Start Time: 1:00 103 Express Scripts Hall

Prerequisites: Graduate students:  IS 5800

Course Description:

Largely fostered by globalization, the Internet, processing standards, and software innovations, organizations aim to provide business services anytime, anywhere, and on any device.  This course covers SOURCING and AUTOMATION topics to help managers deliver business services better, faster, cheaper and with good social impacts. Students will investigate sourcing options such as outsourcing, offshoring, shared services, captive centers, cloud sourcing, impact sourcing, prison sourcing, crowd sourcing, and rural sourcing.  Students will investigate automation innovations such as robotic process automation, cognitive automation, and Blockchain. The course covers all types of business services, including IT, financial and accounting services, human resource services, call centers, procurement, real estate services, legal services, and other back office services.

About the Course Instructor:

Dr. Mary C. Lacity is Curators’ Distinguished Professor at the University of Missouri-St. Louis and a Visiting Scholar at MIT CISR.  She has held visiting positions at the London School of Economics, Washington University, and Oxford University. She is a Certified Outsourcing Professional ®, Industry Advisor for Symphony Ventures, and Co-editor of the Palgrave Series: Work, Technology, and Globalization. Her research focuses on the delivery of business and IT services through global sourcing and automation.  She has conducted case studies and surveys of hundreds of organizations on their outsourcing and management practices. She has given keynote speeches and executive seminars worldwide and has served as an expert witness for the US Congress.  She was inducted into the IAOP’s Outsourcing Hall of Fame in 2014, one of only three academics to ever be inducted. She was the recipient of the 2008 Gateway to Innovation Award sponsored by the IT Coalition, Society for Information Management, and St. Louis RCGA. She has published 26 books, most recently Robotic Process Automation and Risk Mitigation: The Definitive Guide (2017) and Service Automation: Robots and the Future of Work  (2016)(SB Publishing, UK, co-author Leslie Willcocks).  Her publications have appeared in the Harvard Business Review, Sloan Management Review, MIS Quarterly, MIS Quarterly Executive, IEEE Computer, Communications of the ACM, and many other academic and practitioner outlets. 

Required Course Materials:

Course Assessment Items:

Exams:

The purpose of the exams is to make sure that you read, understood, and can apply material contained in the readings and lectures.  The exams are administered online. EXAMS ARE POSTED IN THE ASSIGNMENT FEATURE IN MYGATEWAY.  Complete all the required readings and listen to all required webinars prior to opening the exam.

Exam 1 covers SOURCING.  You have the option of studying for and taking the SOURCING FOUNDATIONS EXAM or if you are familiar with sourcing, you have the option of studying for and completing the ADVANCED EXAM.

·      Exam 1 FOUNDATIONS covers the SOURCING modules:  Overview of Outsourcing, 20 years of Research, Moving to the Strategic Agenda, Decision Process, Offshore Outsourcing.

 ·      Exam 1 ADVANCED covers SOURCING modules:  Overview of Outsourcing, 20 years of Research, Innovation, Cloud Services, Nine Keys to World Class BPO.

Exam 2 covers AUTOMATION modules: Robotic Process Automation, Cognitive Automation and Blockchain Technologies

Please note, ONCE YOU OPEN THE EXAM YOU ONLY HAVE 2 HOURS TO COMPLETE IT!

Do not open the test until after you have read/watched the required materials and you have studied.  You may use your notes, readings, power point slides to answer questions.  You may not speak with other students about the exam. There are 45 multiple choice questions (worth 2 points each) randomly selected on each exam plus one essay (10 points).

Grading Exams:

Exams are due at the dates and times as indicated above. There is no “double grading” (i.e. no asking to redo an exam if a student is not satisfied with the grade earned).

 Grading Philosophy:

My grading philosophy is that professors do not “give” grades.  Students “earn” grades.  I take grading very seriously.  I thoughtfully grade each assessment item on the assessment sheets.  A sub-culture has emerged among some (certainly not all) graduate students that graduate students are “customers” and that everything they do should be awards an A.  Such a view dilutes the value of your education, and as a professor I cannot possibly hold this view.  I am morally obligated to clearly define expectations (which I do on a very detailed syllabus and detailed assignments), to help you as much as I can before your assignments are due, and to grade the actual performance using the assessment sheets. All that said, I have great empathy for college students, having been one myself for nine years!   I care about your learning. No one would be happier than I to see all students earn high grades! In this class, the letter grades use the following scale:

Class Participation:

The class only meets face-to-face a few times so it is vital that students attend all classes.   Students who must miss a class must watch class recording and submitting short essays on missed material in order to complete the course. 

In Class Teaching Case Presentations

Students will prepare and lead the discussion of two teaching cases in class:

·         Lacity, M., and Willcocks, L. (2016), “Rethinking Legal Services in the Face of Globalization and Technology Innovation: The Case of Radiant Law”, Journal of Information Technology Teaching Cases, Vol. 5, 1, pp. 15-22.

·         Lacity, M., Rottman, J., and Carmel, E. (2014), "Prison Sourcing: “Doing Good” or “Good for Business”?, Journal of Information Technology Teaching Cases

The class will be divided into four groups, three to four students each.   Each group will be responsible for leading a ten minute discussion of specific questions.  The cases and the questions are on MyGateway.  The group presentations will be graded using the in-case grade assessment sheet.

Oral Group Presentation:

Each group is responsible for presenting a 50 minute presentation to the class. Each group will be assigned a different business service topic from among the following:

Sourcing topics:

·         Business Process Outsourcing

·         Shared Services or Captive Centers

·         Crowdsourcing!

·         Impact Sourcing

·         Societal View: Is outsourcing good or bad for the US Economy?

Automation topics:

·         The Rise of the Robots

·          Organizational uses of Cognitive Automation

·          Organizational uses of Blockchain

·         Societal View: Is automation good or bad for the US Economy?

RESEARCH BASE:

Secondary Resources. Each group should research at least 20 external references such as journal articles, newspapers, short videos, or relevant websites.  Some excellent sources that cover the ITO and BPO markets are:

At least 10 of these references must be from refereed journals or academic journals for practitioners, such as Sloan Management Review, Harvard Business Review, MIS Quarterly Executive, Academy of Management Perspectives. Refereed journals assure some level of validation.  The academic articles don’t have to be limited to just your narrow topic (such as Egypt), but can include academic articles on outsourcing in general, surveys of outsourcing, theories or outsourcing, literature reviews on outsourcing, etc. The best source to find refereed journal articles is ABI-INFORM, available online to UMSL students.  To find refereed articles, simply tick the box for “peer-reviewed ” while in ABI inform.

Information about required Academic Articles

Many students liven up their presentations by including short video clips about their topic (such as a youtube video). 

Primary Resources. Students should conduct three to four original interviews for their group projects.  Another potential source of primary data is an original survey.  For example, a past group surveyed lawyers to see if they would outsource any legal work.   Another group surveyed graduate students to assess their level of participation in crowdsourcing.

Information about required Primary Sources

Important Information for Group Projects:

Advice and Checklists for Oral Group Presentations

PRESENTATION TIMING:

Each group should only plan 40 minutes of content to allow 10 minutes of audience interaction during the presentation. Think of yourselves not as formal speakers, but as teachers. You should incorporate the audience during the entire presentation.  In the past, students have done very creative things for audience participation including a short Jeopardy game, a bingo game, a short survey, a guess the provider logo game, etc.

PRESENTATION MATERIALS:

Each group will develop power point slides (or a Prezi or another presentation format).

On the day of your presentation, please provide a STAPLED, hardcopy set the slides for your instructor. Please print only 2 slides per page.

Please load your final power point slides in GROUP X Group Pages under FILE EXCHANGE. 

Please name the final version of your power point slides exactly as indicated below:

CITATIONS:

Make sure that every slide appropriately credits sources, be it an interview, printed material, or web site.

Information about Citations

DO NOT PLAGERIZE!!!! You may not copy directly from sources unless you indent the text and put it in quotes.  This would normally be reserved for a few sentences of specific quotations.  You must RE-WORD sources!  You are using external references as INPUT to your originally created OUTPUT. Professors take plagiarism very seriously and any student who copies directly from the web or printed sources will be turned over to Academic Affairs.

I am very happy to work with groups on their specific topic. I strongly suggest that I meet with your groups several times.  At a MINIMUM, I want to review your power point slides at least a week before your presentation. Please feel free to email me to make an appointment in person, or we can do it over the phone or online as well.

Oral Group Presentation Grades:

Oral presentations are graded as a group grade rather than as individual grades. 

Most oral group presentations will be graded using the following form  oral group grade form:, except geographic oral group presentations will be graded using the following form: oral group grade form

All group members will receive the same grade for the oral presentation, provided that all members agree that each individual made a significant contribution. If a group member has not meaningfully or fully participated, I will assume that group member was legitimately distracted by other life issues such as illness or heavy work travel. I do expect that members who do not fully participate show their integrity by willingly reducing their percentage of contribution. It is no shame to not fully participate because of legitimate reasons.  It is a great shame to expect other group members to falsely report contribution percentages.

In order to provide some accountability, albeit imperfect, I will ask that each group fill in the following form and each group member must sign it. This form is due on the day of presentation.

Please print, fill in, and have every member sign a copy of: group contribution form .

FACE-TO-FACE CLASS SCHEDULE

Course Self-Study Tracks:

SOURCING: Students will tell me which sourcing track they wish to complete:

FOUNDATIONAL SOURCING: Students new to outsourcing/offshoring should complete the sourcing foundational modules that cover sourcing decisions from the initiation of a sourcing decision and evaluation process through to service provider selection and transition to outsourcing.  The foundational management practices needed to ensure good outsourcing outcomes for both parties are also covered.

ADVANCED SOURCING: Students with a basic understanding of outsourcing/offshoring will want to skip the foundations and instead complete the advanced sourcing modules on innovation, cloud sourcing, and nine keys to world-class services. 

AUTOMATION AND THE FUTURE OF WORK

All students will complete the modules that cover robotic process automation, cognitive automation and Blockchain.