Stephen Barley

Bailey, D. E, Barley, S. R., and Leonardi, P. (Forthcoming) “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. (Forthcoming) “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. (Forthcoming) “What is a Technological Revolution”.  In S. Barley. Work and Technological Change.  Oxford, ENG: Oxford University Press.

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

Barley, S. R.  and D. Bailey. (Forthcoming) “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.

Barley, Stephen R. (Forthcoming, December 2020) Work and Technological Change.  Oxford, ENG: Oxford University Press.

Barley, Stephen R. and Kunda, Gideon.  (2004)  Gurus, Hired Guns and Warm Bodies: Itinerant Experts in a Knowledge Economy.  Princeton, NJ:

Kochan, Thomas A., Barley, Stephen R. et al.  (1999) The Changing Nature of Work and Its Implications for Occupational Analysis.  National Research Council: Washington, D.C.

Barley, Stephen R. and Julian Orr. (Eds)  (1997).   Between Craft and Science: Technical Work in the United States.  Ithaca, NY: ILR Press.

Best Reviewer Award, Academy of Management Discoveries.  August 2019.

Conrad Arensberg Award, Lifetime Contribution to the Anthropology of Work.  American Anthropological Society. November 2018

Distinguished Speaker.  International Symposium on Process Organization Studies.  Kos, Greece.  June, 2016

Clarendon Lectures.  Oxford University, Oct. 2016.

Laurent Picard Distinguished Lecture, Desautels Faculty of Management, McGill University, Montreal Sept. 2016

Distinguished Scholar, Critical Management Studies Division, Academy of Management. 2010

Distinguished Scholar, Organizational Communication and Information Systems Division, Academy of Management. 2010.

Fellow, Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, Palo Alto, CA.  2008-2009

Joan Woodward Distinguished Lecturer, Imperial College, London 2008

Fellow, Academy of Management.  2007-present.

Author of the largest number of interesting papers.  2006.  Academy of Management Journal.

Distinguished Scholar, Organization and Management Theory Division, Academy of Management. 2006

IBM Fellow, 2005-2006

Ethnography of Lobbyists

            Dan Morales (a former doctoral student who currently works for McKinsey) and I are writing a book on the daily work of lobbyists employed by two of the top ten for-hire lobbying firms in Washington D.C.  The book is based on Dan’s dissertation, Policymaking as Gift Exchange: An Ethnographic Study of Lobbyists. 

Helping Entrepreneurs Manage their Private Lives

            Successful entrepreneurs and other wealthy individuals find they need to build organizations to help manage their private lives. To overcome the combined pressures of work and demands of managing property, civic involvement and families, successful entrepreneurs often employ full-time personal assistants, housekeepers, nannies, drivers, pilots, grounds keepers, and members of other occupations.  Paul Leonardi, Camille Endicott (doctoral student in Communications), Virginia Leavell (doctoral student in TMP) and I have been studying the work done by members of such occupations for wealthy families in both Santa Barbara and the Silicon Valley. Ours is the first contemporary study of those who help wealthy individuals manage their lives outside of work.

TMP 433: Organization Design and Innovation (Masters of Technology Management Course)

We live in a psychologically oriented culture.  When we try to explain what occurs in an organization and why it occurs, we usually favor accounts that feature individuals’ personalities or interpersonal dynamics. Without doubt psychology, especially social psychology, tells us a great deal about why people and teams do what they do and how to manage them.  But there are structural and cultural aspects of organizations that also shape behavior in organizations and the actions that organizations take.  These topics are the domain of organizational sociologists and anthropologists who tend to view organizations as social systems. This course will focus on how structural and cultural dynamics shape organizations, the behavior of people within them and the probability of innovation.  The course covers such topics as differences in formal organizational structures, the importance of informal organizational structures conceived of as networks, sources of innovations, how space and time structure work processes, and the social structure and cultures of science and engineering and how the two differ. Throughout we ask how these phenomena influence an organization’s ability to innovate.

TMP 272:  Organization Theory (Doctoral Seminar)

This course is designed as an intensive seminar that introduces students to major streams of theory and research in macro-organizational theory.  The course takes a historical approach.  We cover topics in roughly the order that they have emerged since the early 20th Century (and in a few cases before).  The course will provide you with the theoretical foundation for doing your own research on organizations from various perspectives including industrial sociology, contingency theory, resource dependency theory, population ecology, neo-institutional theory and network theory.

TMP 283:  Ethnographic Field Methods (Doctoral Seminar)

This course is designed as an intense practicum in participant observation in an ethnographic tradition.  Although reading methods texts and research reports written by fieldworkers is crucial for learning to do ethnography, it is not enough.  Just as you cannot understand the intricacies of survey, archival, or experimental research without doing a study, so you cannot fully understand ethnography unless your work in the field.  Accordingly, the course has six substantive objectives:

• To provide experience in doing participant observation and ethnographic interviewing.

• To develop skills at recording, coding, and analyzing observational data.

• To develop skills at eliciting, recording, coding and analyzing data through ethnographic interviews.

• To learn to build grounded theory using the constant comparative method.

• To learn how to evaluate and write ethnography.

• To provide an opportunity to do a potentially significant piece of applied research