Syllabus: E-Commerce at University of California

SAN FRANCISCO (09/01/2000) - Location: University of California at Irvine Instructor: Vijay Gurbaxani Class Size: 30Description: Gurbaxani, a consultant and professor at the school, says understanding theory is the top priority in his class, but sometimes in the world of e-commerce even that isn't abstract enough. "I'm trying to get students to think for themselves because there isn't established research on these issues," he says.

The big question then is how can students make predictions with imperfect theories - that is, theories that don't directly apply to problems students will encounter in making e-commerce decisions.

The answer is to study broad themes, and Gurbaxani provides them in spades through sessions like "The Productivity Paradox of IT," "Economics of Electronic Commerce" and "Managing IT for High Return." The latter takes a look at shifting work practices around e-business decentralization and organizational changes in the technology and management sectors of business.

Like many other e-business professors, Gurbaxani believes that there is not yet a canon of textbooks that address e-commerce issues. However, he recommends The Economics of Electronic Commerce as a starting point because it has a theoretical approach.

"It focuses on the underlying economics of e-commerce," Gurbaxani says. "It's more enduring than other books."

Books The Economics of Electronic Commerce: The Essential Economics of Doing Business in the Electronic Marketplace by Soon-Yong Choi, Dale Stahl and Andrew Whinston (Macmillan Technical Publishing)Information Systems Management in Practice (Fourth Edition) edited by Barbara McNurlin and Ralph Sprague (Prentice Hall)Magazines Harvard Business Review, Information Systems Research, Management Science, Sloan Management Review, Information WeekSpeakers Ashwin Rangan, VP of information services, Conexant.

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