Courses taught

Business Policy and Strategy
Strategic Management and Decision-Making
Assessing Performance of Sustainable Organizations

Expertise

Merits and demerits of corporate social responsibility.
Managing corporate and industry reputations.
Creation, function, and maintenance of industry wide institutions for self-regulation.
Managerial and stakeholder cognition.

Overview

Mike Barnett serves as Professor of Strategy in the Strategy, Entrepreneurship, and International Business Group. He is also a Fellow in Strategy at St. Anne’s College.

Prior to coming to Oxford, Mike was Associate Professor of Strategy and Exide Professor of Sustainable Enterprise in the Department of Management and Organization at the University of South Florida’s College of Business.  He was also Research Fellow of the University of South Florida’s Kiran C. Patel Center for Global Solutions and served as Secretary of the Faculty Senate.  Prior to entering academia, Mike’s primary management experience was as a commissioned officer in the US Air Force.  He served as Squadron Section Commander and Executive Officer at McConnell AFB in Wichita, Kansas.

Mike holds a PhD and MPhil in Strategic Management from New York University’s Stern School of Business, an M.B.A. from Webster University, and a BS in Business Administration (Banking & Finance; Economics) from the University of Missouri.

Research interests

Mike’s research focuses on the firm-stakeholder interface. In particular, he studies how firms individually and collectively manage their relationships with stakeholders, and how their efforts at stakeholder management, through acts of corporate social responsibility and via communal institutions such as industry trade associations, influence their reputations and financial performance. 

Mike’s work has been published in myriad scholarly journals such as Academy of Management Journal, Academy of Management Review, Business & Society, Industrial & Corporate Change, Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Journal of Management Studies, and Strategic Management Journal.  He is editing The Oxford Handbook of Corporate Reputation, which will be published by Oxford University Press in 2012. He has guest edited a special issue of Corporate Reputation Review on reputational interdependence and is currently guest editing a special issue of Long Range Planning on sustainability in constrained economic times.

Mike’s scholarship has won numerous honors, to include the 2008 Academy of Management Journal Best Paper Prize, the 2006 Best Article Award from the International Association for Business & Society, and Finalist for the 2009 Aspen Institute Faculty Pioneer Award. Mike currently serves on the editorial boards of Academy of Management Journal, Academy of Management Review, Academy of Management Perspectives, Business & Society, Long Range Planning, and Strategic Management Journal. He also serves in leadership roles for the Business Policy & Strategy, Organizations & Natural Environment and the Social Issues in Management Divisions of the Academy of Management.

To view full drafts of Mike's research papers, visit his Social Science Research Network (SSRN) author page:

http://ssrn.com/author=414796

Book chapters:

Barnett, M.L. Forthcoming. Strategic learning. In D. Teece and M. Augier (eds.), Palgrave Encyclopedia of Strategic Management. London, UK: Palgrave Macmillan.

Barnett, M.L. & Dunbar, R.L.M (2008). Making sense of real options reasoning: An engine of choice that backfires? In G. Hodgkinson & W. Starbuck (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Organizational Decision Making. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 383-398.

Barnett, M.L., Starbuck, W.H. & Pant, P.N. (2006). Which dreams come true? Endogeneity, industry structure, and forecasting accuracy. Reprinted in W. H. Starbuck (ed.), Organizational Realities: Studies of Strategizing and Organizing. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 509-524.

King, A., Lenox, M. & Barnett, M.L. (2002). Strategic responses to the reputation commons problem. In A. Hoffman and M. Ventresca (eds.), Organizations, Policy, and the Natural Environment: Institutional and Strategic Perspectives. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 393-406.

Journal articles:

Barnett, M.L., & King, A.A. (2008). Good fences make good neighbors: A longitudinal analysis of an industry self-regulatory institution. Academy of Management Journal, 51(6): 1150-1170.

Starbuck, W.H., Barnett, M.L. & Baumard, P (2008). Payoffs and pitfalls of strategic learning. Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, 66(1): 7-21.

Barnett, M.L. (2008). An attention-based view of real options reasoning. Academy of Management Review, 33(3):606-628.

Barnett, M.L. & Hoffman, A.J. (2008). Beyond corporate reputation: Managing reputational interdependence. Corporate Reputation Review, 11(1): 1-9

Barnett, M.L. (2007). Stakeholder influence capacity and the variability of financial returns to corporate social responsibility. Academy of Management Review, 32(3): 794-816.

Barnett, M.L. (2006). Finding a working balance between competitive and communal strategy. Journal of Management Studies, 43(8):1753-1773.

Barnett, M.L. & Salomon, R.M. (2006). Beyond dichotomy: The curvilinear relationship between social responsibility and financial performance. Strategic Management Journal, 27(11): 1101-1122.

Barnett, M.L., Starbuck, W.H. & Pant, P.N. (2003). Which dreams come true? Endogeneity, industry structure, and forecasting accuracy. Industrial and Corporate Change,12(4): 653-672.

Barnett, M.L. (2003). Falling off the fence? A realistic appraisal of a real options approach to corporate strategy. Journal of Management Inquiry, 12(2): 185-196.

Fombrun, C.J., Gardberg, N.A. & Barnett, M.L. (2000). Opportunity platforms and safety nets: Corporate citizenship and reputational risk. Business and Society Review, 105(1): 85-106.

Working papers:

One voice, but whose voice? Assessing what drives trade association activity.

See no evil? Limits on stakeholder attention and the social control of business.

But it really pays to be really good: Addressing the shape of the relationship between social and financial performance.

Does it pay to be good to the Academy? Measuring career returns to journal editorship.

The Helios paradox: An alternative perspective on how success breeds failure.

Toward a reputational theory of the industry.