Stephen Barley

Stephen R. Barley is Professor Emeritus in the Department of Management Science and Engineering at Stanford University, where he served as the Richard W. Weiland Professor. A prominent figure in social science research on organizations and technology, he earned an AB in English from the College of William and Mary in 1975, an M.Ed. and MS in Student Personnel Administration from The Ohio State University in 1977, and a PhD in Organization Studies from the Sloan School of Management at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1984. Prior to joining Stanford in 1994, Barley was a faculty member in the School of Industrial and Labor Relations at Cornell University for ten years. At Stanford, he held the position of Associate Chair of the Department of Management Science and Engineering from 2011 to 2015 and co-founded and co-directed the Center for Work, Technology, and Organization in Stanford's School of Engineering from 1994 to 2015. He currently holds the Christian A. Felipe Professorship of Technology Management in the College of Engineering at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

Barley's research specializations include the impact of new technologies on work, the organization of technical work, organizational culture, science and innovation in industrial settings, social network theory, and macro-organizational behavior. He has authored over ninety articles and received major awards such as Fellow of the Academy of Management in 2007, Distinguished Scholar by the Academy of Management's Organization and Management Theory Division in 2006, and similar distinctions from its Organization Communication and Information Systems Division and Critical Management Studies Division in 2010. Barley edited the Administrative Science Quarterly from 1993 to 1997, served as founding editor of the Stanford Social Innovation Review from 2002 to 2004, and has been on editorial boards of journals including Academy of Management Annals and Organization Science. Key publications include the books Between Craft and Science: Technical Work in the United States (edited with Julian Orr, 1997) and Gurus, Hired Guns, and Warm Bodies: Itinerant Experts in a Knowledge Economy (with Gideon Kunda, 2004), as well as influential papers such as Technology as an Occasion for Structuring (1986), Institutionalization and Structuration (1997, with Pamela S. Tolbert), and Bringing Work Back In (2001, with Gideon Kunda). He co-chaired the National Research Council committee that produced The Changing Nature of Work (1999). With over 44,000 citations, his scholarship has shaped organization theory, ethnography, and studies of work and technology.

Professional Email: sbarley@stanford.edu