BUSI 5710G - Strategic Information Technology Management

Information technology (IT) has the potential to change the landscape of global competition, increase productivity, change industry structure, make markets more efficient and alter a firm’s competitive position. IT can increase the efficiency of every business activity including product design, production, purchasing, marketing, customer-supplier relationships and human resource management. Economists agree that IT has contributed significantly to productivity growth and helped check inflation. Such beliefs and promises have persuaded corporations to spend over a trillion dollars on IT alone over the last decades. However, the dramatic decline in IT investments after 2000-2001 and the difficulty researchers have had in tying IT investments to corporate performance has led sceptics to question the economic contribution of IT. Indeed, the rapid rate of IT innovation, massive investments in the IT infrastructure and applications, the difficulty in showing the competitive impact of IT investments and conflicting viewpoints regarding the value of IT raise a gamut of issues for managers in user organizations, financial institutions, vendor organizations and consulting firms: Do IT and the Internet change basic economic principles and strategies? Does the ability to search, seek and share information regardless of time, space and geographical differences increase market efficiency? Is such efficiency beneficial to all market participants? How and where can IT benefit an organization? Are there any killer applications that can still justify large investments in IT infrastructure? Which types of information technologies hold promise for the future? This course has been designed to provide frameworks and underlying principles to address these and other related issues.
Credit hours: 3
Prerequisite(s): BUSI 5500G.