Barbara Larson - D'Amore-McKim School of Business

Barbara Larson is Executive Professor of Management at the D’Amore-McKim School of Business, Northeastern University, where she has been a member of the faculty since 2012. Her research focuses on the personal and interpersonal skills that people need to work effectively in virtual environments, and she works with collaborators in both academia and industry to develop training methods and materials to enable more productive virtual and remote work. Larson is the author of the book, Remote and Hybrid Work: What Everyone Needs to Know (Oxford, 2023). Her research has been published in Strategic Management Journal, Academy of Management Perspectives, and Management Science, among other outlets. She is a contributor at Harvard Business Review, and her work and insights have been cited by the New York Times, USA Today, NBC, BBC, and Bloomberg, among others.

Prior to her academic career, Larson worked for 15 years in international finance and operations leadership, most recently as Director of International Finance at R.R. Donnelley. She earned her doctorate (DBA) at Harvard Business School, her MBA at the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, and her BA at the University of Virginia.

Education

DBA Management, Harvard University
MBA, University of Pennsylvania
BA Spanish, University of Virginia

Selected Publications

Larson, B.Z. (2023) Remote and Hybrid Work: What Everyone Needs to Know. Oxford University Press.
Makarius, Erin, Larson, Barbara, & Vroman, Susan (2021). “What is your organization's long-term remote-work strategy?” Harvard Business Review, Online, March 24.
Choudhury, Prithwiraj, Foroughi, Cirrus, & Barbara Z. Larson (2021). Work From Anywhere: The Productivity Effects of Geographic Flexibility. Strategic Management Journal, 42:4, 655-683.
Larson, Barbara (2020). “Give your remote team unstructured time for collaboration,” Harvard Business Review, Online, October 27.
Larson, Barbara, Vroman, Susan, & Erin Makarius (2020). “A guide to managing your (newly) remote workers.” Harvard Business Review, Online, March 18.
Choudhury, Prithwiraj, Larson, Barbara & Cirrus Foroughi (2019). “Is it time to let employees work from anywhere?” Harvard Business Review, Online, August 14.
Wertheim, E., Glick, L., & Larson, B. Z. (2019). Teaching the Basics of Negotiation in One Class. Management Teaching Review, 4(2), 95-118.
Larson, Barbara & Erin Makarius (2018). “The virtual work skills you need – even if you never leave the office.” Harvard Business Review, Online, October 5.
Makarius, Erin and Barbara Zepp Larson (2017). “Changing the perspective of virtual work: Building virtual intelligence at the individual level,” Academy of Management Perspectives, 31:2, 159-178.
Larson, Barbara Z., Leung, Opal and Kenneth Mullane (2017). “Tools for teaching virtual teams: A comparative resource review. Management Teaching Review, 2(4), 333-347.
Siegel, Jordan I. and Barbara Zepp Larson (2009). “Labor Market Institutions and Global Strategic Adaptation: Evidence from Lincoln Electric,” Management Science, 55:9, 1527-1546.

Selected Presentations

Larson, Barbara, Makarius, Erin, & Diefendorff, James (2021). “Bots, Fraud, and Careless Responding: Challenges of Bad-faith Responses in Survey Research.” CloudResearch Innovations Conference (online due to COVID).
Larson, Barbara, Makarius, Erin, & Diefendorff, James (2021). “Bots, Fraud, and Careless Responding: Challenges of Bad-faith Responses in Survey Research.” Academy of Management Annual Meeting (online due to COVID).
Choudhury, Prithwiraj, Foroughi, Cirrus, and Larson, Barbara (2020). “Work From Anywhere: The Productivity Effects of Geographic Flexibility.” Academy of Management Annual Meeting (online due to COVID). Winner of Distinguished Paper Award from the Strategic Management Division (STR) of the Academy of Management.
Pierce, Jason & Larson, Barbara (2020). “Conducting Peer Evaluations with the TEAMMATES App,” Management & Organizational Behavior Teaching Conference (online due to COVID).
Larson, Barbara & Makarius, Erin (2018). “A 5-year retrospective: What have we learned about teaching virtual work skills?” Management & Organizational Behavior Teaching Conference, Conway, SC.

Research & Teaching Interests

Dr. Larson teaches courses in managing change and disruption, innovation management, high-performing teams and organizational behavior. She conducts research on virtual work and telework, and training of digital workers. Her work has been published in Academy of Management Perspectives, Harvard Business Review, Management Science, and Management Teaching Review, among other outlets.

Industry & Academic Experience

Prior to joining the D'Amore-McKim faculty in 2012, Larson taught at University College London and University of Sussex in the United Kingdom, as well as Harvard Summer School. Before her academic career, Larson spent 15 years in various international finance and operations roles in industry, most recently as Director of International Finance at R.R. Donnelley.

Services to the Profession

Academy of Management: Named one of top 25 reviewers, International Management Division (IMD), 2009; Doctoral Committee member (invited), IMD, 2007-2009; Paper Session Discussant, 2009; Reviewer, 2007, 2009-2012 Annual Meetings.
Academy of International Business, member 2005 & 2009: Reviewer, AIB 2006 Annual Meeting.
University of Illinois CIBER (Center for International Business Education and Research): Member, Business Advisory Council (invited), 2003-4.

Awards & Recognition

Northeastern University Non-tenure-track Faculty Fellowship for Fall Semester 2022.
Ronald Copeland Best Paper Award, 2022, D'Amore-McKim School of Business. For Choudhury, Foroughi & Larson (2021) “Work from Anywhere: The productivity effects of geographic flexibility.”
Academy of Management, 2020 Distinguished Paper Award from the Strategic Management Division (STR). For Choudhury, Foroughi & Larson “Work from Anywhere: The productivity effects of geographic flexibility.”
Alpha Kappa Psi Professional Fraternity, National Faculty Advisor of the Year, 2020.
Northeastern University, Faculty Advisor of the Year, 2019.