203.432.5801

William S. Beinecke Professor of Management

Professor Baron’s research interests include human resources; organizational design and behavior; social stratification and inequality; work, labor markets, and careers; economic sociology; and entrepreneurial companies. Before coming to SOM in 2006, he taught at Stanford's Graduate School of Business from 1982-2006. At Stanford, he taught the MBA core course, Human Resource Management. He was co-director of the Stanford Project on Emerging Companies (SPEC), a large-scale longitudinal study of the organizational design, human resource management practices, and financial and non-financial performance measures of entrepreneurial firms in Silicon Valley. Papers based on the project appeared in leading disciplinary journals, and an overview of the project in California Management Review won the 2003 Accenture Award for making “the most important contribution to improving the practice of management.”

He is the author, with Stanford economist David M. Kreps, of a textbook, Strategic Human Resources: Frameworks for General Managers (John Wiley & Sons, Inc.). Baron is also a regular contributor to leading sociology and organization journals, such as the American Sociological Review and Administrative Science Quarterly. His research has also been published in influential journals in economics and social psychology.

Selected Books
Manpower and Personnel Needs for a Transformed Naval Force (with National Research Council Committee on Manpower and Personnel Needs for a Transformed Naval Force), National Academy Press, 2008

Strategic Human Resources: Frameworks for General Managers (with D.M. Kreps), John Wiley & Sons, 1999. Translated into Orthodox Chinese by Western Books Co. (Republic of China); to be published in Spanish by Oxford University Press (Mexico); to be published in Simplified Chinese by John Wiley & Sons and Tsinghua University Press

Social Differentiation and Inequality: Essays in Honor of John Pock (with D.B. Grusky and D.J. Treiman, eds.), Westview Press, 1996

Process and Outcome: Perspectives on the Distribution of Rewards in Organizations (with K.S. Cook, ed.), Special issue of Administrative Science Quarterly 37, June, 1992

Selected Book Chapters
"The Economic Sociology of Organizational Entrepreneurship: Lessons from the Stanford Project on Emerging Companies" (with M.T. Hannan), in Victor Nee and Richard Swedberg (eds.), The Economic Sociology of Capitalism, Princeton University Press, 2005

"Gender and the Organization-Building Process in Young, High-Tech Firms" (with M.T. Hannan, Greta Hsu, and Ö. Koçak), in M.F.Guillén, R. Collins, P. England, and M.Meyer (eds.), The New Economic Sociology: Developments in an Emerging Field, Russell Sage Foundation, 2002

Selected Articles
"In the Company of Women: Gender Inequality and the Logic of Bureaucracy in Start-up Firms" (with M.T. Hannan, G. Hsu, and O. Kocak), Work and Occupations, Vol. 34, 35-66, February, 2007

"Organizational Identities and the Hazard of Change" (with M.T. Hannan, G. Hsu, and O. Kocak), Industrial and Corporate Change, Vol. 15, 755–84, October, 2006

"Employing Identities in Organizational Ecology" Industrial and Corporate Change, Vol. 13, 3-32, 2004

"Organizational Blueprints for Success in High-Tech Start-Ups: Lessons from the Stanford Project on Emerging Companies" (with M.T. Hannan), California Management Review, Vol. 44, 8-36, Spring, 2002 (Received 2002 Accenture Award for best paper published in 2002.)

"Labor Pains: Organizational Change and Employee Turnover in Young, High-Tech Firms" (with M.T. Hannan and M.D. Burton), American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 106, 960-1012, January, 2001

"Avenues of Attainment: Occupational Demography and Organizational Careers in the California Civil Service" (with W.P. Barnett and T. Stuart), American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 106, 88-144, July, 2000

Working Papers
"The Purpose of Purpose: Obligation and Identity in Employment Relationships"

Education
PhD University of California, Santa Barbara, 1982
MS University of Wisconsin, 1977
BA Reed College, 1976