Information Management- Period 6 Business & Economics Program Fall 2020 Semester - Amsterdam

No organization can do without information systems. For some organizations, such systems are even of strategic relevance to them: they offer a clear competitive advantage. Think, for example, of how Amazon.com has become such a dominant retailer or how an organization as Uber is conquering the taxi market.This course explains the relevance and use of information systems in modern organizations. We will briefly sketch how the role of information systems has developed over the years to reach its current ubiquitous level. Special attention is devoted to the rise of the internet. This has its impact on traditional organizations, but also allows for the emergence of new types of (cloud-based) organizations.

Reasoning from the organizational importance of information systems, we will look into the way information systems are developed such that organizations can achieve their objectives. We will pay considerable attention to an important phase in information system development: the way how to analyze and model business processes. For this purpose, we will rely on the use of classical Petri nets.

This course will approach the topic of information management in breadth and in depth. Breadth is achieved by giving an overview of all relevant topics in the area of information management; depth is attained by introducing students to a powerful, formal modeling technique that they will learn to master in the context of organizational analysis.

Contact hours listed under a course description may vary due to the combination of lecture-based and independent work required for each course therefore, CEA's recommended credits are based on the ECTS credits assigned by VU Amsterdam. 1 ECTS equals 28 contact hours assigned by VU Amsterdam.