Brad Morrison

MIT Sloan School of Management Senior Lecturer, Leaders for Global Operations Program

Brad Morrison studies problems in organizations, organizational change, and management that are rooted in the interactions of human behavior and the dynamically complex environments in which we work. One stream of his research focuses on implementation problems and other organizational pathologies, trying to understand why some cases lead to successful implementation while others lead to failures. He has studied implementation in contexts such as process improvement settings and firms adopting the practices of lean manufacturing. His research draws strongly on organizational theory, with a methodological emphasis on interpretation through the lens of system dynamics.

Another stream of his research focuses on human performance in dynamically complex settings in healthcare, such as emergency departments and operating rooms. He is currently Principal Investigator for a study supported by the National Institutes of Health to investigate emergency department crowding and organizational resilience. He is also a faculty member and researcher at the Center for Medical Simulation in Boston, where he works with doctors, nurses and other healthcare providers using full-field simulation improve safety in healthcare.

He has been a partner at a leading global management consulting firm and has more than 20 years of consulting experience in the retail and consumer products and healthcare industries. He has assisted dozens of organizations wrestling with change in areas such as product development and supply chain management.

Morrison has taught system dynamics and operations management in a variety of undergraduate, masters, and executive education programs at the MIT Sloan School of Management and at the Brandeis International Business School. His publications have appeared in a range of journals including the Academy of Management Review, the American Medical Journal, Academic Emergency Medicine, the System Dynamics Review, and the Journal of Operations Management. He is the 2012 recipient of the Jay W. Forrester Award from the System Dynamics Society, recognizing the best work in the field for the previous 5 years. He holds a Ph.D. in Management (System Dynamics and Organization Studies) from the Sloan School of Management at MIT, an MBA (Finance) from the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business, and undergraduate degrees in Chemistry and Management Science from MIT.