BIS 8613
MIS Administration
Fall 2015
Class Time: M 5:30-8:00 PM or online, anytime
Room: McCool 202
Instructor: Dr. Kent MarettE-Mail: / Office: McCool 302H
Phone: (662) 325-7001
Virtual Office Hours: M & W 2-4 PM CST
or by appointment
Response Time: I will respond to emails within 24 hours. I check my e-mail several times a day.
Class Website: http://misweb.cbi.msstate.edu OR
http://misweb.cbi.msstate.edu/~COBI/faculty/professor.shtml?kmarett
Course Description: Prerequisites: BIS 1012. Three hours lecture. A survey of the components, functions, and processes of Information Systems as they relate to managing modern organization for increased efficiency and competitiveness.
Readings (required): You will be responsible for reading both cases and journal articles for this class. A list of readings can be located in this syllabus following the class calendar.
Software: This class uses the "misweb system" for course management. Your first step in using misweb is to "register" for the system. To do this, go to:
http://misweb.cbi.msstate.edu/editor
Enter your Banner net id, such as abc123, and your Banner net password. Click on the Log in button. If you have already registered for misweb, you will go straight to your Edit Routine. If you have not previously registered for misweb, you will go to a short form which will allow you to register. Complete and submit the form.
Register for misweb immediately!
Grading: The following table shows the allocation of the weights that will be assigned when calculating your final grade.
Midterm Exam #1 / 20% / A / 90.0 – 100Midterm Exam #2 / 20% / B / 80.0 – 89.99
Final Exam / 20% / C / 70.0 – 79.99
Managerial Decision Making Presentation / 20% / D / 60.0 – 69.99
Weekly Responses / 20% / F / 59.99
· Case/Article Responses: Each student will also be responsible for written responses to questions related to cases and articles we will be reading at various points in the semester (see schedule below). Questions will be assigned a week before. The response will be due on Fridays at 11:59 PM on the week they are assigned, and they should be uploaded on the course website.
· Managerial Decision Making Report: Each student will make a presentation (either online or in person) about how a certain cognitive tendency can affect the decision making of an IT manager. We will get into more detail later about the requirements for this presentation, but the student can count on defining the assigned heuristic or bias, providing examples of how it has been demonstrated in past scientific studies and/or real life, and then describing/speculating how it can affect the information technology-related decisions made within a business organization.
Students can choose from among the following list of heuristics and biases (not meant to be comprehensive):Anchoring & Adjustment
Availability Heuristic
Base Rate Fallacy
Bandwagon Effect
Confirmation Bias
Escalation of Commitment
Gambler’s Fallacy
Groupthink / Halo Effect
Nirvana Fallacy
Ostrich Effect
Representativeness Heuristic
Self-Fulfilling Prophecies
Slippery Slope
Stereotyping
Zero-Sum Heuristic
We will determine what topic you should present (as well as the due date) during weeks 2-3.
Grade Appeals: I am willing to review grades. If you wish to appeal a grade, you should submit a written explanation to the instructor summarizing why you believe your grade should be modified. Appeals must be made within one week of the score being made available to you.
Exam and Assignment Policy: If, for some reason*, you must miss one of the exams or quizzes, you are obligated to contact me beforehand so we can arrange an alternative. The same goes for dates assignments are due. There will be no makeup exams after the fact, and late assignments will likely not be accepted.
* - a university-approved reason, such as severe illness, death, job interview, participating in an athletic event, etc. See student handbook.
Extra Credit: There may be an opportunity to earn extra points through your participation in various research projects throughout the semester. These projects may or may not come about, so I cannot guarantee this will happen. You will need to be in class to take part.
Academic Dishonesty: I will enforce university regulations regarding the MSU student honor code to their fullest. The code states “As a Mississippi State University student I will conduct myself with honor and integrity at all times. I will not lie, cheat, or steal, nor will I accept the actions of those who do.” Information is also available at this link: http://students.msstate.edu/honorcode
You will have to sign a copy of the honor code before accessing the first weekly readings, and you will sign the honor code again before every exam. Ignorance of the rules does not exclude any member of the MSU community from the requirements or the processes of the Honor Code.
Title IX
MSU is committed to complying with Title IX, a federal law that prohibits discrimination, including violence and harassment, based on sex. This means that MSU’s educational programs and activities must be free from sex discrimination, sexual harassment, and other forms of sexual misconduct. If you or someone you know has experienced sex discrimination, sexual violence and/or harassment by any member of the University community, you are encouraged to report the conduct to MSU’s Director of Title IX/EEO Programs at 325-8124 or by e-mail to . Additional resources are available at http://www.msstate.edu/web/security/title9-12.pdf, or at http://students.msstate.edu/sexualmisconduct/
Students with Disabilities: I am committed to providing assistance to help you be successful in this course. Reasonable accommodations are available for students with a documented disability. Please visit the Disability Support Services (DSS) during the first two weeks of every semester to seek information or to qualify for accommodations. All accommodations MUST be approved through the DSS (01 Montgomery Hall). Call (662) 325-3335 to make an appointment with a disability counselor.
Changes to the Syllabus: Any changes will be announced during class and posted on the course website. Please contact me for any clarifications.
Course Schedule (see table below)
How to interpret the schedule: Simply put, the readings/cases for the following week are listed in the left hand column, and the due dates to submit responses are in the right column.
For instance, take week 1. The course begins on Monday, August 17. The Carr article is listed for the week in the left column. On the evening of the 17th, I will preview the Carr article in class for the on-campus students, and for the distance students I will post a “preview video” to the course website.
Then, sometime over the course of the next week, you will read the article. By the following Friday night, you will need to have posted your responses using the week 1 response form. By the following Sunday evening, I will post a summary of the week’s responses and post a preview for Week 2, when we will do it all over again.
The full references for the readings are below the schedule.
Topic / Reading(s) / Due Dates11:59 PM Central
Week 1
(starts 8/17) / Course Intro
IT Doesn’t Matter (Carr 2003) / Friday 8/21
Week 2
8/24 / IT Does Matter (Mata et al. 1995) / Friday 8/28
Week 3
8/31 / Strategy and IT
How Newly Appointed CIOs Take Charge (Gerth & Peppard 2014) / Friday 9/4
Week 4
9/7 / *** Labor Day – No Class ***
Week 5
9/14 / IS Strategic Alignment (Preston & Karahanna 2009) / Friday 9/18
Week 6
9/21 / Sustainable IT at Intel (Curry et al. 2012) / Friday 9/25
Week 7
9/28 / *** Midterm Exam #1 *** / Wednesday 9/30
Week 8
10/5 / Project Decision Making
Classic Project Mistakes (Nelson 2007)
Turning Around Runaway Project (Iacovou & Dexter 2004) / Friday 10/9
Week 9
10/12 / Too Far Ahead of the IT Curve? (Glaser 2007) / Friday 10/16
Week 10
10/19 / Cloud at Mohawk (Stamas 2014)
Cloud at Bayer (Winkler 2014) / Friday 10/23
Week 11
10/26 / Ethics and Security
Ethical Issues and Big Data (Martin 2015)
Customer Privacy and Org Priorities (Greenaway & Chan 2013) / Friday 10/30
Week 12
11/2 / Hurricane Katrina (Junglas and Ives 2007)
Rethinking Passwords (Cheswick 2013) / Friday 11/6
Week 13
11/9 / *** Midterm Exam #2 *** / Wednesday 11/11
Week 14
11/16 / HR Issues
Articles: Retaining IT Staff (Agarwal et al. 2006)
Life After Outsourcing (Ranganathan et al. 2009) / Friday 11/20
Week 15
11/23 / Article: Work-Life Balance (Sarker et al. 2012) / Friday 11/27
Week 16
11/30 / Articles: Social Media (Mandviwalla and Watson 2014)
Wal*Mart RFID (Hardgrave et al. 2008) / Friday 12/4
Monday
12/7 / *** Final Exam *** / Wednesday 12/9
Journal Articles: You can find links to these on the course website. They are also free to MSU students through our library at http://library.msstate.edu/.
Agarwal, R., Brown, C., Ferratt, T., and Moore, J.E. "Five mindsets for retaining IT staff," MIS Quarterly Executive (5:3) 2006, pp 137-150.
Carr, N. "IT doesn't matter," Harvard Business Review (81:5) 2003, pp 41-49.
Cheswick, W. “Rethinking passwords,” Communications of the ACM (56:2), pp 40-44.
Curry, E., Guyon, B., Sheridan, C., and Donnellan, B. “Developing a Sustainable IT Capability: Lessons from Intel’s Journey,” MIS Quarterly Executive (8:1) 2012, p.61-74.
Gerth, A. and Peppard, J. “How Newly Appointed CIOs Take Charge,” MIS Quarterly Executive (13:3), 159-173.
Glaser, J. “Too Far Ahead of the IT Curve?” Harvard Business Review 2007, p.29-39.
Greenaway, K. and Chan, Y. “Designing a Customer Information Privacy Program Aligned with Organizational Priorities,” MIS Quarterly Executive (12:3) 2013, p.137-150.
Hardgrave, B., Langford, S., Waller, M., and Miller, R. "Measuring the impact of RFID on out of stocks at Wal-Mart," MIS Quarterly Executive (7:4) 2008, pp 181-192.
Hirschheim, R., Welke, R.J., and Schwarz, A. "Service-oriented architecture: Myths, realities, and a maturity model," MIS Quarterly Executive (9:1) 2009.
Iacovou, C. L., & Dexter, A. S. (2004). Turning around runaway information technology projects.IEEE Engineering Management Review, 97-112.
Junglas, I., and Ives, B. "Recovering IT in a disaster: Lessons from Hurricane Katrina," MIS Quarterly Executive (6:1) 2007, pp 39-51.
Mandviwalla, M., & Watson, R. (2014). Generating capital from social media. MIS Quarterly Executive,13(2), 97-113.
Martin, K. “Ethical Issues in the Big Data Industry,” MIS Quarterly Executive (14:2) 2015, p.67-85.
Mata, F., Fuerst, W., and Barney, J. "Information Technology and Sustained Competitive Advantage: A Resource-Based Analysis," MIS Quarterly (19:4) 1995, pp 487-505.
Nelson, R. "IT project management: Infamous failures, classic mistakes, and best practices," MIS Quarterly Executive (6:2) 2007, pp 67-78.
Preston, D. and Karahanna, E. “How to Develop a Shared Vision: The Key to IS Strategic Alignment,” MIS Quarterly Executive (8:1) 2009, p.1-8.
Ranganathan, C., and Outlay, C. "Life after IT outsourcing: Lessons learned from resizing the IT workforce," MIS Quarterly Executive (8:4) 2009.
Sarker, S., Xiao, X., Sarker, S., and Ahuja, M. “Managing employees’ use of mobile technologies to minimize work-life balance impacts,” MIS Quarterly Executive (11:4), 2012.
Stamas, P., Kaarst-Brown, M, and Bernard, S. “The Business Transformation Payoffs of Cloud Services at Mohawk,” MIS Quarterly Executive (13:4) 2014, p.177-192.
Winkler, T., Benlian, A., Piper, M., and Hirsch, H. “Bayer HealthCare Delivers a Dose of Reality for Cloud Payoff Mantras in Multinationals,” MIS Quarterly Executive (13:4) 2014, p.193-208.