Stephen Barley

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Emeriti Distinguished Professor, Technology Management (he/ him)

Christian A. Felipe Professor, Technology Management

Stephen R. Barley is a Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Technology Management at UCSB's College of Engineering. He is also a professor emeritus of Management Science and Engineering at Stanford University. He holds an AB. in English from the College of William and Mary, an M.Ed. from the Ohio State University, and a Ph.D. in Organization Studies from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Prior to coming to UCSB, Barley served for ten years on the faculty of the School of Industrial and Labor Relations at Cornell University and for twenty-two years on the faculty of the Department of Management Science and Engineering at Stanford. At Stanford Barley co-founded and co-directed of the Center for Work, Technology and Organization. He was editor of the Administrative Science Quarterly from 1993 to 1997 and the founding editor of the Stanford Social Innovation Review from 2002 to 2004.

Barley serves on the editorial boards of the Academy of Management Discoveries, Research in the Sociology of Organizations, and Information and Organization. He has been the recipient the Academy of Management's New Concept Award and was named Distinguished Scholar by the Academy of Management’s Organization and Management Theory Division in 2006, the Organization Communication and Information Systems Division in 2010 and the Critical Management Studies Division in 2010. Barley has been a fellow at Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences and is a Fellow of the Academy of Management. In 2006 the Academy of Management Journal named Barley as the author of the largest number of “interesting” articles in the field of management studies. In 2018 he won Conrad Arensberg Award for Lifetime Contribution to the Anthropology of Work by the American Anthropological Society and in 2021 the Everett C. Hughes Award from the Academy of Management's Careers Division.

Barley was a member of the Board of Senior Scholars of the National Center for the Educational Quality of the Workforce and co-chaired the National Research Council and the National Academy of Science's committee on the changing occupational structure in the United States. The committee's report, The Changing Nature of Work, was published in 1999. He also served on the National Academies' committee on the Information Technology Research and Development Ecosystem (2006-2008) and the National Academies' Committee on Automation and the Workforce (2015-16).

Barley has written over a hundred articles on the impact of new technologies on work, the organization of technical work, and organizational culture. He edited a volume on technicians' work entitled Between Craft and Science: Technical Work in the United States published in 1997 by the Cornell University Press. In collaboration with Gideon Kunda of Tel Aviv University, Barley authored Gurus, Hired Guns and Warm Bodies: Itinerant Experts in the Knowledge Economy, an ethnography of contingent work among engineers and software developers published by the Princeton University Press in 2004. His most recent book, Work and Technological Change was published by the Oxford University Press in 2020.

Barley has served as a consultant to organizations in a variety of industries including publishing, banking, computers, electronics and aerospace.

Recent Papers

Eberhart, R., S. R. Barley and A. Nelson. (2022) “Freedom is just another word for nothing left to lose: Entrepreneurialism and the changing nature of employment relations.” Research in the Sociology of Organizations. 81:13-41

Bailey, D. E, Barley, S. R., and Leonardi, P. (2021) “Wrestling with Digital Objects and Technologies in Studies of Work” In G. Symon, C. Hine, K. Pritchert (Eds.) Research Methods for Digital Work and Organization: Investigating Distributed, Multi-modal and Mobile Work. Oxford, ENG: Oxford University Press.

Barley, S. R. and Beane, M. (2020) “How Should We Study Intelligent Technologies’ Implications for Work and Employment?” In S. Barley. Work and Technological Change. Oxford, ENG: Oxford University Press.

Barley, S. R. (2020) “What is a Technological Revolution”. In S. Barley. Work and Technological Change. Oxford, ENG: Oxford University Press.

Barley, S. R. (2020) “How Do Technologies Change Organizations?” In S. Barley. Work and Technological Change. Oxford, ENG: Oxford University Press.

Barley, S. R. and D. Bailey. (2020) “Managing the Fears of Studying Technical Work.” In S. Barley. Work and Technological Change. Oxford, ENG: Oxford University Press.

D. E. Bailey and S. R. Barley (2020) “Beyond Design and Use: How Scholars Should Study Intelligent Technologies.” Information and Organization. 30(2):1-12

Kaynak, E. and S. R. Barley. (2019) “Shaping the political environment: An ethnography of public affairs professionals at work.” Work and Occupations. 4:265-306.

Barley, S. R. (2019) “Working Institutions” Pp. 12-31 in Reay T., Zilber, T., Langley, A. & Tsoukas, H. (Eds.), Institutions and Organizations: A Process View, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Barley, S. R. (2019) “About organizational socialization at the MIT Sloan School of Management – For Ed Schein.” Pp 46-56 in G. Fatze, J. Van Maanen, D. Schmid and W. Weber (Eds.), Ed Schein: The Spirit of Inquiry. Innsbruck, Austria: University of Innsbruck Press.

Brunhaver, S. R., Korte, R. F., Barley, S. R., and Sheppard, S. D. (2018). “Bridging the gaps between engineering education and practice.” Pp. 128-168 in R. Freeman & H. Salzman (Eds), U.S. Engineering in a Global Economy. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press.

Rahman, H. and S. R. Barley. (2017) “Situated redesign in creative occupations – An ethnography of architects.” Academy of Management Discoveries. 3:404-424.

Van de Ven, A, R. Adner, S. Barley, D. Dougherty, J. Fountain, A, Hargadon, M. Kamlet, B. Karlin and M. Schilling. (2017) “Increasing benefits and reducing costs to society of technological innovations.” Behavioral Science and Policy. 3:93-103.

Barley, S.R., B.A. Bechky, and F. Milliken. (2017) “The changing nature of work: Careers, identities, and work lives in the 21st century.” Academy of Management Discoveries. 3:111-115.

Valdes, G. and S. R. Barley. (2016) “Be careful what you wish for: Why the need to learn causes trouble for knowledge workers and their families.” Work and Occupations. 43:466-501

Barley, S. R., B. A. Bechky, and B. J. Nelson. (2016) “What do technicians mean when they talk about professionalism? An ethnography of speaking.” Research in the Sociology of Organizations, 47:125-161.

Barley, S. R. (2016) “60th anniversary essay: Ruminations on how we became a mystery house and how we might get out.” Administrative Science Quarterly, 61:1-8.

Books

Awards

Former and Current Ph.D. Students

Student	Year of Degree	Ph.D. From	Title	Employer
Gordon Meyer	1989	Cornell ILR	Professor Emeritus of Management	Canisius College, Buffalo, NY
David Morand	1990	Cornell ILR	Professor, Management	Penn State, Harrisburg
Hans Dieter-Meyer	1991	Cornell ILR	Professor, Education Administration and Policy Studies	SUNY, Albany
Ralph Hybels	1994	Cornell ILR	CEO	Leadership in Medicine, Norwich, VT
Scott Siebert	1994	Cornell ILR	Professor, Human Resource Management	Rutgers University
Asaf Darr	1997	Cornell ILR	Senior Lecturer, Sociology and Anthropology	University of Haifa, Israel
Bonalyn Nelsen	1998	Cornell ILR	Associate Professor, Business Administration	American University of Iraq, Sulaimani
Lee Fleming	1998	Stanford MS&E	Professor Industrial Eng. and Op. Research	UC Berkeley
Mario Scarselletta	1999	Cornell ILR	Division, VP Global Employee Relations	Corning, Inc.
Neil Kane	1999	Stanford MS&E	Director, Global Purchasing	Xilinx
Beth Bechky	1999	Stanford MS&E	Professor, Management	U.C. Davis
Kieth Rollag	2000	Stanford MS&E	Professor, Management	Babson College
Siobhan O’Mahony	2002	Stanford MS&E	Professor, Strategy and Innovation	Boston University
Fabrizio Ferraro	2003	Stanford MS&E	Professor, Strategic Management	IESE, Barcelona
James Evans	2004	Stanford Sociology	Professor, Sociology	University of Chicago
Soong Moon Kang	2005	Stanford MS&E	Professor, Management	University College London
Stine Grodal	2007	Stanford MS&E	Associate Prof. Strategy and Innovation	Boston University
Andrew Nelson	2007	Stanford MS&E	Associate Prof. of Management	University of Oregon
Paul Leonardi	2007	Stanford MS&E	Professor Technology Management	U.C. Santa Barbara
Dana Wang	2010	Stanford MS&E
Isaac Waisberg	2012	Stanford MS&E	Lecturer Labor Studies	Tel Aviv University, Israel
Kurt Sandholtz	2013	Stanford MS&E	Professor Management	Brigham Young University
Dan Morales	2013	Stanford MS&E	Director, People Analytics	McKinsey
Daisy Chung	2014	Stanford MS&E	Senior Lecturer Organizational Behavior	City University, London
Yosem Companys	2016	Stanford MS&E	CEO	Techlantis
Thomas Haymore	2016	Stanford MS&E
Gonzalo Valdes	2017	Stanford MS&E	Assistant Professor, School of Economics and Business	Catholic University, Chile
Zach Rogers	2017	Stanford MS&E	Associate	McKinsey
Hatim Rahman	2019	Stanford MS&E	Assistant Professor, Management & Organizations	Northwestern
Ece Kaynak	2019	Stanford MS&E	Lecturer Organizational Behavior	City University, London
Danielle Bovenberg	PhD in Progress	UCSB
Virginia Leavell	2022	UCSB	Assistant Professor in Organisational Theory and Information Systems	Cambridge University Judge Business School

Stephen Barley

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