Jay B. Barney (born October 8, 1954) is an American professor in strategic management at the University of Utah.

Majoring in sociology at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah, he graduated summa cum laude in December 1974.

Barney joined the faculty at the Anderson Graduate School of Management at UCLA in 1980.

He moved to the Mays Business School at Texas A&M University in 1986, then to the Fisher College of Business at the Ohio State University in 1994, where he held the Chase Chair for Excellence in Corporate Strategy,[1] and then to the Eccles School of Business at the University of Utah in 2012, where he held the rank of Presidential Professor and the Lassonde Chair in Social Entrepreneurship.

In the mid-2000s, Barney worked with Dr. Sharon Alvarez to develop a new theoretical approach to the study of entrepreneurship.