Michael O'Leary

Michael Boyer O’Leary graduated from MIT’s Sloan School of Management (PhD, Organization Studies) and Duke University (BA, Public Policy). Previously, he was on the faculty at Boston College’s Carroll School of Management and worked as a management consultant (Coopers & Lybrand) and policy analyst (Pelavin Associates, now American Institutes of Research). Prof. O’Leary’s research and teaching deals with high performing teams, young leaders, multitasking, multiteaming. His work has been published by MIT Press and in the Academy of Management Review, IESE Insight, Journal of Organizational Behavior, Organization Science, MIS Quarterly, Organization Studies, and Academy of Management’s Best Paper Proceedings. Prof. O’Leary teaches classes on leadership, organizational change, organizational behavior, and teams at the undergraduate, MBA, EMBA, GEMBA, PhD, and executive levels. At the executive level, he has worked with the World Bank, IFC, OPIC, Booz Allen, Deloitte, the Irish Times, Abengoa, Telvent, Josoor Institute/World Cup 2022, Inter-American Development Bank, AACSB, INSEAD's Global Leadership Development Program, and a variety of other organizations. He is co-lead academic advisor for the Presidential Leadership Scholars program, and academic director of leadership development programs for AARP, Community Connections of DC, and ESADE's Executive Master in Healthcare Organization Leadership (EMHOL) program's Georgetown module, among others. He has won multiple teaching awards at both Boston College and Georgetown. At Georgetown, he led the effort to re-design the undergraduate Management major and received the 2010 Dean’s Distinguished Service Award. At Boston College, he helped design a first-year introductory course in leadership, management, and ethics for all incoming undergraduate students, and helped re-design the MBA and undergraduate leadership and management majors. O’Leary is or has been a member of the executive committee of the Academy of Management’s Organizational Communications and Information Systems Division, the Interdisciplinary Network of Group Researchers (INGRoup) and Harvard’s GroupsGroup since their founding. He serves (or has served) as an expert reviewer for three National Science Foundation grant review panels -- Innovation and Organizational Sciences (IOS), Cyber-Enabled Discovery and Innovation (CDI) program, and Research and Evaluation on Education in Science and Engineering (REESE). He also has reviewed for more than two dozen academic journals. Prior to his academic career, Prof. O’Leary worked as a management consultant for Coopers & Lybrand, where his practice focused on higher education, medical, and non-profit institutions. Before that, he served as a policy analyst in the Washington, DC office of Pelavin Associates Inc., now part of American Institutes of Research. At Coopers & Lybrand, his clients included major research universities and medical centers (e.g., Columbia, Georgetown, Stanford, Tufts, Boston University, and the Universities of Pennsylvania and Minnesota), as well as several large nonprofit organizations (e.g., the Educational Testing Service and the NCAA). His consulting clients were all undergoing major changes in their information technology systems and dealing with the strategic, organizational, and behavioral implications of those new systems. At Pelavin Associates, his clients included the U.S. Departments of Education and Labor, the National Center for Education Statistics, the Census Bureau, the Bureau of Indian Affairs, and the Bureau of Prisons. Prof. O’Leary served as a member of the Duke University Board of Trustees from 1991 to 1995 and the Academic Advisory Board of Creative Realities Inc., an innovation consultancy. He grew up and attended public schools in Stony Brook and Setauket, New York, lives with his wife and two children in Bethesda, Maryland. He plays soccer, tennis, and racquetball; is an avid fan of college basketball; and loves to travel, ski, and cook.

Education

• Massachusetts Institute of Technology - Ph.D.
• Duke University - B.A.

Publications

Articles in Journals (13)

O’Leary, M.B., Wilson, J.M., and Metiu, A. "Beyond Being There: The Symbolic Role of Communication and Identification in the Emergence of Perceived Proximity in Geographically Dispersed Work." MIS Quarterly, 38, 4 (2014)

O’Leary, M.B., Mortensen, M, and Woolley, A.W.. "Multiple Team Membership: A Theoretical Model of Productivity and Learning Effects for Individuals and Teams." Academy of Management Review, 36, 3 (2011): 461-78.

M.B. O’Leary, M. Mortensen. "Go Con(Figure): Subgroups, Imbalance, and Isolates in Geographically Dispersed Teams." Organization Science, 21, 1 (2010): 115-131.

O’Leary, M.B., Mortensen, M., and Woolley, A.W. "Multiple Team Membership: Working Together before It All Goes Downhill." IESE Insight, Q3, 6 (2010): 52-58.

O’Leary, M.B., Mortensen, M., and Woolley, A.W. "Trabajo en Múltiples Equipos: Cómo pedalear en varios equipos in perder el equilibrio." IESE Insight, Q3, 6 (2010): 50-56.

O’Leary, M.B. & Almond, B. "Predicting the Settings of Top Management Research: Economic Importance vs. Ease of Access." Journal of Organizational Behavior, 30 (2009): 497-524.

M.B. O’Leary, B. Almond. "The Industry Settings of Leading Organizational Research: The Role of Economic and Non-Economic Factors." Journal of Organizational Behavior, 30 (2009): 497-524.

Jeanne M. Wilson, Michael Boyer O'leary, Anca Metiu And Quintus R. Jett. "Perceived Proximity In Virtual Work: Explaining The Paradox Of Far-but-close." Organization Studies, 29, 7 (July 2008): 979-1002. DOI: 10.1177/0170840607083105.

O’Leary, M.B. and Arthaud, J.B. "The Nathaniel and Anna (Balch) (Rich) Wallis Family of Beverly, Massachusetts." New England Historical and Genealogical Register, 161, 2 (2007)

M.B. O’Leary, J.N. Cummings. "The Spatial, Temporal and Configurational Characteristics of Geographic Dispersion in Teams." MIS Quarterly, 31, 3 (2007): 433-452.

M.B. O’Leary, W.J. Orlikowski, J. Yates. "Managing By Canoeing Around: Lessons from the Hudson’s Bay Company." Knowledge Directions, 3, 1 (2001): 26-37.

M. O'Leary, & J. Moskowitz. "Intrastate Fiscal Equity." U.S. Department of Education (1994)

L. Brush, M. O'Leary, & M.K. Traylor. "Assessment of Training and Facilities Needs within Tribally Controlled Postsecondary Vocational Institutions." U.S. Department of Education, (1993)

Articles in Books (5)

O’Leary, M.B., Woolley, A.W., and Mortensen, M.. "Multiteam Membership in Relation to Multiteam Systems." Multi-Team Systems: An Organization Form for Dynamic and Complex Environments, edited by Zaccaro, S., Marks, M. and DeChurch, L., 141-172. NY: Routledge/Taylor & Francis, 2012.

M. Mortensen, A. W. Woolley, M.B. O’Leary. "Conditions Enabling Effective Multiple Team Membership." Virtuality and Virtualization vol. 236, edited by K. Crowston, S. Sieber, & E. Wynn, 215-228. Boston: Springer, 2007.

M.B. O’Leary, W.J. Orlikowski, J. Yates. "Distributed Work Over the Centuries: Trust and Control in the Hudson’s Bay Company, 1670-1826." Distributed Work, edited by Hinds, P. & Kiesler, S., 27-55. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, 2002.

M. O'Leary & J. Moskowitz. "Best Practices for Analyzing Elementary & Secondary Educational Finance Data." Developments in Educational Finance, edited by W. Fowler, Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Education, 1997.

P. Segall, M. O'Leary, D. Johnson, & E. Connelly. "Key Issues and Best Practices in Administrative Computing." Reinventing the University, edited by S. Johnson & J.J. Kidwell, 145-172. New York: Wiley & Sons, 1996.

Articles in Conference/Workshop Proceedings (3) Turner, J.W. and O’Leary, M.B. "Targets’ Practices: How People Allocate Their Attention among Multiple Streams of Incoming Information." ECIS 2012 Proceedings, Paper 58. European Conference on Information Systems, Barcelona, Spain: , 2012.

O’Leary, M.B.. "An Interaction Control Theory of Mediated Communication between Relatively Proximate Colleagues." Academy of Management Best Paper Proceedings, edited by OCIS, 1-6. , 2010.

M.B. O’Leary, B. Almond, E. Lamm. "Which Organizations, What Work? The Industry, Job Level, Firm Size and Occupational Contexts of Leading Management Research, 1988-2002." Academy of Management Best Paper Proceedings, C1-6. RM, 2006.