James Baron

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.

EDUCATION

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

SELECTED BOOKS

• Employment as an economic and social relationship J. Baron and D. M. Kreps Handbook of Organizational Economics 2012
• Strategic Human Resources: Frameworks for General Managers J. N. Baron and D. Kreps Hoboken, NJ: Wiley 1999
• Social Differentiation and Inequality: Some Reflections on the State of the Field J. N. Baron, D. B. Grusky and J. D. Treiman Westview Press Social Differentiation and Social Inequality: Essays in Honor of John Pock 1996

SELECTED ARTICLES

• S/he blinded me with science: the sociology of scientific misconduct J.N. Baron, M. King and O. Sorenson Organizational Wrongdoing: Key Perspectives and New Directions 2016
• Employment as an Economic and a Social Relationship J. N. Baron and D. M. Kreps The Handbook of Organizational Economics 2012
• Empathy Wages?: Gratitude and Gift Exchange in Employment Relationships J. Baron 2011
• In the Company of Women Gender Inequality and the Logic of Bureaucracy in Start-up Firms Work and Occupations 2007
• Organizational identities and the hazard of change Industrial and Corporate Change 2006

SELECTED WORKING PAPERS

• Stuck in the Middle? Social Comparison Processes in Response to Raising Minimum Pay* Y. Cho, A. Wrzesniewski, and J. Baron More Publications by James N. Baron