Jay B. Barney

University of Utah | UOU · David Eccles School of Business

Teece (J Int Bus Stud 45(1):8–37, 2014) identifies two theories of the emergence of multinational enterprises (MNEs)—one that focuses on how MNEs solve transactional difficulties that can emerge in market exchanges and another that focuses on how MNEs facilitate economic value creation that is difficult to realize through market exchanges—and sugge...

Research Summary As the study of entrepreneurship advances, our appreciation for the role of theory in the development of the field has grown. In this paper, we build on our collective experiences to offer a peek into the inner workings of entrepreneurship theorizing, using specific examples to highlight ways of developing theoretical insights for...

Purpose This paper aims to draw from research on culture, stigma and entrepreneurial activity to hypothesize that the relationship of stigma with the level of entrepreneurial activity differs by the dimensions of national culture, i.e. individualism, masculinity, uncertainty avoidance and power distance. Design/methodology/approach The hypotheses...

The resource‐based view is an enduring and impactful mainstay of research within strategic management and beyond. This editors' introduction to the special issue on “new directions for the resource‐based view” accomplishes two main tasks. First, we describe the contributions offered by the seven articles contained in the special issue. Second, we e...

Research Summary This paper uses formal modeling and simulation to develop a more robust theory of how entrepreneurs gain access to human capital resources through their strong and weak social network ties. Whereas prior work focuses on the informational context in which an endeavor operates (i.e., is it risky or uncertain), the models developed in...

International business scholars have successfully applied transactions cost economics theories of the firm to understand a wide variety of global business phenomena. However, because this theory takes the value of a global exchange as given, and then examines how to organize this exchange most efficiently, it cannot be considered a “strategic theor...

As the study of entrepreneurship continues to advance, recognition of the role of theory in the development of the field grows. In this paper, we build on our collective experiences to offer a peak into the inner working of theorizing and highlight how specifically to develop theoretical insights for advancing entrepreneurship scholarship. Four pri...

Purpose This study aims to focus on inter-firm collaboration, exploring the main capabilities that can make a business more or less open to collaboration; it also considers the role of both firm-specific and relationship-specific capabilities. The paper proposes a model that can be used to study how the combination of the two categories of capabili...

This chapter considers how core strategic management theories (resource-based theory, positioning theory and the theory of the firm) could be impacted by incorporating stakeholder considerations. Resource-based theory would need to adopt a model of profit appropriation in which stakeholders in addition to shareholders would have residual claims on...

This article explains how viewing resource-based theory within Brandenburger and Stuart’s value creation framework adds clarity to the theory as a whole and to its essential elements including the definition of its dependent variables, its approach to value creation, and its approach to the appropriation of economic value. Building on this foundati...

I have recently been encouraged to share my personal reflections on the emergence of resource-based theory. In many ways, I have been reluctant to do so, at least in print, since any such effort would necessarily reflect my idiosyncratic view of this history. A complete discussion of both the people involved in the development of resource-based the...

We briefly introduce the fourteen articles that compose the special issue. Collectively, they highlight three types of pathways for additional contributions involving the resource-based view of the firm: opportunities to enhance synergy between the resource-based view and other theories, opportunities to build greater content knowledge by leveragin...

The use of the business model concept has grown dramatically over the past several years, yet it remains difficult to distinguish the concept from conventional strategy. Despite a lack of consensus on a definition of business model, proponents of the concept assert that it is quite different from strategy. We generate alternative definitions of the...

Stringent bankruptcy laws are generally understood to increase the costs of failure and thus not conducive for entrepreneurship. In this paper, theory is developed and tested exploring the moderating influences of the dimensions of culture—individualism—collectivism, masculinity–femininity, uncertainty avoidance, and power distance. Results of this...

Scholars looking to make original theoretical contributions typically must address at least three challenges: Defining what constitutes an original theoretical contribution, positioning a paper in ongoing theoretical conversations, and critiquing prior published work. Based on experiences at the Academy of Management Review, approaches for addressi...

This article investigates how project expertise and complexity jointly impact the decision to adopt open or closed innovation. It identifies four different types of open innovation models—crowdsourcing, coopetition, science-based, and network—and explores the varying conditions of project expertise and complexity under which firms tend to adopt a p...

In assembly of short responses, noted scholars—including former presidents of the Academy of Management (AOM)—share their perspectives on the events related to AOM leadership following EO13769. The pieces are reflections on the micro-level aspects of leadership and the ethical and moral choices therein.

The stakeholder perspective has provided a rich forum for a variety of debates at the intersection of business and society. Scholars gathered for two consecutive years, first in North America, and then in Europe, to discuss the major issues surrounding what has come to be known as stakeholder theory, to attempt to find common ground, and to uncover...

Research Summary: Using arguments derived from transactions cost economics and incomplete contract theory, this article shows that the assumption that shareholders are a firm's only residual claimants is logically inconsistent with resource‐based theory's model of profit generation. It follows from this conclusion that resource‐based theory's model...

Loss leadership is a marketing strategy in which retailers sell items for unusually low prices to induce customers to buy other goods at normal profits. While the phenomenon and its efficacy have received relatively little scholarly attention, the existing evidence suggests that it can be a viable means of achieving price discrimination as well as...

Strategic imitation occurs when one firm purposefully copies the products, processes, managerial methods, organizational form, market entry and/or investment timing of another firm with the intention of fulfilling a strategic goal. This imitation can be purposeful and take various forms, such as counterfeiting, reverse engineering or the adoption o...

The resource-based view (RBV) has emerged as one of several important explanations of persistent firm performance differences in the field of strategic management. After passing through an intense period of theoretical development and proliferation in the early 1980s and early 1990s, basic RBV logic was established and began to have an impact on em...

Cost–benefit analysis is an analytical technique that developed out of welfare economics and the concept of Pareto efficiency. It is utilized primarily in the public domain as a means of determining which alternative to the status quo will provide the greatest increase in social welfare. By assessing both the expected benefits of a policy or projec...

Rather than introducing radical new “grand theory” paradigms, most theory contributions in strategic management extend, clarify, or apply received theories in new and interesting ways. Here, we offer a guide on how to make these kinds of contributions to theory. Theory usually begins with a research question, which can come from the phenomenon of i...

Much research suggests that entrepreneurial opportunities in established firms result from bottom-up initiative in a diverse workforce, senior management's main role in the entrepreneurial process is to select among opportunities generated in the bottom-up process, and it should refrain from directly getting involved in this process. We develop an...

Oliver had the kind of intellectual curiosity that only first‐year strategic management Ph.D. students seem to possess. Indeed, while others viewed it as a chore, he took delight in preparing for each session of the strategic management seminar he was then taking.

Resource‐based theory has, since the 1990s, become an important part of the strategic management literature. Several authors have articulated the basic assumptions and propositions of this theory concerning the relationship between firm resources and capabilities and performance. This theoretical work has generated several testable hypotheses that...

This Management and Organization Review (MOR) special issue on ‘ Coopetition and Innovation in Transforming Economies ’ aims to explore key features of the strategic relationship between coopetition and innovation in transforming economies. It is generally accepted that innovation can be a fundamental driver for economic growth, new sources of empl...

Current research favors diversity within strategic networks as a source of idea generation and opportunity pursuit. However, diversity may not always be advantageous. Drawing from literature on entrepreneurial opportunities, social network theory, and cognitive psychology, it is argued in this paper that the level of diversity in entrepreneurial st...

This paper distinguishes between text and metatext in the resource-based view (RBV) – that is, the actual words and logic fundamental to the RBV (the text) and the traditions, interpretations and applications of the theory (the metatext). It argues that Kaufman's (2015) criticism of the RBV as applied to strategic human resource management actually...

This Management and Organization Review (MOR) special issue on ‘ Coopetition and Innovation in Transforming Economies ’ aims to explore key features of the strategic relationship between coopetition and innovation in transforming economies. It is generally accepted that innovation can be a fundamental driver for economic growth, new sources of empl...

The resource-based view (RBV) has emerged as one of several important explanations of persistent firm performance differences in the field of strategic management. After passing through an intense period of theoretical development and proliferation in the early 1980s and early 1990s, basic RBV logic was established and began to have an impact on em...

Loss leadership is a marketing strategy in which retailers sell items for unusually low prices to induce customers to buy other goods at normal profits. While the phenomenon and its efficacy have received relatively little scholarly attention, the existing evidence suggests that it can be a viable means of achieving price discrimination as well as...

A firm would be enticed to imitate the resources and capabilities that enable other firms to gain a competitive advantage. Nevertheless, imitation efforts might not pay off. Firms with an advantage, as a consequence, will be able to maintain it over a long period of time. This article discusses four major reasons why it might be costly to imitate a...

Cost–benefit analysis is an analytical technique that developed out of welfare economics and the concept of Pareto efficiency. It is utilized primarily in the public domain as a means of determining which alternative to the status quo will provide the greatest increase in social welfare. By assessing both the expected benefits of a policy or projec...

Strategic imitation occurs when one firm purposefully copies the products, processes, managerial methods, organizational form, market entry and/or investment timing of another firm with the intention of fulfilling a strategic goal. This imitation can be purposeful and take various forms, such as counterfeiting, reverse engineering or the adoption o...

Known best in the strategy field for his work on the resource-based view (RBV) of the firm, Birger Wernerfelt has also amassed a respectable body of work in the fields of marketing and economics. His professed research topics of interest include the theory of the firm, selling formats, marketing design, marketing implementation and organizational i...

This Management and Organization Review (MOR) special issue on ‘ Coopetition and Innovation in Transforming Economies ’ aims to explore key features of the strategic relationship between coopetition and innovation in transforming economies. It is generally accepted that innovation can be a fundamental driver for economic growth, new sources of empl...

Research summary : Prior scholarship has assumed that firm‐specific and general human capital can be analyzed separately. This article argues that, in some settings, this is not the case because prior firm‐specific human capital investments can be a market signal of an individual's willingness and ability to make such investments in the future. As...

Research summary Entrepreneurs often need resources controlled by stakeholders to form and exploit opportunities. While many of these resources can be acquired through simple contracts, the acquisition of some may require efforts on the part of stakeholders that go beyond what can be specified contractually. Such efforts—extra‐role behaviors—genera...

Research summary: Prior theory suggests that the performance effects of a firm's diversification strategy depend on a firm's individual resources and capabilities and the setting within which it is operating. However, prior tests of this theory have examined the average diversification‐performance relationship across all firms, instead of estimatin...

When firms create value with employees' human capital, who captures this value - employees or their employing firms? This paper explains that the answer to this question depends both on the type of human capital deployed and characteristics of the labor market from which the firm hired the employees. When labor markets are highly competitive, indiv...

This paper documents the Management, Spirituality, and Religion’s Plenary Session at the Academy of Management, Philadelphia, 2014, with Jay B. Barney, Judy Wicks, and C. Otto Scharmer. The speakers were asked to discuss their views on Transcendental Leadership in terms of their own spiritual practices and how these practices contribute to a shift...

Despite decades of effort, abject poverty remains a serious problem in many countries around the world. The effects of five approaches to poverty alleviation—foreign aid, microfinance, social entrepreneurship, base of the pyramid initiatives, and the establishment of property rights among the abjectly poor—are briefly reviewed. While each of these...

This article defines the various entrepreneurial resources and explains how they are used to gain competitive advantage or exploit competitive imperfections. It also provides suggestions for future research in entrepreneurship.

Discovery opportunities are assumed to arise from competitive imperfections in markets due to changes in technology, consumer preferences, or some other attributes of the context within which a market or industry exists. In particular, these opportunities emerge independent of the actions of those seeking to generate economic profits from exploitin...

A substantial body of literature describes workplace commitment in established organizations. However, this literature has not examined the special challenges associated with commitment in entrepreneurial settings. Entrepreneurs often need resources controlled by stakeholders to form and exploit opportunities. Some of these resources can be acquire...

This study examines the coevolution of inter-firm networks and the choices firms make about governance. Previous studies on inter-firm networks and alliance formation provide insights into how networks shape social mechanisms, and information and resource flow, and thus influence the firms’ economic actions. This stream of research has focused on t...

This study examines the coevolution of inter-firm networks and the choices that firms make about governance. Prior studies on inter-firm networks and alliances have provided insights into how networks shape firms’ decisions about organizational governance. This stream of research has focused on the impact of networks on governance without fully inc...

The notion of dynamic or organizational capability has received much attention in the strategy, organizational and entrepreneurship literatures. However, there are wildly divergent opinions about the nature of capabilities, and particularly their origins. The purpose of this proposed panel symposium is to bring scholars together to discuss and deba...

The strong interest by academic scholars and managers in the business model concept has led to the proliferation of research on the subject by both academics and practitioners. Business models emphasize a system-level, holistic approach towards explaining how firms do business (not what, when or where). As such, a business model is the template ena...

There is continuing interest in the actions that entrepreneurs can take to create and exploit opportunities. Two of these actions— identifying opportunities and enrolling stakeholders to help exploit these opportunities—have received particular attention. On the one hand, the process of opportunity identification can enable entrepreneurs to underst...

Kozlenkova et al. (Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science 2013) show that resource-based theory has had important implications for marketing. This paper suggests that marketing might have important implications for resource-based theory.

Entrepreneurial activity does not always lead to economic growth. While improvements have been made to human capital, property rights protection, and access to financial capital in abject poverty contexts with the assumption that they will increase entrepreneurial activity, the results have been mixed. More recently, many entrepreneurs interested i...

This research draws on transaction-cost and resource-based theory to examine how information technology (IT) capital moderates the relationship between different types of assets and firm scope—both vertical integration and diversification. The analysis suggests that IT capital enables firms with narrowly valuable assets to be less vertically integr...

The concept of strategic factor markets is a fundamental element of resource-based theories of competitive advantage. Barney’s (1986) article, which introduced the strategic factor market (SFM) concept, provided seminal insights on the origins of heterogeneous resource positions and subsequent research has made great strides studying the role of in...

The purpose of this proposed symposium is to bring scholars together to discuss and debate the origins of organizational capabilities. The question of origins has been a sticky one to resolve, specifically due to the problem of infinite regress and the multi-level nature of capabilities. For example, should explanation of capabilities be reduced to...

Stringent bankruptcy laws are generally understood to increase the costs of failure and thus not conducive for entrepreneurship. However, the relationship between bankruptcy laws and entrepreneurial activity may be more nuanced than implied by previous work. In particular, the cultural context within which bankruptcy occurs, and the nature of the e...