Peter G. Klein, Ph.D.
Professor of Entrepreneurship | Baylor University
Waco, TX, UNITED STATES
Peter G. Klein is an economist who studies managerial and organizational issues, with a special interest in entrepreneurship and innovation
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Biography
Peter G. Klein is Professor of Entrepreneurship at the Hankamer School of Business, Baylor University, and Senior Research Fellow with Baylor's Baugh Center for Entrepreneurship and Free Enterprise. He is also Adjunct Professor of Strategy and Management at the Norwegian School of Economics and Carl Menger Research Fellow at the Mises Institute. Peter has also held faculty positions at the University of Missouri's Division of Applied Social Science and Truman School of Public Affairs, the Copenhagen Business School, the University of Georgia’s Terry College of Business, and Washington University’s Olin Business School, and he holds an Honorary Professorship at the Beijing University of Information Science and Technology. He was formerly a Senior Economist at the Council of Economic Advisers. He holds a PhD in economics from the University of California, Berkeley and a BA from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.
Peter’s research focuses on the links between entrepreneurship, strategy, and organization, with application to innovation, diversification, vertical coordination, health care, and public policy. His work has appeared in Organization Science, Academy of Management Review, Rand Journal of Economics, Strategic Entrepreneurship Journal, Journal of Management, Managerial and Decision Economics, Journal of Industrial Economics, Sloan Management Review, and other outlets. Peter’s 2012 book Organizing Entrepreneurial Judgment (Cambridge University Press, with Nicolai Foss) received the 2014 Best Book Award from the Foundation for Economic Education. He has also received Best Paper awards from the Journal of Private Enterprise Education and the European Management Review. His work has been funded by the National Science Foundation, the Kauffman Foundation, the Mises Institute, the Illinois-Missouri Biotechnology Alliance, and other organizations.
Areas of Expertise (9)
Entrepreneurship
Innovation
Diversification
Vertical Coordination
Public Policy
Health Care
Strategy and Organization
Angel Investors
Entrepreneurship Theory
Accomplishments (5)
Brent Clum Outstanding Research Award (professional)
Awarded by the Hankamer School of Business
Best Book Award (professional)
Awarded by the Foundation for Economic Education
Best Paper Award (professional)
Awarded by the Association of Private Enterprise Education
Best Paper Award (professional)
Awarded by the European Management Review
TIAA-CREF Outstanding Paper Award (professional)
Awarded by the Eastern Finance Association
Education (2)
University of California, Berkeley: Ph.D., Economics 1995
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill: A.B., Economics 1988
Media Appearances (6)
Middle managers embrace wokeness because it increases their influence and job security, new paper says
Forbes online
2023-02-08
A new paper by Nicolai Foss, Ph.D., a strategy professor at Copenhagen Business School, and Peter Klein, Ph.D., professor and chair of entrepreneurship and corporate innovation at Baylor, suggests that middle managers might be using “wokeness” to climb the ladder at work and keep their jobs during tough times.
Rethinking Hierarchy
MIT Sloan Management Review & Report online
2023-01-25
This article is adapted from the book, “Why Managers Matter: The Perils of the Bossless Company,” by Nicolai J. Foss and Peter G. Klein, Ph.D., professor and chair of entrepreneurship at Baylor. In redesigning managerial authority and hierarchy for the 21st century, leaders must realize that they don’t need to know everything, but only just enough, and they need to consider what their employees want and think is fair in designing structures and systems.
Can bossless management work?
Strategy + Business online
2023-01-10
In their book, “Why Managers Matter,” Nicolai Foss, Ph.D., a strategy professor at the Copenhagen Business School, and Peter Klein, Ph.D., The W.W. Caruth Chair and professor of entrepreneurship at Baylor’s Hankamer School of Business, examine the various iterations of manager-free organizations and conclude that “Bosses matter, not just as figureheads but as designers, organizers, encouragers, and enforcers.”
'Strikes are contagious’: Wave of labor unrest signals crisis in tight job market
Yahoo! Finance online
2021-10-21
Peter Klein, Ph.D., professor in the Department of Entrepreneurship and W.W. Caruth Chair of Entrepreneurship and Corporate Innovation, explains the implications of strikes in the labor industry.
The State of Modern Economics
The Austrian online
2021-05-06
Interview with Peter G. Klein, The W.W. Caruth Chair and Professor of Entrepreneurship at Baylor and Carl Menger Research Fellow of the Mises Institute, about the state of the economics profession.
How we chose the 2020 CNBC Disruptor 50 list of revolutionary start-ups
CNBC online
2020-06-16
Peter G. Klein, Ph.D., The W.W. Caruth Chair and professor of entrepreneurship, served as a member of the 2020 CNBC Disruptor 50 Advisory Council that identified the fast-growing, innovative start-ups on the path to becoming the next generation of great public companies.
Articles (5)
Private Equity and Asset Characteristics: The Case of Agricultural Production
Managerial and Decision Economics2014 Unlike most other mature industries, family firms, partnerships, and cooperatives dominate the agricultural production sector, with few corporations and limited access to capital derived from a source other than retained earnings and existing owners. However, the use of external equity capital in agriculture has increased dramatically since 1990. This funding source allows farms to exploit entrepreneurial opportunities not easily financed by debt. Following O. Williamson, we view debt and equity as alternative governance structures and argue that transaction ...
Analyzing Government Decision Making in the South African Biofuels Industry: a Game Theoretic Approach
Biofuels2014 The production of biofuels in many countries is largely driven by the government strategy and incentives that are in place. In South Africa the first round of the development of such a draft strategy took place in 2005, with the official stance on biofuels finalized in December 2007. During the policy-development process, various governmental departments had strategic goals and targets that they were all required to achieve. The achievement of these strategic targets and goals is risky and the various departments that have some form of involvement in the biofuels industry ...
Capabilities and Strategic Entrepreneurship in Public Organizations
Strategic Entrepreneurship Journal2013 Public organizations are relatively understudied in the strategic entrepreneurship literature. In this article, we submit that public organizations are usefully analyzed as entities that create and capture value in both the private and public sectors and that a capabilities lens sheds important new insights on their behavior. As they try to create and capture value, public organizations can act entrepreneurially by creating or leveraging bundles of capabilities, which may then shape subsequent entrepreneurial action. Such processes can involve complex interactions among public and ...
Private Equity and Entrepreneurial Governance: Time for a Balanced View
The Academy of Management Perspectives2013 Private equity is best understood not as a financing method but as a governance structure, one that emphasizes strong performance incentives, rules over discretion, and a strong alignment between ownership and management. Briefly, private equity governance makes owners into active managers and makes managers behave like owners. As such, private equity is often regarded as a more “entrepreneurial” form of governance than that associated with the publicly traded corporation. We argue for a balanced view in which private equity is best regarded as a governance ...
Who is in Charge? A Property Rights Perspective on Stakeholder Governance
Strategic Organization2012 The fields of strategy and organization are dominated by the stylized idea that the purpose of the firm is to maximize returns on investment for equity shareholders. This idea is based on simplifying assumptions about externalities, contractual ties, investments, and the nature of competition. As a result, the dominant conceptualization of the firm’s purpose as shareholder value maximization may lead to serious misunderstandings regarding the firm’s contractual obligations. Furthermore, the idea of shareholder value maximization may lead to problematic and inaccurate ...
