Dr. Mark Addleson

Mark Addleson is a teacher, writer, and researcher. In his most recent book, Beyond Management: Taking Charge at Work (Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), he says today’s productive workplace rests on collaboration and teamwork, not rules and rigid structures. Designed for factories with production lines, management practices stand in the way of people cooperating and sharing knowledge. Knowledge workers, dealing with complex issues and a dynamic environment, where events are continually unfolding, need to be agile. They need to go ‘beyond management’ and organize themselves.

Mark taught for more than 20 years in his native South Africa at the University of the Witwatersrand’s Graduate School of Business Administration, where he was head of the General Management program (marketing, strategy, economics). At Mason, he was founding director of the Masters program in Organization Development and Knowledge Management. This organizational change program focuses on workplace practices, emphasizing group- and team-based approaches to organizing, and communities of practice.

Mark has consulted to many companies, as well as government and non-profit organizations, both in the United States and South Africa. In the ’80s and ’90s he was a director of Econometrix, with clients across all sectors of the economy. In the USA he was an associate of the OCL Group and consulted on the University of Maryland’s TAMAR project, bringing organizational learning ideas and practices to an integrated trauma treatment and education program for women inmates of detention centers. He has worked in the area of organizational coaching, to develop new approaches to organizational change.

Mark publishes regularly in academic journals on knowledge management, organizational change, policy, and management decisions. He has given keynote addresses at conferences is a recipient of the Wits Business School’s award for teaching.