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 including organizational theory, rhetoric and writing studies, genre theory, business history, archival studies, history of computing, and standardization. [1] [2]
She has been recognized as a thought leader in business communication. [3] Her work has achieved awards in several fields, including the Alpha Kappa Psi Award for Distinguished Publication in Business Communication (three times); Outstanding Researcher in Business Communication, the Association for Business Communication; Waldo Gifford Leland Prize of the Society of American Archivists; the Harold F. Williamson, Sr. Prize for Mid-Career Achievement in Business History; Lifetime Service Award from the Organizational Communication and Information Systems Division of the Academy of Management; and numerous best paper awards.
Yates received her BA from Texas Christian University in 1974, and her M.A. and later her Ph.D. in 1980 from the University of North Carolina.
In the 1980 she started her academic career at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, where she founded the Managerial Communication Unit. Since 1999 she has been Sloan Distinguished Professor of Management at the MIT Sloan School of Management. From 2007 to 2012 she was Deputy Dean of the Sloan School of Management. She retired in 2020.
Yates' research focuses on the use of communication and information technology in business. Her aim is to understand "how the use of communication and information technology within firms shapes and is shaped over time by its changing organizational, managerial, and technological contexts." [4]
Yates has authored and co-authored numerous publications including both monographs in business history and articles in management and communication journals. [5]
Her award-winning book Control Through Communication (1989) examines the intersection of the rise of corporate organizations, changing communicative practices, and the emergence of material technologies that facilitate control through communication, from pigeon hole desks to filing systems; from handwritten copies to typewriters to duplication technologies; and from letters to memos, standardized reports, and summary business charts.
Her book Structuring the Information Age: Life Insurance and Information Technology in the 20th Century (2005) shows how the information-intensive life insurance industry pioneered record keeping and sorting technologies in the United States from the turn of the twentieth century, then how their pre-computing technologies and practices shaped the adoption and early use of early computer technology, while at the same time shaping the evolution of the computer industry itself.
Her most recent book, co-authored with her husband Craig N. Murphy, Engineering Rules: Global Standard Setting since 1880 (2019) studies the rise and important role of private, voluntary standard setting in the global economy.
Her collaborations with MIT colleague Wanda Orlikowski in the 1990's and after introduced rhetorical analysis of genre within a frame of structuration theory to organizational studies. [6] They then used this approach to study the use of new electronic modes of communication within organizations. [7]
Strategic planning is an organization's process of defining its strategy or direction, and making decisions on allocating its resources to attain strategic goals.
Within the realm of communication studies, organizational communication is a field of study surrounding all areas of communication and information flow that contribute to the functioning of an organization. Organizational communication is constantly evolving and as a result, the scope of organizations included in this field of research have also shifted over time. Now both traditionally profitable companies, as well as NGO's and non-profit organizations, are points of interest for scholars focused on the field of organizational communication. Organizations are formed and sustained through continuous communication between members of the organization and both internal and external sub-groups who possess shared objectives for the organization. The flow of communication encompasses internal and external stakeholders and can be formal or informal.
The theory of structuration is a social theory of the creation and reproduction of social systems that is based on the analysis of both structure and agents, without giving primacy to either. Furthermore, in structuration theory, neither micro- nor macro-focused analysis alone is sufficient. The theory was proposed by sociologist Anthony Giddens, most significantly in The Constitution of Society, which examines phenomenology, hermeneutics, and social practices at the inseparable intersection of structures and agents. Its proponents have adopted and expanded this balanced position. Though the theory has received much criticism, it remains a pillar of contemporary sociological theory.
Genre studies is an academic subject which studies genre theory as a branch of general critical theory in several different fields, including art, literature, linguistics, rhetoric and composition studies.
Wanda J. Orlikowski is a US-based organizational theorist and Information Systems researcher, and the Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Information Technologies and Organization Studies at the MIT Sloan School of Management, Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Theories of technological change and innovation attempt to explain the factors that shape technological innovation as well as the impact of technology on society and culture. Some of the most contemporary theories of technological change reject two of the previous views: the linear model of technological innovation and other, the technological determinism. To challenge the linear model, some of today's theories of technological change and innovation point to the history of technology, where they find evidence that technological innovation often gives rise to new scientific fields, and emphasizes the important role that social networks and cultural values play in creating and shaping technological artifacts. To challenge the so-called "technological determinism", today's theories of technological change emphasize the scope of the need of technical choice, which they find to be greater than most laypeople can realize; as scientists in philosophy of science, and further science and technology often like to say about this "It could have been different." For this reason, theorists who take these positions often argue that a greater public involvement in technological decision-making is desired.
A discourse community is a group of people who share a set of discourses, understood as basic values and assumptions, and ways of communicating about those goals. Linguist John Swales defined discourse communities as "groups that have goals or purposes, and use communication to achieve these goals."
Thomas W. Malone is an American organizational theorist, management consultant, and the Patrick J. McGovern Professor of Management at the MIT Sloan School of Management.
The Social Study of Information Systems (SSIS) is interested in people developing and using technology and the "culture" of those people.
The ISO/IEC 27000-series comprises information security standards published jointly by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) and the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC).
Communicative ecology is a conceptual model used in the field of media and communications research.
M. Lynne Markus is an American Information systems researcher, and John W. Poduska, Sr. Chair of Information Management, Bentley University, who has made fundamental contributions to the study of enterprise systems and inter-enterprise systems, IT and organizational change, and knowledge management.
Intercultural communicative competence in computer-supported collaborative learning is the application of computer-supported collaborative learning (CSCL) to provide intercultural communicative competence (ICC) to its users.
Karim R. Lakhani is a professor of business administration at Harvard Business School. He is the principal investigator of the Crowd Innovation Lab at the Harvard Institute for Quantitative Social Science. His research and teaching focuses on open and user innovation.
Multi-communicating, the practice of engaging in more than one conversation at a time. The possibility and likelihood of interactions accelerated in medium especially through digital technology and its ubiquitous nature of smartphones in today's society.
Martha S. Feldman is an organization theorist best known for her work on organizational routines and, particularly, routine dynamics. Other areas of research she has contributed to include inclusive management and qualitative research methods. Feldman is the Johnson Chair for Civic Governance and Public Management in the School of Social Ecology at the University of California, Irvine She has published four books as well as numerous book chapters and journal articles.
Jeanne Wenzel Ross is an American organizational theorist and principal research scientist at MIT Sloan School of Management and the MIT Center for Information Systems Research (CISR), specializes in Enterprise Architecture, ICT and Management. She is known for her work on IT governance, and Enterprise architecture.
Cynthia Mathis Beath is an American economist and Professor Emerita at the Department of Information, Risk and Operations Management at the McCombs School of Business,
The MIT Center for Information Systems Research (CISR) is a research center at the MIT Sloan School of Management founded in 1974. MIT CISR's research focuses on the use of information technology and management in complex organizations. Its mission is to "develop concepts and frameworks to help executives address the IT-related challenges of leading increasingly dynamic, global, and information-intensive organizations."
Sociomateriality is a theory built upon the intersection of technology, work and organization, that attempts to understand "the constitutive entanglement of the social and the material in everyday organizational life." It is the result of considering how human bodies, spatial arrangements, physical objects, and technologies are entangled with language, interaction, and practices in organizing. Specifically, it examines the social and material aspects of technology and organization, but also emphasizes the centrality of materials within the communicative constitution of organizations. It offers a novel way to study technology at the workplace, since it allows researchers to study the social and the material simultaneously.