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Cover of Information Systems: A Manager's Guide to Harnessing Technology v1.2
Published: 
August 2011
Page Count: 
346
ISBN (Digital): 
978-1-4533-3007-4

Information Systems: A Manager's Guide to Harnessing Technology

Version 1.2
By John Gallaugher

Included Supplements

Key Features

Teach Information Systems Management? Adopt this college textbook as is or personalize it online at Flat World. Change chapter titles, move content with ease, and delight in how much less your students pay. We publish peer-reviewed textbooks by expert authors. You make them perfect for your course.

Students

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Listen to a podcast of John discussing his textbook.

Information Systems: A Manager’s Guide to Harnessing Technology V1.2 is intended for use in undergraduate and/or graduate courses in Management Information Systems and Information Technology.

Version 1.2 of John's book retains the same structure and theory of version 1.1, but refreshes key statistics, examples, and brings case material up to date (vital when covering firms that move as fast as Facebook, Google, and Netflix). Adopting version 1.2 guarantees your students will have the most current text on the market, drawing real and applicable lessons from material that will keep your class offerings current and accessible.

One of BusinessWeek’s "Professors of the Year", John Gallaugher of Boston College, brings you a brand new Management Information Systems textbook that teaches students how he or she will experience IS from a Managers perspective first hand through interesting coverage and bleeding-edge cases.

Get involved with John's community by visiting and subscribing to his blog, The Week In Geek, where courseware, technology and strategy intersect and joining his Ning IT Community site where you can get more resources to teach Information Systems.

Shockingly, at a time when technology regularly appears on the cover of every major business publication, students find IS among the least appealing of management disciplines.

The teaching approach in Information Systems: A Manager’s Guide to Harnessing Technology V 1.2 can change this. The text offers a proven approach that has garnered student praise, increased IS enrollment, and engaged students to think deeper and more practically about the space where business and technology meet. Every topic is related to specific business examples, so students gain an immediate appreciation of its importance. Rather than lead with technical topics, the book starts with strategic thinking, focusing on big-picture issues that have confounded experts but will engage students. And while chapters introduce concepts, cases on approachable, exciting firms across industries further challenge students to apply what they've learned, asking questions like:

Why was NetFlix able to repel Blockbuster and WalMart? How did Harrah's Casino's become twice as profitable as comparably-sized Caesar's, enabling the former to acquire the latter? How does Spain's fashion giant Zara, a firm that shuns the sort of offshore manufacturing used by every other popular clothing chain, offer cheap fashions that fly off the shelves, all while achieving growth rates and profit margins that put Gap to shame? Why do technology markets often evolve into winner-take-all or winner take-most scenarios? And how can managers compete when these dynamics are present? Why is Google more profitable than Disney? How much is Facebook really worth

The Information Systems course and discipline have never seemed more relevant, more interesting, and more exciting. Gallaugher's textbook can help teachers make students understand why.

  • About the Author
  • Acknowledgments
  • Dedication
  • Preface

    • Chapter 1: Setting the Stage: Technology and the Modern Enterprise

  • 1.1 Tech’s Tectonic Shift: Radically Changing Business Landscapes
  • 1.2 It’s Your Revolution
  • 1.3 Geek Up—Tech Is Everywhere and You’ll Need It to Thrive
  • 1.4 The Pages Ahead

    • Chapter 2: Strategy and Technology: Concepts and Frameworks for Understanding What Separates Winners from Losers

  • 2.1 Introduction
  • 2.2 Powerful Resources
  • 2.3 Barriers to Entry, Technology, and Timing
  • 2.4 Key Framework: The Five Forces of Industry Competitive Advantage

    • Chapter 3: Zara: Fast Fashion from Savvy Systems

  • 3.1 Introduction
  • 3.2 Don’t Guess, Gather Data
  • 3.3 Moving Forward

    • Chapter 4: Netflix in Two Acts: The Making of an E-commerce Giant and the Uncertain Future of Atoms to Bits

  • 4.1 Introduction
  • 4.2 Act I: Netflix Leverages Tech and Timing to Create Killer Assets in DVD-by-Mail
  • 4.3 Act II: Netflix and the Shift from Mailing Atoms to Streaming Bits

    • Chapter 5: Moore’s Law: Fast, Cheap Computing and What It Means for the Manager

  • 5.1 Introduction
  • 5.2 The Death of Moore’s Law?
  • 5.3 Bringing Brains Together: Supercomputing and Grid Computing
  • 5.4 E-waste: The Dark Side of Moore’s Law

    • Chapter 6: Understanding Network Effects

  • 6.1 Introduction
  • 6.2 Where’s All That Value Come From?
  • 6.3 One-Sided or Two-Sided Markets?
  • 6.4 How Are These Markets Different?
  • 6.5 Competing When Network Effects Matter

    • Chapter 7: Social Media, Peer Production, and Web 2.0

  • 7.1 Introduction
  • 7.2 Blogs
  • 7.3 Wikis
  • 7.4 Social Networks
  • 7.5 Twitter and the Rise of Microblogging
  • 7.6 Other Key Web 2.0 Terms and Concepts
  • 7.7 Prediction Markets and the Wisdom of Crowds
  • 7.8 Crowdsourcing
  • 7.9 Get SMART: The Social Media Awareness and Response Team

    • Chapter 8: Facebook: Building a Business from the Social Graph

  • 8.1 Introduction
  • 8.2 Does Facebook Want to Eat Your Firm’s Lunch? Enveloping Markets across the Internet
  • 8.3 The Social Graph
  • 8.4 Facebook Feeds—Ebola for Data Flows
  • 8.5 Facebook as a Platform
  • 8.6 Advertising and Social Networks: A Work in Progress
  • 8.7 Privacy Peril, Beacon, and the TOS Debacle: What Facebook’s Failures Can Teach Managers about Technology Planning and Deployment
  • 8.8 One Graph to Rule Them All: Facebook Reaches across the Web with Open Graph
  • 8.9 Is Facebook Worth It?

    • Chapter 9: Understanding Software: A Primer for Managers

  • 9.1 Introduction
  • 9.2 Operating Systems
  • 9.3 Application Software
  • 9.4 Distributed Computing
  • 9.5 Writing Software
  • 9.6 Understanding Technology beyond the Price Tag: Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) and the Cost of Tech Failure

    • Chapter 10: Software in Flux: Partly Cloudy and Sometimes Free

  • 10.1 Introduction
  • 10.2 Open Source
  • 10.3 Why Open Source?
  • 10.4 Examples of Open Source Software
  • 10.5 Why Give It Away? The Business of Open Source
  • 10.6 Cloud Computing: Hype or Hope?
  • 10.7 The Software Cloud: Why Buy When You Can Rent?
  • 10.8 SaaS: Not without Risks
  • 10.9 The Hardware Cloud: Utility Computing and Its Cousins
  • 10.10 Clouds and Tech Industry Impact
  • 10.11 Virtualization: Software That Makes One Computer Act Like Many
  • 10.12 Make, Buy, or Rent

    • Chapter 11: The Data Asset: Databases, Business Intelligence, and Competitive Advantage

  • 11.1 Introduction
  • 11.2 Data, Information, and Knowledge
  • 11.3 Where Does Data Come From?
  • 11.4 Data Rich, Information Poor
  • 11.5 Data Warehouses and Data Marts
  • 11.6 The Business Intelligence Toolkit
  • 11.7 Data Asset in Action: Technology and the Rise of Wal-Mart
  • 11.8 Data Asset in Action: Caesars’ Solid Gold CRM for the Service Sector

    • Chapter 12: A Manager’s Guide to the Internet and Telecommunications

  • 12.1 Introduction
  • 12.2 Internet 101: Understanding How the Internet Works
  • 12.3 Getting Where You’re Going
  • 12.4 Last Mile: Faster Speed, Broader Access

    • Chapter 13: Information Security: Barbarians at the Gateway (and Just About Everywhere Else)

  • 13.1 Introduction
  • 13.2 Why Is This Happening? Who Is Doing It? And What’s Their Motivation?
  • 13.3 Where Are Vulnerabilities? Understanding the Weaknesses
  • 13.4 Taking Action

    • Chapter 14: Google in Three Parts: Search, Online Advertising, and Beyond

  • 14.1 Introduction
  • 14.2 Understanding Search
  • 14.3 Understanding the Increase in Online Ad Spending
  • 14.4 Search Advertising
  • 14.5 Ad Networks—Distribution beyond Search
  • 14.6 More Ad Formats and Payment Schemes
  • 14.7 Customer Profiling and Behavioral Targeting
  • 14.8 Profiling and Privacy
  • 14.9 Search Engines, Ad Networks, and Fraud
  • 14.10 The Battle Unfolds
    • Instructor’s Manual

    Instructor’s Manual

    The Instructor’s Manual guides you through the main concepts of each chapter and important elements such as learning objectives, key terms, and key takeaways. Can include answers to chapter exercises, group activity suggestions, and discussion questions.

    Instructor’s Manual

    PowerPoint Lecture Notes

    PowerPoint Lecture Notes

    A PowerPoint presentation highlighting key learning objectives and the main concepts for each chapter are available for you to use in your classroom. You can either cut and paste sections or use the presentation as a whole.

    PowerPoint Lecture Notes

    Test Generator

    Test Generator

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    Test Bank Files for Import to Learning Management Systems

    Test Bank Files for Import to Learning Management Systems

    For your convenience, we've packaged our test items for easy import into Learning Management Systems like Blackboard, Brightspace/D2L, Canvas, Moodle, or Respondus.

    Test Item File

    Test Item File

    Need assistance in supplementing your quizzes and tests? Our test-item files (in Word format) contain many multiple-choice, fill-in-the-blank, and short-answer questions.

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    John Gallaugher Boston College

    John Gallaugher (PhD Syracuse University School of Management) is the founder of the Boston College TechTrek field study programs, and as an advisor to multiple successful student entrepreneurs, John has had unprecedented access to the world’s leading technology and tech investment firms. An award-winning educator and author, John has been named a "Distinguished Educator" by Apple Inc., a "Most Popular Professor" by Bloomberg Businessweek, and “Guru to Grads” by Entrepreneur Magazine. He has also received the Boston College Trzaska Faculty Leadership Award, the all-university Boston College Teaching Award, the Carroll School of Management Teaching Award, and the student newspaper’s Momentum Award for campus impact. His bestselling textbook Information Systems: A Manager's Guide to Harnessing Technology has been used at over 450 universities worldwide, and has twice won the Textbook and Academic Authors' Association "Texty" award for excellence. John has taught on five continents and has led field study experiences in Seattle, San Francisco/Silicon Valley, Boston, New York, Dublin, Ghana, and Sydney. John’s research has been published in leading journals including the MIS Quarterly and Harvard Business Review, and he has consulted for leading organizations including Apple Inc., Accenture, ING, Partners Healthcare, State Street, and the U.S. Information Agency, among others. John has worked extensively with student entrepreneurs and has seen several former students gain admittance to elite accelerators (Y-Combinator, TechStars, MassChallenge), raise capital, and build thriving businesses, with some garnering unicorn ($1 billion plus) valuations. His comments on Business and Technology have appeared in several media outlets, including The New York Times, BusinessWeek, The Associated Press, National Public Radio, and Wired. One of the rare academics who teaches managerial as well as software and hardware programming courses, you can find hundreds of "flipped learning" and project videos at: YouTube.com/profgallaugher. John holds both a BA in Computer Science and an MBA from Boston College, and a PhD in Information Systems from the Syracuse University School of Management. He occasionally publishes on Substack (http://profgallaugher.substack.com) and is also active on social media—having left X for Threads: @john.gallaugher.

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