Technology Service Management: A Multi-level Approach for Teaching the MBA Core Information Systems Course

Abstract

Executive SummaryCore MBA IT courses have tended to be survey courses that cover important topics but often do not sufficiently engage students. The result is that many top-ranked MBA programs have not found such courses useful enough to include in their core MBA requirements. In this paper, we present a design of an MBA course emphasizing information technology and intending to be a valuable part of a core MBA program.The primary audience for this course is the general MBA student, and the primary teaching objectives of the course are for students to (1) recognize that IT plays a vital role in the functioning of most modern organizations, (2) recognize that the effective application of IT requires the active engagement of non-IT as well as IT management, and (3) acquire the tools and concepts necessary for non-IT managers to participate in the effective management of an enterprise's IT resources.The basic framework by which we accomplish these objectives conceptualizes IT management into three domains of activity: executive-level IT governance, enterprise-level IT governance/management, and functional-level IT governance/management. Executive-level IT governance issues reside at the board and executive level and include parameters involving the strategic application of IT. Enterprise-level IT management/governance includes those activities that are best accomplished through joint business and IT management participation, such as the development of IT service level agreements. These two areas are most emphasized in the course. Functional-level IT management refers to those activities that should be solely the responsibility of IT managers. This framework provides a means for parsing out IT management responsibilities with the intent of emphasizing that some IT management activities require the involvement of non-IT managers.As a means for helping students understand what an enterprise needs to do well to use IT to support its goals, we applied the Information Orientation framework (Marchand, Kettinger, & Rollins, 2001). This framework considers how well organizations (1) collect, process and maintain their information (information management practices), (2) share information and use it to support decision making, and (3) employ specific IT management practices. These three domains comprise an organization's "information orientation maturity," which is posited to relate to an orMaterial published as part of this publication, either on-line or in print, is copyrighted by the Informing Science Institute. Permission to make digital or paper copy of part or all of these works for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that the copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage AND that copies 1) bear this notice in full and 2) give the full citation on the first page. It is permissible to abstract these works so long as credit is given. To copy in all other cases or to republish or to post on a server or to redistribute to lists requires specific permission and payment of a fee. ...