Michelle Barton's experience spans both management practice and academia. Her lively, enthusiastic and highly practical presentation and coaching style has made her an award-winning professor of Organizational Behavior and a sought-after speaker for organizations as diverse as the U.S. military, NASA and the Boston Medical Center. Dr. Barton spent a decade at Harvard Business Publishing eLearning business, where she was a co-founder of the eLearning business and global Product Director for Leadership and Management Development programs.
Michelle A. Barton is currently a visiting Associate Professor of Management at Bentley University. Prior to this appointment, she was an Assistant Professor of Organizational Behavior at Questrom School of Business, Boston University. Dr. Barton earned her Ph.D in Business Administration (Management & Organizations) from the University of Michigan and her B.A. in Psychology from Pomona College.
Dr. Barton's research addresses how individuals and groups manage and learn in in real time, under conditions of high uncertainty. Drawing from a variety of empirical settings, including wildland firefighting, high technology entrepreneurship and military operations, she focuses on practices that enable rapid learning, adaptive response and resilience. Her work bridges the domains of crisis management, organizational learning and technology innovation. She has published in practitioner journals (e.g., "Learning when to stop momentum" in MIT Sloan Management Review) and academic journals (e.g., "Group Resilience: The place and meaning of relational pauses" in Organization Studies). Her co-authored article "Make Yourself an Expert" was published in the Harvard Business Review. Her work has also appeared in edited collections, e.g., "Knowledge and the Management of Creativity and Innovation" in The Handbook of Innovation Management, and "Status and expertise in groups" in Status, Organization and Management.
Dr. Barton has presented her work at a variety of practitioner and academic venues including NASA Mission Control at the Johnson Space Center, U.S. Army Medical Command, the Department of Homeland Security, Johns Hopkins University Patient Safety Conference, the Boston Medical Center and the International Academy of Management Conferences. She has also conducted workshops for groups as varied as police organizations and engineering firms.
Prior to her doctoral work, Dr. Barton helped found the eLearning business at Harvard Business School Publishing. In her ten years there, she helped create over two dozen award-winning management development programs for corporate learners. In her role as Product Director, she was responsible for the vision, strategy, and management of the Leadership and Management Development product lines, globally. In addition, she worked with corporations such as 3M, Allstate Insurance, Baxter International, the United States Navy and Pfizer to assess evolving leadership needs and competency gaps, and to develop appropriate training and support. While at HBSP, Dr. Barton presented their approach to managerial learning to academic and corporate audiences and co-developed and taught a two-day workshop designed to help training directors align development programs with corporate strategic initiatives. Prior to her time at HBSP, she was an Associate at the Boston Consulting Group.