The MGS Blog

Tuesday, January 26, 2016

CEMS+ Ethics and Responsible Leadership in the Digital Society

UCD Business is organising a 2-day conference on Ethics and Responsible Leadership in the Digital Society to be held on the 11th and 12th of February 2016. The conference will be held under the auspices of CEMS and is primarily for the benefit of our 50 CEMS students. These students are required to take a set of seminars on the topic of Responsible Global Leadership, and this year these seminars will take the form of a 2-day conference structured around keynote presentations, group breakouts and plenary discussion sessions. The conference will be held in MH201 in the Blackrock campus.

We are also opening the conference to about 40 interested and engaged students from a number of our MSc programmes. Our vision is to encourage these students to critically reflect and engage with the pressing issues of Ethics and Responsible Leadership in a Digital world and also to spark a wider discussion on this area in our school.

We should also have space available for up to 10 faculty at each of the sessions. If you are interested, and sure you will be able to attend, please register for one or more of the sessions via EventBrite (click on REGISTER below). If you have questions, please contact one of the event organisers—Andrew Keating, Colm McLaughlin, Donncha Kavanagh, Gianluca Miscione or Séamas Kelly.

Thursday 11th Feb, morning: REGISTER

Lucas Introna, Professor of Organisation, Technology and Ethics at Lancaster University.
Seán Kelly, Professor of Philosophy, Harvard University.
Adrian MacKenzie, Professor of Sociology at Lancaster University

Thursday afternoon: REGISTER

Ronan Harris, Head Google Ireland and VP Google EMEA
Ultan O'Carroll, Technology Advisor at Office of Data Protection Commissioner
Olinga Ta'eed, Professor of Social Enterprise and Director of the Centre for Citizenship, Enterprise, University of Northampton
Kristy Milland, Amazon Mechanical Turk activist.

Friday 12th Feb, morning: REGISTER


Robert Kitchin, Professor at NUI Maynooth
Gerardine Meaney, Professor of Cultural Theory and Director of the UCD Humanities Institute
Danielle Clarke, Associate Professor of English Renaissance Language, UCD.
Pauline Walley, Lawyer and writer.

Friday afternoon: REGISTER


John Herlihy, Linkedin’s Vice-president and Managing Director for EMEA (Former Google Ireland CEO and VP International Sales)
Paul Maher, Security Consultant with Integrity Solutions Ltd.
Seán Rooney, Technical Director, Integrity360

Technê, Technology, and Truth from Aristotle to Foucault'

Prof. Seán D. Kelly will be giving a public lecture on the philosophy of creativity (entitled 'Technê, Technology, and Truth from Aristotle to Foucault') at 5pm on Tuesday 2 February in the UCD Lochlann Quinn School of Business, Belfield.  The abstract for the talk is appended below and a copy of the paper is attached.

All are very welcome and please feel free to circulate this notice further.  For those wishing to attend, please register for the event here so that we might have a good indication of numbers.

Register at EventBrite


Technê, Technology, and Truth from Aristotle to Foucault'

  Sean D. Kelly : Harvard University

Technology and human existence stand in a deep and revealing relation with one another. It is not just that human beings are tool-using creatures, or that human history is basically co-extensive with the history of technological innovation.  Rather, and more fundamentally, technology is a central means by which human beings establish the truth of what is, and in particular of what human beings are. To understand this claim properly, however, we need to know what truth is and how technê – the Greek word for skill or craft – is related to it. This paper starts with Aristotle’s account of these phenomena, digs back towards a deeper and more revealing account of them in the work of the poets, prophets, and kings of the Archaic Greek era, and ends with the appropriation of this deeper account in the works of Heidegger and Foucault. It develops the claim that the master craftsmen, through the masterly practice of his or her craft, can literally establish what is true.


Sunday, January 24, 2016

Technology for organisational configurations

This page...  Offers pointers to some essential and interesting services that business owners, product managers and producers of digital goods should know about; some old some new (this list will grow and grow).

For example: Conversational software for persistent collaboration covers a few different application categories. The area is fast evolving with lots of feature/functionality replication washing across all the various offerings...
Team communication tools: any kind of open Wiki, Slack, Google+Hangouts, Skype, etc.
Social networking tools: FB, SnapChat, WhatsApp, Yammer, LinkedIn, etc.
Collaborative software: any kind of Wiki, plus a whole range of other products mixing database, web and markup (like wiki, structured text, restructured text, rich text, native Word, html, etc), with features like fine grained (or not) user/account/rights, workflow, content management, discussion, blogging, file systems, change tracking, versioning, tagging, bookmarking, etc.

Our growing list of interesting / essential digital services


@github The most active of the quasi-open source software-service offerings for versioning digital artefacts and source code control

@sensu for monitoring operational infrastructure; control, report, configurations, availability etc

@nagiosinc, also for operational infrastructure monitoring.

@tortoisesvn Subversion (svn) + Tortoise SVN (the very nice workstation client for svn). The worthy heir to cvs; industrial strength + open source source code control and versioning system

@Zendesk 'software for better customer service'! Highly regarded I hear.

@SlackHQ Don't forget the wonderfully fluid and open ended SLACK! What is it? A kind of Lego for collective mind? Interested? Then ask to be added to https://mscdigitalinnovation.slack.com/

@CrazyEgg for integrating gaze heatmap and other tracking tools with website analytics.

And then there is @vtigercrm an open source web based sales and marketing platform
@mantisbt the venerable web based issue tracking system, open source, an excellent system for customer issue management.

@bugzilla another excellent problem tracking system, again, open source, web based.

@UniTuitionHQ a market for matching tutors with students at Uni level, and perhaps even secondary school? https://www.unituition.com/

@servicenow a scarily polished crm, issue tracking, service and it management system. Customer self-service portal system thingys.

@HP SAW. Their service access workbench has been mentioned as a 'good thing'. What they are calling 'hybrid infrastructure'.

@jetbrains Awesomely good TeamCity for continuous integration, i.e. automated build, package, test.

@Atlassian 's @JIRA issue, sprint, project, product tracking software system wonderfulness.

@trello visual to-do lists and project management in the cloud.

On the topic of CRM I suppose we should mention one of the elephants in the room @MSFTDynamics

@SonarQube (previously sonarsource) can be a useful additional tool for assessing the quality of your source code. See http://www.sonarqube.org/ and demo at http://nemo.sonarqube.org/

@aha_io for Product Roadmap and/or project manager views of the world.

@moqups for wireframe designs and software mock-ups.

@balsamiq also for wireframe designs and software mock-ups.

LICEcap from @Cockos for simple animated screen captures, great for teaching and explaining stuff on the web.

Saturday, January 23, 2016

Research topic challenge: Who can give me access?


The student groups have to identify their own topics. Not an easy task!

I recommend you read through the case and research papers in the 'READINGS' folder and widen your investigation to other outsourcing research articles to start getting ideas and be inspired.

Consider addressing a couple of prerequisites first.

1. Access. Who can give me access to an organisation or many organisations?

2. Data. What am I going to ask or discover, what kind of data do I think I can gather?

Then brainstorm, capture, structure, write.

Question: Why is there no template?
I would like this to be taken as an opportunity for you to create something of real value, your own research project, an exercise that you can define and conduct independently. In the first instance you should attempt to create your own research output, built with your own creative energy and enthusiasm, something that is yours, that is substantial and original.
However, to say that there is no template is incorrect. Research nearly always conforms to a limited range of presentation genres. The guidelines document (link) is merely one of the most general formats

I look forward to reading through your ideas.

Wednesday, January 20, 2016

How to do really well with this subject

Read the readings. Go to the library and read the books.

The term paper is your project, you do the field research, you analyse, interpret, write up and create!

Target your writing towards ECIS, one of the main IS conferences. Word or LaTeX templates can be downloaded from https://goo.gl/TcN31Z

The following high quality, general conferences may be good sources for searching for similar research.
  • IFIP Working Group Conferences (esp. 8.2, 8.4, 8.6, 9.4) 
  • Academy of Management Conference 
  • ICIS 
  • EGOS
  • other local conferences like the Irish Academy of Management annual conference, UKAIS etc.
The following journals are potentially good quality sources for relevant related research. Register with a relevant journal to receive notifications of new publications; for example: Palgrave e-alerts (European Journal of Information Systems).
  • MIS Quarterly 
  • Information Systems Research 
  • Communications of The ACM 
  • Information & Organization 
  • European Journal of Information Systems 
  • Journal of Information Technology 
  • Information Systems Journal 
  • Journal of Strategic Information Systems 
  • Journal of Management Information Systems 
  • IT & People 
  • Scandinavian Journal of IS 
  • The Information Society 
  • Communications of the AIS 
  • Information and Management

UCD Smurfit Entrepreneurship Series Events in February 2016

Organised by Majella Murphy UCD College of Business Entrepreneur-in-Residence

Monday, 1st February: 19.00-20.30 in Lawrence Crowley Boardroom
Hear about start-up early stage and growth strategies with Justin Keating, co-founder and CEO Version 1 (www.version1.com). Version1 is one of the fastest growing IT services companies in Western Europe with over 700 employees, 8 International offices and €75m in annual revenue.
To register for this event: http://1drv.ms/1W8B4SN

Tuesday, 2nd February: 18.00-19.00 in MH102
Find out about a number of Student Entrepreneurship Competitions, including: EI Student Entrepreneur of the Year Award, Enactus Social Entrepreneurship Competition, Accenture Leaders of Tomorrow programme and UCD Startup Stars competition.
To register for this event: http://02022016.eventbrite.ie

Tuesday, 9th February: 18.30 in Main Hall
Participate in an enaging and fiery debate on the topic "Do Irish governement policies and supports help or hinter entrepreneurs?". Niamh Bushnell (Dublin Commissioner for Start-ups), Chris Horn (co-founder and former CEO Iona Technologies, now Venture Partner at Atlantic Bridge Ventures) and Brendan Cremen (UCD Director of Enterprise and Commercialisation) will share their opinions. Dr Bruce Martin (UCD Lecturer and Director of MSc Innovation, Entrepreneurship and Design) will moderate the evening's discussion. Note - additional panel members may be added.

Tuesday, 16th February: 18.30 in Main Hall
An evening focused on Social Entrepreneurship - what exactly is social entrepreneurship? who is involved in the eco-system? Meet a number of social entrepreneurs and find out how or why they became social entrepreneurs, what skills are required in their work and what "a day in the life" of a social entrepreneur is like.

Thursday, 25th February: 18.30 in Main Hall
A rare opportunity to listen to Trevor Parsons recount his story of the journey from a computer science PhD student at UCD to co-founder and CEO of Logentries which he sold to Rapid7 last year for €68m - one of the biggest spinouts ever from UCD.

Startup Grind in January:
Tuesday, 26th January: 18.30 at Google, Barrow Street
Fireside chat with Deborah Magid, Director of the IBM Venture Capital Group. Deborah is responsible for sharing insights about emerging markets, technologies, and business models with venture firms and entrepreneurs around the world. She scouts for emerging business opportunities, and shares views on innovation and growth areas of the market. As a director of strategy in IBM Software Group, she also brings insight from the venture community to the development of IBM’s growth strategies. Deborah is responsible for fuelling the ecosystem pipeline in strategic areas related to building a “smarter planet” and contributes to filling out the IBM product portfolio through M&A.
To register for this event (with a Smurfit Student discount): https://www.eventbrite.com/e/startup-grind-dublin-hosts-deborah-magid-ibm-venture-capital-group-tickets-20017478818?discount=smurfit_2016_jan

Monday, January 18, 2016

Welcome to New Proudly Made in Africa Fellow: Dr Penelope Muzanenhamo

Message from Professor Ciarán Ó hÓgartaigh, College Principal and Dean of Business, UCD.
"We are delighted to welcome Dr Penelope Muzanenhamo as the new Proudly Made in Africa Fellow in Business and Development, based at the UCD Quinn and Smurfit Schools."
Penelope has studied the contribution of Brand Africa to Sustainable Development from a diasporan perspective. She holds a PhD from Warwick Business School (WBS) and two Masters degrees (in Strategic Management and in Business Administration) from the University of Innsbruck, Austria.
Dr Penelope Muzanenhamo Room Q108, UCD Lochlann Quinn School of Business, University College Dublin.
W: www.proudlymadeinafrica.org

On 10/Feb/2016 Penelope delivered a seminar titled "Why Africa"
She described the potential for shifting value added activities to different sites as a means of better distributing the resources of a value chain; to shift benefits towards primary producers. The supply chain / value chain perspective offers an intriguing way of looking the Global Sourcing phenomenon.

Impact sourcing or ethical sourcing raises the potential to make better use of the links between entrepreneur and enterprise motivation, social need, value production with region branding and the strategic goal of Country Selection for Global Sourcing. We consider why issues of location branding are typically not evident or employed by digital enterprises (software and service firms). Some authors have claimed that the notion of national culture and national myths surrounding professional identity should be significant determinants of levels of outsourcing activity actually appear to be largely ignored in the tech industry where it is rare to associate a product or service so closely with a location (country, culture, etc.).

Friday, January 15, 2016

Themes in Managing Global Sourcing

This site covers material for dealing with the following challenges...
  • How should one manage sourcing relationships? (and how does this vary according to the mode?)
  • Relationship development - Important stages of sourcing relationships.
  • Formulating sourcing contracts and service level agreements.
  • Relationship governance structures and practices.
  • Risk management.
  • Facilitating effective communication and learning in context of cultural diversity and distributed work.
  • The enabling role of ICT across organisational boundaries.
  • Identifying and addressing emerging relationship problems.
  • What are the emergent trends in sourcing relationships that are likely to be important in the future?

Tuesday, January 12, 2016

Responsible Sourcing and Ethics of Digital Supply

A potential general theme is offered as a starting point for your Term-Paper.

Consideration of the ethics of digital sourcing highlights the issues of leadership, the person, connections, responsibility and responsible sourcing for technology services and business processes.
Topics of interest include:
  • Issues of global, geographical separation, and teams
  • Hybrid organisations
  • Cultural clash and compatibility
  • New trends, impact of emerging forms of organisation and technology
  • Impact sourcing for social change
  • Waste and value, sustainability
  • Social responsibility
Research papers in this field could address areas such as:
  • Raising awareness of issues surrounding the global sourcing of IT and Business Process capability.
  • Study the role of NGOs in Ireland and the challenges they face in developing countries in raising the level of key human development indicators.
  • Develop new ideas broadly aligned with the theme of sustainable responsible sourcing.
  • Literature reviews.
  • Desk research analysing aggregate social/economic indicators.
  • Reversals in directionality of innovation; from developing countries into developed economies.
  • Develop case studies of sourcing enterprises from the perspective of:
    • suppliers
    • clients
    • consumers
    • regulators
    • mediators
    • NGOs
    • venture capital or other investment organisations
    • government development agencies
    • public services
  • Option of general cases or research into any one or more of the main themes from the global offshore and outsourcing literature including:
    • Sourcing models and decisions
    • Country attractiveness
    • Supplier capabilities and strategies
    • Knowledge
    • The client perspective
    • The IT outsourcing lifecycle
    • Governance and regulation
    • Distributed teams

Monday, January 11, 2016

Irish Academy of Management CFP 2016

Abstracts of 1500 words are due by February 1st. If accepted, full papers (6,000-8,000 words) will be due by June 30th. Submission details and further information about the conference can be found on the conference website. http://www.iamireland.ie/annual-conference/2016-annual-conference-ucd.html



The 2016 Irish Academy of Management Conference is being hosted by the UCD Michael Smurfit Graduate School of Business, Dublin, from Aug 31st to Sept 2nd, 2016.

The conference theme is ‘Ireland 2016: Re-imagining business and the role of ethics’. 2016 is an historic year for Ireland as we commemorate the 1916 Easter Rising and Proclamation. The official commemorations invite us to remember our past and imagine a better future. As part of these commemorations, the 2016 IAM Conference will examine ethics in business - past, present and future. We invite papers and roundtable symposiums that explore the concept of ethics in its broadest sense and across multiple levels – individual, organisational, sectoral, national and international – and enhance our understanding of building a sustainable and ethical economy and society.

We welcome contributions from within business and management schools, but also from other disciplines across academia and from civil society, NGOs and practitioners.

While the conference will have a strong Irish and ethical focus, we warmly welcome international scholars and papers from all business disciplines on a wide range of topics.

Sunday, January 3, 2016

Suhas Pathak, Sarth Systems

Suhas Pathak, based in Pune, India.
He has 30+ years of experience in the software industry including working in USA, Australia, UK, Belgium and Ireland.  Strong expertise in offshore product development, mentoring and project management areas.  Has learnt, adopted and respected the agile methodologies in software development and also provides training on Agile implementation to software companies. Experience with various business models working with customers for product and services development success. Connected with a strong pool of experienced technology experts in various technologies in India. Works with customers in Europe and the USA, successfully implementing a virtual remote sourcing model with production teams distributed between the USA, India and China. The model is based on close-coupled teams with which customers can enjoy the outsourcing advantages with in-sourcing benefits.

Suhas is happy to explore any collaboration for outsourcing any product work.

Contact details are:
website: https://sarthsystems.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/pathaksuhas/