Syllabus Inside Today's Business Schools - Calendar of Events

Industry Standard, The, Sept 11, 2000 by Kathi Black

COURSE: STRATEGIC COST MANAGEMENT AND USES OF INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY

LOCATION: Arizona State University

INSTRUCTOR: Buck Pei

CLASS SIZE: 30

DESCRIPTION: Pei, an associate professor of accountancy and information management, says he drives home three simple points in his class. Value chain, value chain, value chain! Actually, what he says is that 1) Managers must focus less on the relationships inside companies and more on relationships between companies. Why? Because cost management in the new economy is about management throughout a supply chain; 2) Once a cost element becomes physical it's too late to manage it. You should monitor information about the chain, not physical assets; and 3) The traditional static management model is dead. All the elements of a business must be constantly adjusted to react to changes in the value chain.

Pei adheres to some traditions, favoring a case-study approach using Harvard Business School materials, but for the coming semester he's added several studies of Internet companies, including Autobytel, Onsale and VerticalNet. He also consults four commercial titles; he recommends Net Ready, which he says is practical, and Blown to Bits, which he says describes not only strategy for competition in the Internet Economy but, even better, new organization models and platforms of collaboration.

BOOKS

Blown to Bits: How the New Economics Of Information Transforms Strategy

by Philip Evans and Thomas S. Wurster (Harvard Business School Press)

Information Rules: A Strategic Guide To the Network Economy

by Carl Shapiro and Hal R. Varian (Harvard Business School Press)

The Innovator's Dilemma: When New Technologies Cause Great Firms to Fail

by Clayton M. Christensen (HarperBusiness)

Net Ready: Strategies for Success In the E-conomy

by Amir Hartman and John Sifonis (McGraw-Hill)

OTHER READINGS

Journal of Cost Management, Management Accounting, Harvard Business Review, MIS Quarterly