Personal Information

Full Name

Michael D. Cohen

email address

mdc@umich.edu

Phone Number

(734) 647-8027

Personal Home Page

http://www.si.umich.edu/~mdc/

Address

School of Information
University of Michigan
312 West Hall
550 East University Avenue
Ann Arbor, MI 48109-1092

Personal Information

Michael D. Cohen is William D. Hamilton Collegiate Professor of Complex Systems at the U-M, a professor in the School of Information, a professor in the Department of Political Science, and a professor in the School of Public Policy. He is the coordinator for the Master of Science in Information ("tailored") degree at SI.

Cohen's research centers on processes of learning and adaptation that go on within organizations as they respond to their changing environments. His latest book, Harnessing Complexity, was written with Robert Axelrod and published by the Free Press in spring 2000.

He is also a co-author of Leadership and Ambiguity, a major study of the organizational problems facing American college and university presidents. He edited, (with Lee Sproull) Organizational Learning, a major collection of research articles in this burgeoning field.

He has written numerous articles contributing to the theory of organizational decision making, many employing computer simulation. The best known of these was A Garbage Can Model of Organizational Choice, co-authored with James March and Johann Olsen. His articles on structural conditions favoring cooperation have appeared in journals such as Rationality and Society and Nature. He has also pursued this theoretical work as an external faculty member of the Santa Fe Institute.

n recent years, Cohen's empirical research has focused increasingly on the organizational effects of information technology, using both controlled laboratory and complex field settings. He has served as a long-term consultant at the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center and was a founding associate director of the Collaboratory for Research on Electronic Work at SI, a multidisciplinary team of University of Michigan faculty who conduct research in this area. He is actively interested in nonprofit uses of technology through the Alliance for Community Technology. Cohen is a member of the faculty group that was merged into the former School of Information and Library Studies to create Michigan's new School of Information.

First name

Michael

Last name

Cohen

Department

William D. Hamilton Collegiate Professor of Complex Systems, and Professor of Information, Political Science, and Public Policy

History

Member for

4 years 27 weeks