MIS 381

(# 03558)

Electronic Commerce

Fall 1996

W 3:30-6:30 p.m. CBA 4.304

Instructor: Andrew B. Whinston email: abw@uts.cc.utexas.edu
Office: CBA 3.240 Office Hrs: W 2:00-3:30pm
Phone: 471-8879
TA: Ram Chellappa email: ram@cism.bus.utexas.edu


Electronic commerce is in its early infancy and is further expected to change in the next five years with the emergence of new technologies. The purpose of this course is to introduce some of the most exciting concepts that are emerging in the field of electronic commerce and which are expected to shape both consumer and business applications in the coming decade.

Required Texts

R1.       Frontiers of Electronic Commerce. Ravi Kalakota and Andrew B. Whinston: Addison-Wesley. 1995.

R2.       Readings Packet: Electronic Commerce - a manager's guide
             Material from Readings in Electronic Commerce

Note:   This is a draft which is under production. There are various mistakes, grammatical, typo, etc. Hence please do not circulate this copy.

Assignments and Grading

Critiques:
Students will write four (two-page, double spaced) critiques of the articles and/or chapters of your own choice. The critiques should show depth of understanding of the material. They should be analyses rather than summaries of the material presented in the articles and/or book chapters.
Term Papers:
Ph.D. students are required to write a term paper on a topic of their choice related to electronic commerce. Each student is encouraged to discuss his/her topic with the instructor as early as possible and get some feedback from the instructor. All Ph.D. students are required to turn in a short description of the research problem on or before Oct. 9th . The final term paper is due on November 27th .

Note: All assignments should be turned in to Ram Chellappa, the TA.
Your grade will be based on the following:
Critiques of readings --- 40%
Research paper --- 40%
Participation in class discussions --- 20%

TOPIC OUTLINE AND READING ASSIGNMENTS

Aug. 28 Introduction to class --- Goals and Objectives  
Sep. 4 Introduction to Electronic Commerce R1 - Chap. 1

Andrew Whinston

Commercial Scenarios for the Web: Opportunities and Challenges
An Unaffiliated View of Electronic Commerce
Sep. 11 Internet Infrastructure R1 - Chap. 3

Ram

R2 - Chap. 2
Sep. 18 World Wide Web
(concepts & technologies)
R1 - Chap. 6

Ram

R2 - Chap. 3 & 4
Sep. 25 Network & Transaction Security (Cryptography) R1 - Chap. 5

Gokul

Oct. 2 Intranets Intranets: Looking Beyond Internal Corporate Web Servers

http://ecworld.utexas.edu/ejou/int/int.html

Wenli
&
Zhang

Oct. 9 Electronic Payment Systems R1 - Chap. 8

Manoj

A Flexible Framework for Network Payment
Oct. 16 Banking, retailing R2 - Chap. 7 & 8

Sharon
&
Akhlaq?

Oct. 23 Supply Chain Management Distributed Decision Support Systems for Real Time Supply Chain Management Using Agent Technologies

http://ecworld.utexas.edu/ejou/articles/art_1.html

Ritchie-Dunham
&
Ming

R2 - Chap 10
Oct. 30 Customer Asset Management R2 - Chap. 11

Paulson

Nov. 6 Manufacturing/Corporate Finance R2 - Chap. 12 & 13

Boris/Mingzhi
&
Seligman

Nov. 13 Electronic Publishing R2 - Chap. 9

Hui
&
Dan

Electronic Publishing Versus Publishing Electronically: The Case of EC World: A Forum for the 21st Century
Nov. 20 Student Presentations
Nov. 27 Student Presentations
Dec. 4 Student Presentations