September 25, 2002

PS 138D – Governance of the E-conomy

Lecture Outline Week V

Professor Weber started the class with a discussion of the research paper and the midterm.

Research Paper

• Your initial thoughts about what topic interests you should be turned in to your GSI in lecture next week (6^th week). You can then work with your GSI to develop a final topic, which is due in 8^th week.
• Prof. Weber outlined five questions to help guide the organization of your paper:
• What is the question you’re trying to answer?
• Where does this question come from?/Why is it a problem? (Situate the question in the broader literature related to the issue)
• What is the answer? (What is your hypothesis?)
• How did you get to that answer? (This will probably be a combination of reasoning and evidence)
• What does it matter? (What are the implications, what’s the relations to the big questions we’re asking in the course?)

Midterm

• This will be a take home midterm
• It should take you about 5 hours to complete
• We expect that your response will be about 4-6 pages double spaced
• Use a thinned down version of the five questions outlined above – this should help you come up with a good exam answer
• The midterm will be emailed to the class on Monday morning, October 14^th. There will also be paper versions available at BRIE. The exam will be due in lecture on Wednesday, October 16^th.
• If at all possible, please type your response!

Lecture – Prof. Zysman

The digital story is the latest version of a long transformation in business structure. There are three main versions of this evolution.

• Emergence of large corporate structure and then division of structure
• Small firms in local regions
• Big companies – US Steel
• Divisionalized companies
• Conglomerates
• Network organizations
• Companies move from being international to multinational to transnational
• The evolution of production
• Craft
• Mass Production
• Innovations in electromechanical techniques
• Wintelism
• Digital era

Detail of the evolution of production –

Mass production – a way of making things

• Separation of conception and execution
• Homogenous products
• Large scale integrated companies

Fordism – term used to describe the economy organized around mass production

• Lack of adaptability/flexability
• First sign it wasn’t working was Volkswagon

Post-Fordism

• Lean production – Japanese model
• Flexible specialization – communities of producers

Wintelism

Good example is HP

• Cross national production
• Contract manufacturing
• Intellectual property

Digital Era

• Integrated digital tool set
• Functionality created by IT manipulation of physical processes
• Digital products and digital markets
• New products and production processes