Faculty

Education

Ph.D. University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
BBA. University of Michigan


Joined the University of Kansas in 2002

Academic Areas

Strategic Management

Interests

Teaching Interests:

• Business Strategy
• General Management
• Organizational Change

• Corporate decline and turnaround
• Managerial cognition and strategy
• Strategic change and innovation

Current Activities

My current research focuses on how top managers influence strategy, especially as shaped by their personalities, motivations, backgrounds and understandings of their competitive situations. I am especially interested in extreme cases such as declining organizations where understandings are influenced by pressure and resource constraints. In addition to my own research, I currently serve on the editorial boards of the Strategic Management Journal, Journal of Management Studies and Journal of Business Research.

View Curriculum Vitae

Selected Publications

Musteen, M. Liang, X. & Barker V.L. III. forthcoming, Personality, perceptions and retrenchment decisions of managers in response to decline: Evidence from a decision-making study. The Leadership Quarterly.

Levitas, E., Barker, V.L. III & Ahsan, M. forthcoming, Top manager ownership levels and incentive alignment in inventively active firms. Journal of Strategy & Management.

McClelland, P., Liang, X. & Barker, V.L. III. 2010. CEO commitment to the status quo: Replication and extension using content analysis. Journal of Management, 36: 1251-1277.

Musteen, M., Barker V.L. III & Baeten, V.L. 2010. The influence of CEO tenure and attitude toward change on organizational approaches to innovation. Journal of Applied Behavioral Science, 46: 360-387.

Mueller, G.C., Mone, M.A. & Barker, V.L. III. 2007. Formal strategic analyses and organizational performance: Decomposing the rationale model. Organization Studies, 28: 853-883.

Barker, V.L. III. 2005. Traps in diagnosing organization failure. Journal of Business Strategy. 26(2): 44-50.

Barker, V.L. III, & Mueller, G.C. 2002. CEO characteristics and firm R&D spending. Management Science. 48: 782-801

Mone, M.A., McKinley, W.A., & Barker, V.L. III. 1998. Organizational decline and innovation: A contingency framework. Academy of Management Review, 23:115-132.

Barker, V.L. III, & Duhaime, I.M. 1997. Strategic change in the turnaround process: Theory and empirical evidence. Strategic Management Journal, 18: 13-38.

Barker, V.L. III, & Mone, M.A. 1994. Retrenchment: Cause of turnaround or consequence of decline? Strategic Management Journal, 15: 395-405.