About Mark Mortensen

Professor Mortensen started his career as a computer scientist but soon realized that the problems he was most intrigued by weren’t technological ones, but the ones arising from the interpersonal and social dynamics into which technologies were placed. While pursuing his PhD in the Center for Work Technology, and Organization within the Stanford School of Engineering he became fascinated by the challenges posed by virtual and remote work – a research interest and domain of expertise he maintains to this day. 

After finishing his graduate work, Professor Mortensen took a job as an Assistant Professor in the Organizational Behaviour department of McGill University’s School of Management, continuing his research on teams, collaboration, and remote work. After three years he left McGill to join the faculty at the MIT-Sloan School of Management in the Organization Studies Group (now Work and Organization Studies). While at MIT, he expanded his research focus beyond virtual work to examine the impact of teams with overlapping – and therefore shared – membership. After a further six years at MIT, Professor Mortensen joined the faculty at INSEAD on the Fontainebleau campus – where he has been for over 12 years. 

An engineer by training, Professor Mortensen’s focus remains applied research and solving real world problems. Having studied remote and virtual work for over 20 years, Professor Mortensen spent much of the pandemic working with companies to help them understand and adjust to widespread remote work and currently consults, speaks, and teaches widely on hybrid work and RTO. 

At INSEAD, Professor Mortensen teaches across a wide range of degree programs (MBA, EMBA, PhD). He also teaches in and directs both Open Enrolment and Company Specific programs in INSEAD’s Executive Education portfolio. 

Full Biography