UCD Graduate School of Business

Masters of Business Studies Programme

MIS40010: Research Dissertation
MIS40250: Research Essay
Semester 3, 2006/2007
Proposed research topics
Guidelines:
The following is a list of faculty from the MIS subject area who would be available for supervising
students on either the Research Dissertation or Research Essay option. Their general research
interests and some specific topics/projects that they are proposing for dissertations/essays are
listed.

Pamela Abbott: (http://mis.ucd.ie/staff/pabbott)

General areas of interest:

Information Systems & Globalisation

Specific research topics/projects:

• Effects of globalisation on the IT industry
o Ireland’s shifting position in relation to software exports from the Celtic Tiger to
Europe’s Singapore
o The emerging Eastern European competitors in outsourcing/offshoring, current
position, strategies and statistics on exports of services and products
o Insights into China’s bid to compete with India in outsourcing and offshoring, critical
success factors, major areas of competition, barriers
o Effects of global outsourcing on IT skills market and university enrolments, e.g. in
Ireland or Europe
o Effects of globalisation on US hegemony in IT industry, offshoring of Research and
Development work, Intellectual property issues, deskilling of technical IS
professionals
• The socio-political influences of the globalisation of the IT industry
o Historical analyses of the growth of offshoring/global sourcing, its geographic spread,
its effects on developing economies, its political fallout in more developed countries
• E-business topics
o Evaluation of E-government initiatives, critical success factors, emergence of citizen-
centred modes of electronic interaction
o Internet governance – social, political & legal implications
 o Other areas covered in the Fundamentals of E-business course

Cathal Brugha: (http://mis.ucd.ie/staff/cbrugha)

General areas of interest:

Nomology, Multi-criteria decision-making

Specific research topics/projects:

• Strategic Decision-Making:
In Information Systems and eCommerce companies are commonly challenged at the
strategic level to decide what direction their company should take in some key area. The
empirical part of this dissertation would be to synthesise the views of the senior managers in
the student’s company.

The output would be an identification of the focus that the company should take in terms of
direction of effort and / or dealing with barriers to progress. Critical to this dissertation would
be (a) access to the senior decision-makers in the company, (b) that has major current
uncertainties with regard to some IT-related strategic issue, (c) that is of current concern to
the company.

• Tactical / Managerial Decision-Making:

One of my research fields is Multiple Criteria Decision-Making (see www.MCDM.com). Most
commonly, this is used where a company has a very important choice to make between
several alternatives, and that involves different criteria that cannot easily be reduced to one,
such as money. The purpose of this dissertation would be to support senior managers in
some company (to be found by the student) as they try to make some choice / decision
involving some IT-related investment, etc.

The output would be a suggested prioritising of the alternatives. Critical to this dissertation
would be (a) access to the senior decision-makers in the company, (b) that has major current
uncertainties with regard to some choice or decision that involves some IT-related aspects,
(c) that is of current concern to the company.

Andrew Deegan: (http://mis.ucd.ie/staff/ajdeegan)

General areas of interest:

• Design and development of systems for EBusiness Measurement; Evaluation in E-Business
Systems development methodologies

Specific research topics/projects:

• Best practice models for ERP implementations
• Change management in the context of enterprise system implementation

Matthias Glowatz: (http://mis.ucd.ie/staff/mattglowatz)

General areas of interest:

• E-business & E-commerce

Specific research topics/projects:

• Web Application Development Issues & e-Business Software Development Life Cycle

• Portal Implementation Issues

• Wireless Commerce and analysis of emerging wireless technologies, such as RFID

• B2B commerce and eProcurement

• Web 2.0 - Technology, Business Models, and impact on organisations & individuals

Allen Higgins: (http://mis.ucd.ie/staff/ahiggins)

General areas of interest:

• Social and organizational perspectives of information systems; Use of content management
systems in networks; Organisational adaptation to the adoption of key practices based on
Extreme Programming in technology companies.

Specific research topics/projects:

• Practicing Standard Knowledge: Software standards and implications for managing
programming as knowledge work. Participant observation workplace study focused on
practices of programmers and others developing software according to open standards
definitions and related institutional processes surrounding such initiatives.

• Software Standards Discourse: Review of literature on standards in software and ICT

infrastructure development. What prior assumptions are implicit and built into standards
discourse; in particular notions of knowledge, work organisation and production.

• Locus of Service Innovation: Development of case studies of selected innovation experiences

in ICT and financial services industry.
• e-Government/Industry Interaction: Site surveys to be conducted to describe typical Irish
traders' contact with public administration (mainly Revenue but also other agencies) when
handling freight movements across national borders. Initial on-line questionnaire driven
survey specified by the Irish Exporters Association complemented by a number of short
duration exploratory field studies (interpretive method: participant observer) of the trader's
work environment for handling goods movements.

Peter Keenan: (http://mis.ucd.ie/staff/pkeenan)

General areas of interest:

• Decision support for routing problems, integration of geographic information systems (GIS)
and decision support systems (DSS), use of GIS in business

Specific research topics/projects:

• The Effects of Electronic Filing on the Irish Tax Industry – examination of the impact of the
Revenue online service as a follow on from a 2001 MBS dissertation which examined the
expected impact of ROS.

• GIS use in Irish business : degree of use and obstacles to development

• Digital rights management for downloadable data

Séamas Kelly: (http://mis.ucd.ie/staff/sbkelly)

General areas of interest:

• Information Systems & Organisation

Specific research topics/projects:

• IS Innovation in Healthcare:
o Evaluation of ongoing initiatives:
 Collaborative models of care.
Use of ICT to facilitate new modes of ‘shared care’ or clinical team working
(e.g. multi-disciplinary teams, integration of primary and secondary care
teams).
 Electronic Patient Records (EPRs).
Problems with implementation and use.
 Learning/ knowledge management in clinical settings (e.g. Evidence Based
Medicine).
What constitutes ‘valid’ medical knowledge, how is it incorporated into clinical
practice, and what role does ICT play in this?
  Telemedicine.
Evaluation of pilot initiatives.
 Major ICT implementation projects (e.g. PPARS, Lorenzo, FISP).
Lessons that might be learned from these.

• Innovation Practice in Software Development:

o Emergent modes of organising global distributed development work.
How do new modes of organising software development work in practice? (e.g.
global distributed teams, Open Source development, Offshoring/ outsourcing) Under
what circumstances do they work well?
o Studies of XP-in-use.
Still few good empirical studies of use of agile development methods. How are they
used in practice? Is there much variation in use? When/ where do they work well?

• Organisation of Knowledge Producing Practices:

o The organisation of knowledge production in a university context.
University as archetypal knowledge intensive enterprise; how have knowledge
creation processes been traditionally organised in academic institutions and what are
the possible implications of recent changes in the management of such institutions?
o The production and consumption of management knowledge.
What kind of knowledge is created in business/ management schools and how, or to
what extent, is it consumed in the broader world? (see recent criticisms of business
research and education by people like Mintzberg and Bennis)
o Theoretical accounts of the role of ICT in changes in contemporary organisations and
society.
Review of multifarious literatures on role of ICT in shaping key aspects of
contemporary social and economic life (e.g. information/ knowledge economies/
societies, globalisation etc.)

• Historical Perspectives on Relationship between Information, ICT, and Organisation:

o Review of significant historical developments in ICT (broadly defined) and their
implications for contemporary ways of thinking and organising.

Michael MacDonnell: (http://mis.ucd.ie/staff/mmacdonn)

General areas of interest:

Specific research topics/projects:

Sean McGarraghy: (http://mis.ucd.ie/staff/seanpl)

General areas of interest:

Specific research topics/projects: