JoAnne Yates

JoAnne Yates is the Sloan Distinguished Professor of Management and a Professor of Managerial Communication at the MIT Sloan School of Management.  

Before joining the Dean’s Office, she developed and taught in the Communication for Managers core course. Her research examines communication and information as they shape and are shaped by technologies and policies over time, in both contemporary and historical organizations. In her work on contemporary organizations, she collaborates with Wanda Orlikowski (of MIT Sloan’s Information Technology group) and various students and researchers to study how groups and organizations use communication and information technologies, and how that use shapes their work. Specific studies have looked at the use of technologies such as electronic mail, instant messaging, the BlackBerry, and corporate blogging. 

Her most recent historical book, Structuring the Information Age: Life Insurance and Technology in the Twentieth Century, provides insight into the largely unexplored evolution of information processing in the commercial sector and the underrated influence of corporate users in shaping the history of modern technologies. She is currently collaborating with her husband, Craig N. Murphy, professor of political science at Wellesley College, on a study of the history of voluntary consensus standard setting.

Yates holds a BA from Texas Christian University as well as an MA and a PhD from the University of North Carolina.