Tom W Malone, Webshop 2011, University of Maryland

Thomas W. Malone (born 1952) is an American

organizational theorist Organizational theory refers to the set of interrelated concepts that involve the sociological study of the structures and operations of formal social organizations. Organizational theory also attempts to explain how interrelated units of organiz ...

, management consultant, and the Patrick J. McGovern Professor of Management at the

MIT Sloan School of Management The MIT Sloan School of Management (MIT Sloan or Sloan) is the business school of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, a private university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. MIT Sloan offers bachelor's, master's, and doctoral degree programs, ...

Biography

Malone received his BA in

applied mathematics Applied mathematics is the application of mathematical methods by different fields such as physics, engineering, medicine, biology, finance, business, computer science, and industry. Thus, applied mathematics is a combination of mathemati ...

, graduating magna cum laude from

Rice University William Marsh Rice University (Rice University) is a private research university in Houston, Texas. It is on a 300-acre campus near the Houston Museum District and adjacent to the Texas Medical Center. Rice is ranked among the top universities ...

. He earned his MS in engineering-economic systems, and his

Ph.D. A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, Ph.D., or DPhil; Latin: or ') is the most common degree at the highest academic level awarded following a course of study. PhDs are awarded for programs across the whole breadth of academic fields. Because it is ...

in cognitive and social psychology, both from Stanford University. After graduation, Malone started his career as research scientist at the

Xerox Palo Alto Research Center Xerox Holdings Corporation (; also known simply as Xerox) is an American corporation that sells print and digital document products and services in more than 160 countries. Xerox is headquartered in Norwalk, Connecticut (having moved from Sta ...

(PARC), where he was involved in designing educational software and office information systems. In 1983 he joined MIT, where he was appointed Professor of Management at the MIT Sloan School of Management. At MIT, he founded and directed the

MIT Center for Collective Intelligence The MIT Center for Collective Intelligence (CCI) is a research center at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, headed by Professor Thomas W. Malone, that focuses on the study of collective intelligence. The Center for Collective Intelligence b ...

, and co-founded the MIT Initiative called "Inventing the Organizations of the 21st Century". Malone was a cofounder of three

software Software is a set of computer programs and associated software documentation, documentation and data (computing), data. This is in contrast to Computer hardware, hardware, from which the system is built and which actually performs the work. ...

companies, and has consulted and served as a board member for a number of other organizations. He speaks frequently for business audiences around the world and has been quoted in numerous publications, including '' Fortune'', ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid d ...

'', and ''

Wired ''Wired'' (stylized as ''WIRED'') is a monthly American magazine, published in print and online editions, that focuses on how emerging technologies affect culture, the economy, and politics. Owned by Condé Nast, it is headquartered in San ...

''.

Work

Malone's research focuses on how new organizations can be designed to take advantage of the possibilities provided by information technology. At MIT he teaches classes on leadership and information technology. The past two decades of Malone's 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''.

Video game design

In 1980, Malone published papers in the nascent field of video game design. His paper "Toward a theory of intrinsically motivating instruction" was based on his PhD dissertation. Malone's last paper in this field was published in 1987.

Electronic business

In the 1987 article "Electronic markets and electronic hierarchies" written with

Joanne Yates JoAnne Yates (born 1951) Sloan Distinguished Professor of Management, Emerita at the MIT Sloan School of Management, has worked at the intersection of organization studies and information technology. She has contributed to a number of fields includ ...

and Robert I. Benjamin, Malone predicted many of the major developments in

electronic business Electronic business (or "Online Business" or "e-business") is any kind of business or commercial transaction that includes sharing information across the internet. Commerce constitutes the exchange of products and services between businesses, grou ...

over the last decade: electronic buying and selling, electronic markets for many kinds of products, " outsourcing" of non-core functions in a firm, and the use of

intelligent agents In artificial intelligence, an intelligent agent (IA) is anything which perceives its environment, takes actions autonomously in order to achieve goals, and may improve its performance with learning or may use knowledge. They may be simple or co ...

for

commerce Commerce is the large-scale organized system of activities, functions, procedures and institutions directly and indirectly related to the exchange (buying and selling) of goods and services among two or more parties within local, regional, nation ...

Publications

Malone has published over 50 articles, research papers, and book chapters; he is an inventor with 11 patents. Books, a selection: * Thomas W. Malone ''Coordination Theory and Collaboration Technology'' Erlbaum, 2001. * Thomas W. Malone, Robert Laubacher, and Michael S. Scott Morton. ''Inventing the Organizations of the 21st Century'' MIT Press, 2003. * Thomas W. Malone ''Organizing Business Knowledge: The MIT Process Handbook'' MIT Press, 2003. * Thomas W. Malone ''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. * Thomas W. Malone
Superminds: The Surprising Power of People and Computers Thinking Together
' Little, Brown and Company, 2018 Articles, a selection: * Malone, Thomas W.
Toward a theory of intrinsically motivating instruction
" ''Cognitive science'' 5.4 (1981): 333–369. * Malone, Thomas W.,

, and Robert I. Benjamin.
Electronic markets and electronic hierarchies
" ''Communications of the ACM'' 30.6 (1987): 484–497. * Malone, Thomas W., and Mark R. Lepper. "Making learning fun: A taxonomy of intrinsic motivations for learning." ''Aptitude, learning, and instruction'' 3 (1987): 223–253. * Malone, Thomas W., and Kevin Crowston.
The interdisciplinary study of coordination
" ''ACM Computing Surveys'' (CSUR) 26.1 (1994): 87-119. * Malone, T. W., Crowston, K., Lee, J., Pentland, B., Dellarocas, C., Wyner, G., ... & O'Donnell, E. (1999)
Tools for inventing organizations: Toward a handbook of organizational processes
''Management Science'', 45(3), 425–443.

References

External links

Thomas W. Malone
at MIT {{DEFAULTSORT:Malone, Thomas W. 1952 births Living people American business theorists Stanford University alumni Rice University alumni Place of birth missing (living people) MIT Sloan School of Management faculty