Max Henri Boisot (11 November 1943 – 7 September 2011) was a British architect and management consultant who was professor of Strategic Management at the

ESADE Esade (Escola Superior d'Administració i Direcció d'Empreses) is an international private educational institution based in Barcelona, Spain. Esade runs two schools of the university, ESADE Business School, Esade Business School and ESADE Law Sch ...

business school in

Barcelona Barcelona ( ; ; ) is a city on the northeastern coast of Spain. It is the capital and largest city of the autonomous community of Catalonia, as well as the second-most populous municipality of Spain. With a population of 1.6 million within c ...

. known for his ideas about the

information economy Information economy is an economy with an increased emphasis on informational activities and information industry, where information is valued as a capital good. The term was coined by Marc Porat, a graduate student at Stanford University, wh ...

, the

Information Space Information space is the set of concepts, and relations among them, held by an information system; it describes the range of possible values or meanings an entity can have under the given rules and circumstances. Scholarly definitions Anothe ...

social capital Social capital is a concept used in sociology and economics to define networks of relationships which are productive towards advancing the goals of individuals and groups. It involves the effective functioning of social groups through interper ...

and

social learning theory Social learning theory is a psychological theory of social behavior that explains how people acquire new behaviors, attitudes, and emotional reactions through observing and imitating others. It states that learning is a cognitive process that occur ...

Biography

Boisot was born in

Maidenhead Maidenhead is a market town in the Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead in the county of Berkshire, England. It lies on the southwestern bank of the River Thames, which at this point forms the border with Buckinghamshire. In the 2021 Census, ...

Berkshire Berkshire ( ; abbreviated ), officially the Royal County of Berkshire, is a Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in South East England. It is bordered by Oxfordshire to the north, Buckinghamshire to the north-east, Greater London ...

, England, the son of French army officer Marcel Boisot and Greek actress Hélène Cordet (''née'' Foufounis). He attended

Gordonstoun Gordonstoun School ( ) is an elite co-educational Private school (United Kingdom), private school for boarding and day pupils in Moray, Scotland. Two generations of British royalty were educated at Gordonstoun, including Prince Philip, Duke of Ed ...

boarding school in

Moray Moray ( ; or ) is one of the 32 council areas of Scotland. It lies in the north-east of the country, with a coastline on the Moray Firth, and borders the council areas of Aberdeenshire and Highland. Its council is based in Elgin, the area' ...

, Scotland, and later studied architecture at the

University of Cambridge The University of Cambridge is a Public university, public collegiate university, collegiate research university in Cambridge, England. Founded in 1209, the University of Cambridge is the List of oldest universities in continuous operation, wo ...

and city planning at the

Massachusetts Institute of Technology The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a Private university, private research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Established in 1861, MIT has played a significant role in the development of many areas of moder ...

, before taking his PhD in technology transfer at

Imperial College London Imperial College London, also known as Imperial, is a Public university, public research university in London, England. Its history began with Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, Prince Albert, husband of Queen Victoria, who envisioned a Al ...

. After working as a manager for construction firm Trafalgar House, in 1972 Boisot co-founded an architectural partnership, Boisot Waters Cohen, and from 1975 to 1978 acted as a consultant on projects in France and the Middle East. from 1983 to 1989, he was Director and Dean of China Europe Management Institute in Beijing China. Afterwards Boisot was Professor of Strategic Management at the

business school in

. Associate Fellow at

Templeton College Templeton College was one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford The University of Oxford is a collegiate university, collegiate research university in Oxford, England. There is evidence of teaching as early as 1096, ...

University of Oxford The University of Oxford is a collegiate university, collegiate research university in Oxford, England. There is evidence of teaching as early as 1096, making it the oldest university in the English-speaking world and the List of oldest un ...

, and Senior Associate at the Judge Institute of Management Studies at the

. He was also a research fellow at the Sol Snider Center, the

Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania The Wharton School ( ) is the business school of the University of Pennsylvania, a private Ivy League research university in Philadelphia. Established in 1881 through a donation from Joseph Wharton, a co-founder of Bethlehem Steel, the Wharton ...

. His book ''Knowledge Assets'' was awarded the Ansoff Prize for the best book on strategy in 2000. The I-Space framework, which is central to his work, is an acknowledged early influence on the development of the

Cynefin The Cynefin framework ( ) is a conceptual framework used to aid decision-making. Created in 1999 by Dave Snowden when he worked for IBM Global Services, it has been described as a " sense-making device". is a Welsh word for 'habitat'. Cynefin ...

framework. Boisot was a co-founder of the I-Space Institute, a research and consulting company that grew out of and is based on his work on the strategic management of knowledge. Max Boisot died from cancer on 7 September 2011, aged 67.

Selected publications

* ''Information and Organization: The Manager as Anthropologist''. London: Collins (1987) * (Editor) ''East-West Collaboration: the Challenge of Governance in Post-Socialist Enterprises'', London: Routledge (1993) * ''Information Space: A Framework for Learning in Organizations Institutions and Cultures'', London: Routledge (1995) * ''Knowledge Assets: Securing Competitive Advantage in the Information Economy'', Oxford: Oxford University Press (1998). * ''Explorations in Information Space: Knowledge, Agents and Organization'', co-authored with Ian C. MacMillan and Kyeong Seok Han, Oxford: Oxford University Press, (2007). * ''Knowledge, Organization, and Management: Building on the Work of Max Boisot'', Edited by John Child and Martin Ihrig, Oxford: Oxford University Press, (2013).

EGOS Annual Award in Honour of Max Boisot

The EGOS Annual Award in Honour of Max Boisot recognizes an outstanding paper, with preference given to early career scholars. The topic for this award is the knowledge-based study of complex organizations and systems. Contributions in any of the main areas in which Max Boisot forged new understanding through a knowledge perspective are eligible for the award, in particular, research on organizational complexity; the strategic management of knowledge; China's business system; and Big Science. Scientists who received this award include: * 2014 Liselore A. Havermans, Deanne N. Den Hartog, and Anne Keegan (University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands) Exploring the Role of Leadership in Enabling Contextual Ambidexterity. * 2015 Goran Calic, Sebastien Hélie, and Elaine Mosakowski (Purdue University, United States of America) Managing Paradoxes for Creativity: A Psychologically Realistic Simulation of Embracing Organizational Tensions. * 2016 Tomas Farchi (IAE Business School, Buenos Aires, Argentina), Sue Dopson (University of Oxford, United Kingdom) & George Chondrakis (Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona, Spain) The Role of Hybrid Governing in Science: Fostering Research across Boundaries. * 2017 Jochem T. Hummel, Hans Berends & Philipp Tuertscher (VU Amsterdam, the Netherlands) What Do We Have in Common? Collective Action among Heterogeneous Actors in a Meta-organization. * 2018 Pedro Monteiro (University of Warwick, United Kingdom) Back to the Future? Bureaucracy as an Infrastructure for Collaborative Knowledge Work. *2019 Stephanie Schrage (University of Hamburg, Germany) & Andreas Rasche (CBS, Denmark) Inter-organizational Paradox Management: How National Business Systems (NBS) Influence the Spillover of Paradox Management Practices in Global Value Chains

References

External links

Remembering Max Boisot, 1943–2011

Max Boisot
at Strategic Learning Partners {{DEFAULTSORT:Boisot, Max 1943 births 2011 deaths British business theorists British expatriate academics English people of French descent Academic staff of ESADE People educated at Gordonstoun Deaths from cancer in the United Kingdom

Biography

Selected publications

EGOS Annual Award in Honour of Max Boisot

References

Further reading

External links