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Mark Thompson

University Senior Lecturer in Information Systems

BA (Univ. of Oxford), MSc (SOAS, Univ. of London), PhD (Univ. of Cambridge)

Professional experience

Mark has sixteen years of information systems and change management consultancy experience, including four years with Andersen Consulting (Accenture). He is currently a Director of Methods Consulting, a UK top 20 business and IS consultancy. He is also a Main Board Member of Intellect, the UK's leading technology trade association.

In 2007-2008 Mark was a senior adviser to the UK Shadow Cabinet under George Osborne, for whom he delivered an influential report proposing widespread adoption of open standards in government IT that has since become policy. Mark was credited by Cabinet Office Minister Francis Maude as having laid the foundation for the government's current procurement strategy and has subsequently authored, co-authored, or significantly influenced a series of a series of white papers, policy documents, and a parliamentary committee Expert Report. Such documents include think-tank document Better for Less, which formed the strategy for Cabinet Office's Efficiency and Reform Group, a journal article that has been widely shared in government, the Government IT Strategy, and the Government Strategic Implementation Plan. Mark is a regularly invited industry and government speaker, and is also pioneering these ideas in practice through his London-based consultancy Methods, where he is delivering radical transformational organisational blueprints for over 10 pathfinding government organisations.

Research interests

The implications of a process-oriented perspective for understanding people, social organisation, technology, and markets.

Mark Thompson is a member of the Organisational Behaviour & Information Systems subject group.

Selected publications

Thompson, M. (2005) "Structural and epistemic parameters in communities of practice." Organization Science, 16(2): 151-164

Thompson, M. (2008) "ICT and development studies: towards development 2.0." Journal of International Development, 20(6): 821-835 (DOI: 10.1002/jid.1498)

Thompson, M. and Walsham, G. (2010) "ICT research in Africa: need for a strategic developmental focus." Information Technology for Development, 16(2): 112-127 (DOI: 10.1080/02681101003737390)

Thompson, M. (2011) "Ontological shift or ontological drift? Reality claims, epistemological frameworks and theory generation in organization studies." Academy of Management Review, 36(4): 754-773

Thompson, M. (2012) "People, practice, and technology: restoring Giddens' broader philosophy to the study of information systems." Information and Organization, 22(3): 188-207 (DOI: 10.1016/j.infoandorg.2012.04.001)

Fishenden, J. and Thompson, M. (2013) "Digital government, open architecture, and innovation: why public sector IT will never be the same again." Journal of Public Administration, Research and Theory (DOI: 10.1093/jopart/mus022) (published online Sep 2012; forthcoming in print)

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