschman, Exit, Voice, and Loyalty. Chapters 1, 2, 3, and 8 (pp. 1-20, 21-29, 30-43, 106-119)

 

Jan 31 Session 4: The Human in the Organization

Questions to consider during reading

How are on-line discussions and organizations distinct from off-line organizations? Does an organization or process change by virtue of replicating it in electronic form? How are people and interactions different on email? How did you handle this information overload?

Readings

Davenport, Thomas H. 1995. The Fad That Forgot People. Fast Company 1 pp. 70. http://www.fastcompany.com/online/01/reengin.html
Davis, J., Farnham, S., Jensen, C. (2002). Decreasing Online Bad Behavior. In Extended Abstracts of CHI 2002, Minneapolis, April 2002.http://research.microsoft.com/scg/papers/Bad Behavior CHI 2002.pdf

Recommended Additional Reading

Connections New Ways of Working in the Networked Organization By Lee Sproull and Sara Kiesler MIT Press, 1991, 212 pages.

The Organization of the ICT Market

Feb 2 Session 1: Telecom Market Basics

Questions to consider during reading

What is convergence? How have historical technologically-dependent decisions created perverse incentives in telecommunications?

Readings

H. H. Lalani, Broadband Networks: The First Hundred Feet: The local access network perspective. (This article outlines the stake holders.)
Rupp The Effects of the Telecommunications Act of 1996 on the Local Exchange: A Significant Step in the Right Direction, 70 S. California Law Review 1085 (note for the reading, CAP = competitive access provider is the same as a CLEC. A CLEC is a phone company _other_ than the original phone company. Cable companies are CLECs. CLEC stands for competitive local exchange carrier. )

Optional Readings

W. Russell Neuman, Lee W. McKnight and Richard Jay Solomon, The Gordian Knot:Political Gridlock on the Information Highway Chapter 1.

 

Feb 7 Session 2: The Seven-Layer Model

Questions to consider during reading

How can you break the network down into parts that are small enough to understand and large enough to be useful? How are markets defined? What are "conduit" and "content" in telecommunications?

Reading

Laudon & Traver, "E-commerce" second edition. pp. 136 - 162

 

Group bibliographies due.
Feb 9 Session 3: Information Market Basics

Questions to consider during reading

How is content presentation different on the network?

Readings

Kalakota & Whinston, "Electronic Commerce"pp 251-282. Addison Wesley (Boston, MA)

Optional Readings

Gupta, Stahl & Whinston, Pricing of Services on the Internet http://cism.bus.utexas.edu/alok/pricing.html

 

Why were they wrong? Why has there not been per-use pricing?

Decision - Making Tools in Economics

Feb 14 Session 1: NPV and Options

Questions to consider during reading

Net present value and options theory are different ways of looking at the same situation. When is one preferable?

Readings

Luehman, "What's It Worth?: A General Manager's Guide to Valuation" HBR May - June pp. 133-141

 

Group work plans due.
Feb 16 Session 2:Resource Economics

Questions to consider during reading

Economics is the science of scarcity (thus the dismal science).

Readings

Solow, "The Economics of Resources or the Resources of Economics" American Economic Review, May 1974, pp. 1-14.

 

Feb 21 Session 3: Economics and Uncertainty

Questions to consider during reading

Every person experiences uncertainty. Now that uncertainty is merely personal but in the future your uncertainty and decisions may play a role in decision-making. Think about your own decisions and how you have fallen to these habits.

Readings

Tversky and Kahneman, "Judgment Under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases" Science, vol. 185, 1974, pp. 1124-1131. (packet)
M. G. Morgan , B. Fischhoff , A. Bostrom Risk Communication : A Mental Models Approach pp 1-18, pp 34-62

 


Lichtenstein et. al, Judged Frequency of Lethal Events, Journal of Experimental Psychology. Vol 4 No 6, pp 551- 578

Information Economics

Revised group work plans due.
Feb 23 Session 1: Digital is Different

Questions to consider during reading

Fundamental assumptions underlie market economics. How does digital challenge those assumptions.

Readings

# Delong and Froomkin (1997) "The Next Economy?" Internet Publishing and Beyond: The Economics of Digital Information and Intellectual Property. Edited by B Kahin and H Varian. Cambridge, MA MIT Press. http://www.law.miami.edu/~froomkin/articles/newecon.htm

 

Feb 28 Financial Cryptography

Guest speaker : To Be Determined

 

Mar 2 Financial Cryptography

Guest speaker : To Be Determined

 

Mar 7 Session 2: Interconnection and Network Effects

Questions to consider during reading Feedback is a critical concept in the economics of networks and in network-based competition.

Reading

Noam, Interconnecting the Network of Networks, MIT Press, 2001. pp. 1-25, 54-68

Optional Reading

The Economics of Networks, by Nicholas Economides, International Journal of Industrial Organization, Vol. 16, no. 4, pp. 673-699 (October 1996). Available on-line

 

Project outline and abstract due.
Mar 9 Session 3: Lock-in and feedback

Questions to consider during reading

Network economics implies feedback. Feedback can cause lock-in. How easy will it be for you to get a new email? A new phone?

Readings

W. B. Arthur, "Competing Technologies, Increasing returns and Lock-in by Historical Events", The Economic Journal, Vol 99, Issue 394, pp116-131

 


P. A. David "Clio and the Economics of Qwerty" The American Economic Review, Vol 75, Issue 2, Papers and Proceedings of the 97th Annual Review of the American Economic Association, May 1985, pp. 332-337.

 

Mar 14 Spring Break

 

Mar 16 Spring Break

 

Mar 21 Session 3: Versioning

Questions to consider during reading

What is versioning? How does digital change versioning?
MLS listings on-line http://www.realtor.com and http://www.targetmls.com/
Amazon.com and www.barnes and noble.com and www.reiters.com

Readings

Information Rules, Shapiro, Carl. & Varian, Hal, , Harvard Business School Press, (Boston, MA) , c1999, pages 53-81

 

Mar 23 Session 4: Intermediation

Questions to consider during reading

What is disintermediation? Re-intermediation? How does a bookstore inherently bring together certain business lines by virtue of physical location? Think about your favorite sites or consider these sites:
The Hunger Site -- http://www.thehungersite.com -- could this work off line?

Readings

Laudon & Traver, "E-commerce" second edition. pp. 136 - 162 pages 28-33
Whinston & Kalakota, "Electronic Commerce" pp. 21 - 23

 

Mar 28 Session 5: Economics of Free Copies

Questions to consider during reading

Are you a criminal? Or are you a nice person who shares? How do you decide?

Readings

Spinello & Tavani: Excerpts from the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) of 1998
Spinello & Tavani: James Boyle, A Politics of Intellectual Property: Environmentalism for the Net
Spinello & Tavani: J. W. Snapper,On the Web, Plagiarism Matters More Than Copyright Violations

Optional Readings

Spinello & Tavani: Shelly Warwick, Is Copyright Ethical?
Spinello & Tavani: Note on the DeCSS Trial
Samuleson, Digital Rights Management {and, or, vs.} the Law vol. 46, no. 4, April 2003. http://www.sims.berkeley.edu/~pam/papers.html
Camp, DRM Doesn't Really Mean Copyright, IEEE Internet Computing. May 2003. http://www.ljean.org/files/DRM.pdf 16 Spring Break

Information Ownership

Mar 30 Session 1: Hazards of Vendor Rule

Questions to consider during reading

How are markets organized? What were the inherent assumptions about markets in the readings from last week? Where do markets come from? Who participates in defining the rules of a market? What are EULA and UCITA?

Readings

The Uniform Computer Information Transactions Act: A Well Built Fence or Barbed Wire Around the Intellectual Commons? uts.cc.utexas.edu/~lbjjpa/2001/bowman.pdf
Information Rules , Shapiro, Carl. & Varian, Hal, , Harvard Business School Press, (Boston, MA) , c1999, also available as an e-book, pp. 1-50

Optional Readings

National Academy of Science, The Digital Dilemma: Intellectual Property in the Information Age. National Academy Press, Washington, DC (2000); (contents completely available on-line) pp. 1-75

 

Apr 4 Session 2: Free Software as Strategy

Questions to consider during reading

Open code, free software and open source are categories of a radical new way (or the old tried and true way) of organizing a market. What are the differences or ways of organizing a software or information market?

Readings

Lerner, Josh & Triole, Jean 2000 - 03 The Simple Economics of Open Source http://opensource.mit.edu/papers/JoshLernerandJeanTriole-TheSimpleEconomicsofOpenSource.pdf
Tuomi, I. (2001). Internet, innovation, and open source: Actors in the network .First Monday ,6(1). Retrieved October 6, 2001, from http://firstmonday.org/issues/issue6_1/tuomi/index.html
MacCormack, Alan; Herman, Kerry , Red Hat and the Linux Revolution (HBS Case Studies) Product Number: 9-600-009

 

Apr 6 Session 3: Security and Competition

Questions to consider during reading

What are the goals of security in theory? How does this differ from how it is used in practice? Would the security strategies discussed in Anderson work with open code?

Readings

Ross Anderson, Cryptography and Competition Policy: Issues with Trusted Computing, http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/ftp/users/rja14/tcpa.pdf
Schneier, 2002 Computer Security: Its the Economics, Stupid: Economics and Information Security Workshop, Berkeley, CA. http://www.sims.berkeley.edu/resources/affiliates/workshops/econsecurity/econws/18.doc

Optional Readings

L. Jean Camp Basic Cryptography Chapter 3. You may purchase the book or select the material from the on-line version. However, if you choose Print after going to the on-line version Trust and Risk you will print the entire book. Also note that this is the free and thus not edited version.

 

Apr 11 Session 4: The Privacy Payoff

Questions to consider during reading

How do privacy and security interact? What is privacy? How are different ideas of privacy built into different technologies? How do security, privacy, and openness interact?

Readings

Michael Froomkin, The Death of Privacy , University of Miami School of Law, 2000. http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/privacy/Fromkin_DeathOfPrivacy.pdf
Spinello & Tavani: Helen Nissenbaum, The Meaning of Anonymity in an Information Age

Optional Readings

Identity in government http://www.ljean.com/files/identity.pdf

 

Apr 13 Session 5: P2P and Knowledge Management

Questions to consider during reading

Reputation systems are used for ratings, for p2p download controls, for knowledge management. reputation systems can be considered micro payment systems, knowledge management systems or access control systems. What, then, is a reputation system and what is a p2p system?

Readings

three readings from The Internet Encyclopedia ed. Hossein Bidgoli, John Wiley & Sons (Hoboken, New Jersey) 2003.
Ronald Tidd, Knowledge Management, pp. 431-442.
Balthazard & Potter, Groupware, pp. 65- 75.
L. Jean Camp Peer to Peer Systems , pp. 25-33. http://www.ljean.org/files/P2P.pdf
Chapter 16: Peer-to-peer as disruptive technologies, Accountability http://www.freehaven.net/doc/oreilly/accountability-ch16.html

 

Apr 18 Session 6: P2P and Knowledge Management

Questions to consider during reading

Reputation systems are used for ratings, for p2p download controls, for knowledge management. reputation systems can be considered micro payment systems, knowledge management systems or access control systems. What, then, is a reputation system and what is a p2p system?

Readings

, L. Jean Camp Peer to Peer Systems ,The Internet Encyclopedia ed. Hossein Bidgoli, John Wiley & Sons (Hoboken, New Jersey) 2003. http://www.ljean.org/files/P2P.pdf
Chapter 16: Peer-to-peer as disruptive technologies, Accountability http://www.freehaven.net/doc/oreilly/accountability-ch16.html

Student Presentations

Teams will pick numbers after formation. The teams will present the projects in numerical order. Discussion sections will be based on the presentations of your peers.

 

Apr 18 (Alternate to Knowledge Management) Session 1
Student presentations » Teams 10, 11, 12

 

Apr 20 Session 2
Student presentations » Teams 7, 8, 9

 

Apr 25 Session 3
Student presentations » Teams 4, 5, 6

 

Apr 27 Session 4
Student presentations » Teams 1, 2, 3

 

Final Exam
The exam period is Wednesday May 4 at 10:15. If there are presentations on the exam day then all projects are due then and there. If there are not presentations on the exam day then all projects are due 5 pm Monday May 2.
Scheduled final exam period will be used as necessary for any overflow presentations that could not be scheduled in the last two weeks of the course. This will not be used for any Make-up presentations. If all team members are hospitalized, as is the requirement for rescheduling presentations, then I will make time for that team on Monday May 2.