Organizations and Markets

Jay Barney to Become Honorary Doctor at CBS

14 March 2008 at 7:20 am Nicolai Foss 2 comments

| Nicolai Foss |

At a ceremony on April 4., a honorary doctorate will be bestowed upon Professor Jay B Barney by the Copenhagen Business School. Jay will be in excellent company; earlier honorary doctors at CBS include Oliver Williamson and James March.

Here is the motivation I penned for Jay’s hon doc:

Jay B. Barney received his PhD (Administrative Sciences/Sociology) from Yale University in 1982. He is currently Professor of Management and Chase Chair for Excellence in Corporate Strategy at the Fisher College of Business, the Ohio State University, and a Fellow of the Academy of Management. Professor Barney has held positions at University of California Los Angeles, and Texas A&M University. He holds honorary positions at universities in United Kingdom, New Zealand, and China.

Professor Barney is one of the most prolific contributors to strategic management theory. He is generally regarded as the main originator of, and driver behind, the resource-based view, the dominant perspective in strategic management since the beginning of the 1990s. Professor Barney’s 1991 article in the Journal of Management, ”Firm Resources and Sustained Competitive Advantage,” develops what has become one of most frequently used instruments of strategic analysis, the VRIN framework. The impact of this article is demonstrated by the fact that it is the most cited strategic management research paper ever, and — at more than 8,000 Google Scholar hits — one of the most cited social science research papers.

While the 1991 paper may be Jay Barney’s best known contribution, he is also the author of several other very important papers and books. Thus, he has published approximately sixty journal articles, many in top journals such as Strategic Management Journal, Academy of Management Review, Organization Science, and Management Science. A large number of these have become classics in their own right — academically awarded, heavily cited, and used and reprinted in multiple readers and collections. An example is Professor Barney’s 1986 Management Science paper on “Strategic Factor Markets.” In addition to his journal papers, Jay Barney has also published numerous book chapters, and edited or written ten books, including the major strategic management textbook, Gaining and Sustaining Competitive Advantage. Tens of thousands of management students are exposed to his idea every year. Finally, it should be mentioned that Professor Barney is an extremely prolific and effective presenter, and has consulted with numerous major US firms, such as Westinghouse Electric Corp., Hewlett-Packard Corp., Koch Industries, and many others.

Professor Barney’s main research interest has centred on clarifying the nature of sustained competitive advantage, and identifying its antecedents. His emphasis on resource heterogeneity as the key antecedent of the explanation of profitability differences directs attention to the precise characteristics of these resources, and to conditions under which they are acquired and organized. This has led to an extremely fertile research program in strategic management on these issues. Thus, recent work has taken the resource-based view further in terms of empirical application and formal model building. In addition, Professor Barney’s resource-based ideas have served as important inspiration for complementary work in strategic management, international business, technology management, and entrepreneurship where systematic thinking about heterogeneous resources has been important starting points for much work during the last two decades. Although sustained competitive advantage has arguably been the main theme in Jay Barney’s research he has made numerous important contributions to other areas, such as innovation strategy, organizational economics, and corporate governance. Recently, he has devoted much attention to corporate social responsibility and particularly to entrepreneurship.

In short, Jay Barney does not rest on his laurels, but is constantly addressing new issues in strategic management and related fields. His contributions to strategic management are seminal. Professor Barney has consistently pursued academic excellence. His contribution goes beyond writing, teaching, and consulting, and extends to building up an international network of strategic management scholars. He has always been generous with respect to participating in academic events at the CBS and in events organized elsewhere by CBS scholars. Professor Barney is a truly remarkable scholar and colleague.

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