Abstract
We are in the early stages of a profound increase in human freedom
in business that may, in the long run, be as important a change for
businesses as the change to democracies was for governments. For the
first time in human history, information technology now makes it
possible to have both the economic efficiencies of large
organizations and the human benefits of small ones: freedom,
motivation, creativity, and flexibility. This talk will describe how
these benefits can be achieved in decentralized business
organizations such as loose hierarchies, democracies, and markets,
and how focusing on the deep structure of business processes in
these organizations provides a key to understanding and managing
them.
Biography
Thomas W. Malone is the Patrick J. McGovern Professor of Management at the MIT Sloan School of Management. He is also the founder and director of the MIT Center for Coordination Science and was one of the two founding co-directors of the MIT Initiative on "Inventing the Organizations of the 21st Century". Professor Malone teaches classes on leadership and information technology, and his research focuses on how new organizations can be designed to take advantage of the possibilities provided by information technology.
The past two decade’s of his research is summarized in his book, The Future of Work: How the New Order of Business Will Shape Your Organization, Your Management Style, and Your Life (Harvard Business School Press, 2004). Professor Malone has also published over 50 articles, research papers, and book chapters; he is an inventor with 11 patents; and he is the co-editor of three books: Coordination Theory and Collaboration Technology (Erlbaum, 2001), Inventing the Organizations of the 21st Century (MIT Press, 2003), and Organizing Business Knowledge: The MIT Process Handbook (MIT Press, 2003). Malone has been a cofounder of three software companies and has consulted and served as a board member for a number of other organizations. His background includes work as a research scientist at Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (PARC), a Ph.D. from Stanford University, and degrees in applied mathematics, engineering, and psychology.
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