Kenneth C. Laudon

Professor, Information Systems

CONTACT INFORMATION
Department of Information Systems
Stern School of Business
44 West 4th Street, Suite 9-66
New York, NY 10012-1126
Tel: (212) 998-0815
Fax: (212) 995-4228
E-mail: klaudon@stern.nyu.edu
| Teaching | | Background | Publications: Books, CD Roms, Working Papers | |Current Research & Professional Activities |

TEACHING FALL 2000
B20.2314 Managing the Digital Firm
C20.0038 Electronic Commerce
B02.3101 Professional Responsibility

BACKGROUND

Ken Laudon is Professor of Information Systems at New York University's Stern School of Business. He holds a B.A. in Economics from Stanford University and a Ph.D from Columbia University. He has authored twelve books dealing with information systems, organizations, and society including Computers and Bureaucratic Reform, Communications Technology and Participation, Dossier Society, Information Technology and Management Strategy, Management Information Systems: Organization and Technology in the Networked Enterprise, Business Information Systems: A Problem Solving Perspective, Solving Classic Business Problems, Information Technology and Society, and Interactive Computing: Concepts and Skills. In addition, he has written thirty five articles and book chapters concerned with the organizational, social and management impacts of information systems.

Ken Laudon is the author of Dossier Society which examines the difficulties of preserving privacy in an environment of large-scale, national information systems in both the private and public sectors. Currently he is involved in research on private information markets, and the role which markets could play in reducing invasions of privacy. This research is supported by the Department of Energy's Human Genome Project.

Ken Laudon currently conducts research and builds prototypes of multimedia higher education materials. This project is supported by grants from McGraw Hill, Prentice Hall, Harcourt Brace, Apple Computer Inc., Digital Equipment Corporation, Assymetrix Corporation, and Macromedia, Inc.

Ken Laudon has testified as an expert before the United States Congress. He has been a researcher and consultant to the Office of Technology Assessment (United States Congress), the Office of the President, several executive branch agencies, the Senate Judiciary Committee, and the House Committee on Government Operations. He currently is a senior consultant to the Social Sciences, Privacy and Genetic Information Project (DOE/Human Genome Project) of the Center for Social and Legal Research. Prof. Laudon also acts as a consultant on systems planning and strategy to several Fortune 500 firms.

Ken's hobby is building sail boats and racing them in off-shore ocean competitions. He is a veteran racer in the Newport-Bermuda and Stamford-Halifax races.

SELECTED PUBLICATIONS

Books

  1. 2000 Management Information Systems: Organization and Technology in the Networked Enterprise, 6th Edition. [with Jane Laudon] Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice Hall.
  2. 1999 Essentials of Management Information Systems. [with Jane Laudon], 4th edition, Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice Hall.
  3. 1998 Information Systems and the Internet: A Problem Solving Approach [with Jane Laudon], 4th edition, Fort Worth: The Dryden Press (Harcourt Brace).
  4. 1998 Interactive Computing. Introduction to Computer Concepts, 2 edition, New York: McGraw-Hill.
  5. 1998 Interactive Computing. Concepts and Skills for Office 97, 2 edition, New York: McGraw-Hill.
  6. 1997 Information Technology: Concepts and Issues [with Carol Traver and Jane Laudon], 2 edition, Cambridge, Mass.: Course Technology Inc. (The Thompson Group).
  7. 1996 Interactive Computing. Introduction to Computer Concepts 1/e. New York: McGraw-Hill.
  8. 1996 Interactive Computing: Concepts and Skills for Office 3.1 1/e. New York: McGraw-Hill.
  9. 1996 Information Technology and Society [with Carol Traver and Jane Laudon]. 2nd edition. Cambridge, Mass.: Course Technology Inc. (The Thompson Group).
  10. 1992 Solving Classic Business Problems [with Jane Price Laudon]. Reading, Mass.: Addison Wesley
  11. 1990 The Integrated Solution: Problem Solving With PC Software [with Jane Laudon]. Chicago: The Dryden Press.
  12. 1989 Solve it! Management Problem Solving With PC Software. [with Jane Laudon and Peter Weill]. New York: Azimuth Corporation.
  13. 1989 Information Technology and Strategic Management [with Jon Turner]. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice Hall.
  14. 1986 Dossier Society. Value Choices in the Design of National Information Systems. New York: Columbia University Press.
  15. 1978 Communications Technology and Political Participation. New York: Praeger Publishing.
  16. 1974 Computers and Bureaucratic Reform. New York: John Wiley and Sons.

Interactive Multimedia CD ROM Programs

  1. 1998 Management Information Systems: Organization and Technology in the Networked Enterprise, 6th Edition. The Interactive Edition. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.
  2. 1998 Information Systems and the Internet: A Problem Solving Approach [with Jane Laudon], 4/e. The Interactive Edition. Fort Worth: The Dryden Press (Harcourt Brace).
  3. 1998 Interactive Computing. Introduction to Computer Concepts 2/e. Interactive Edition. New York: McGraw-Hill.
  4. 1998 Interactive Computing: Concepts and Skills for Office 97 2/e. Interactive Edition. New York: McGraw-Hill.
  5. 1997 Information Technology and Society: Interactive Edition 2/e. Cambridge, Mass.: Course Technology Inc.
  6. 1997 Information Technology and Society: Concepts and Issues 2/e. The Interactive Edition. Cambridge, Mass.: Course Technology Inc. (International Thomson).
  7. 1996 Management Information Systems: Organization and Technology 4/e. The Interactive Edition. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall (Simon Schuster Interactive).
  8. 1996 Interactive Computing: Concepts and Skills for Office 3.1 1/e. Interactive Edition on CD ROM. New York: McGraw-Hill.
  9. 1996 Interactive Computing. Introduction to Computer Concepts 1/e. Interactive Edition on CD ROM. New York: McGraw-Hill.
  10. 1996 Information Technology and Society [with Carol Traver and Jane Laudon] 1/e. Cambridge, Mass.: Course Technology Inc.
  11. 1996 Information Systems: A Problem Solving Approach [with Jane Laudon], 3/e. Fort Worth: The Dryden Press (Harcourt Brace General Cinema)
  12. 1995 Essentials of Management Information Systems. 3/e. [with Jane Laudon] Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice Hall (Simon Schuster Interactive).

Research Monographs and Working Papers

  1. 1999 "Enterprise Systems and Industrial Networks: the Vision and the Issues," 30 pages, submitted March 1999.
  2. 1999 "Privacy, Philosophy and the Law. A review of the literature 1968-1998," [with Carol Traver] , 230 pages, submitted March 1999.
  3. 1996 "Extensions to the Theory of Privacy and Markets: Establishing the Price of Information (Purchaser view). Working Paper Stern School of Business, IS Department.
  4. 1995 "Privacy, Law and Markets in a Networked Society," National Human Genome Project, Department of Energy & the Center for Study of Social Issues (Hackensack, N.J.)
  5. 1995 "Management Strategy, Investment in IT, and Productivity" [with Kenneth L. Marr and David Sessions]
  6. 1995 "Occupational and Structural Changes in Post Industrial Organizations Due to Information Technology: 40 Years of Computing at the IRS, FBI, and SSA."
  7. 1995 "Estimating Long Term Productivity Changes Due to Information Technology in Large Service Organizations: the SSA, IRS, and FBI."
  8. 1994 "Ethical Dimensions of the Information Age." CRIS working paper submitted to CACM April 1994.
  9. 1994 "Productivity and the Enactment of a Macro Culture." CRIS Working paper submitted to ICIS and CACM.
  10. 1994 "Privacy and Markets," CRIS Working Paper. Submitted to CACM February 1994.
  11. 1994 Knowledge and Information Work in Organizations, [with Bill Starbuck].
  12. 1994 Blips, Trickles, and Strategic Thrusts: Information Technology in Public Policy.
  13. Very Large Scale Systems: Managers Beware. New York University, Center For Research on Information Systems (CRIS), 1992. Estimating the Power of Computers Since 1940 [with Phil Devin and Alan Westin]. 1992.
  14. A General Model for Understanding the Relationship Between Information Technology and Organizations. New York University, Center For Research on Information Systems (CRIS), 1989.

CURRENT RESEARCH & PROFESSIONAL ACTIVITIES

Ken Laudon's current research focuses on three areas: the social and organizational uses of information technology, privacy of personal information, and the development of multimedia, interactive digital higher education materials.

Social and Organizational Uses of Information Technology

Ken's organizational research focuses on the role of management strategy and larger cultural influences in shaping the use of information technology in large complex organizations. This research inverts the normal concerns with "the social impacts of IT" and instead focuses on how and why social actors use information technology as they do. Ken's research is not mainstream IS research but instead fits more closely into the organizational theories of sociology and economics. Specifically, Ken's research has:

  • Illustrated how political and bureaucratic forces shape the uses of information technology (Computers and Bureaucratic Reform)
  • Shown how to design telecommunications systems so as to enhance democratic participation (Communications Technology and Democratic Participation)
  • Described how ideology, cultural assumptions, and politics have shaped the evolution of large scale government national information systems (Dossier Society)
  • Described how managers can use information technology to achieve strategic effects (as well as strategic disasters) (Information Technology and Strategic Management)
  • Shown how management strategies and collective cultural beliefs shape the productivity results--and organizational structures-- achieved by organizations as they invest in IT (recent papers in the NSF series).

A number of unresolved issues are being pursued in this line of research. Most of the above research was conducted on government organizations, and the dynamics of IT, culture, and politics are different in the private sector. Long term longitudinal studies of the insurance and banking industry (which are similar in core production technology to government agencies) are being pursued. In the Spring of 1999 Ken undertook a major joint research project with The Concours Group (a Cambridge-based consulting firm) and approximately twenty large domestic and foreign corporations to study evolving industrial networks.

Personal Information Privacy

Ken Laudon's Dossier Society: Value Choices in the Design of National Information Systems is widely considered to be a landmark second generation statement of the problem of maintaining privacy in an increasingly information-rich society. Dossier Society traced the development of national information systems at the FBI, Social Security, and Internal Revenue Service. (Office of Technology Assessment, US Congress). The conclusion was that existing first generation regulatory protections would prove to be inadequate to protect individual privacy in the Internet era. Dossier Society called for new mechanisms--including market mechanisms--to ensure privacy protection.

As the Internet developed in the 90's, and as progress is made in identifying unique and powerful individual level predictors of human behavior which take on increasing market value (genetic codes, personal credit behavior, consumption behavior), the difficulties of protecting privacy in a free-market society are increasing.

Ken's latest privacy research focuses on market-based solutions to personal privacy in which individuals would have a common law property right to their personal information, these rights could be sold, and national information markets would emerge (along with necessary intermediary and depository institutions). The outline of this solution is spelled out in "Markets and Privacy" Communications of the ACM 1996. This research on new privacy protection regimes is funded by the Department of Energy through a grant to the Center for the Study of Legal Issues. A recent article published by the Department of Commerce discusses the mechanics of pricing personal information.

There are a number of issues involving the mechanism(s) needed to make national information markets operational. What do people sell? To whom? How much would a purchaser pay for a basket of personal information? We need to study how existing information markets for personal information operate. No one has examined this area of existing information markets.

Professor Laudon conducts privacy research at the Center for Social and Legal Research where he is a Senior Research Associate. At the Center Ken is conducting research on the changing philosophical concepts of privacy and the changing legal environment for privacy in the period 1968-2000. In addition, he is conducting interviews with corporate leaders concerning the development of corporate privacy policies and responses to the changing privacy demands of Americans.

Interactive Multimedia Higher Education

Ken developed the IS Virtual Multimedia Project at Stern based on grants from Apple Computer, Digital Equipment, Macromedia Software Corporation, and Assymetrix Corporation. The purpose of this project was to:

  • Involve IS faculty in the development of prototype business school educational materials,
  • Conduct research on the viability of multimedia platforms as learning tools in higher education
  • Bring multimedia interactive software into the class and the curriculum, and
  • Explore with Industrial Partners the uses of interactive multimedia in corporate training, new product introduction, and advertising.

This grant provided faculty and graduate students with access to leading-edge multimedia hardware and software. As a part of this grant, Ken led a symposium for the higher education publishing industry in at Stern.

Many faculty and graduate students benefited from this introduction to multimedia. Ken has produced the first interactive CD ROM-based business school titles in the US for major publishers. These new tools for learning fully exploit the design opportunities of interactive platforms, reconceptualize how materials are delivered in class, and offer the first realistic glimpse of how so-called "distance learning" over networks will emerge.

Ken is pursuing this action-oriented research with several higher education publishing firms by stretching the pedagogical limits of interactivity, finding the outer edges of the PC platform envelope, and developing Web-delivered versions of digital interactive content. This work is supported by McGraw-Hill College Publishing, Prentice Hall, and Harcourt Brace.

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