William Starbuck is courtesy professor in residence at the Lundquist College of Business of the University of Oregon and professor emeritus at New York University. He received his M.S. and Ph.D. in industrial administration at Carnegie Institute of Technology, after receiving an A.B. in physics at Harvard. He has also been awarded honorary doctorates by universities in Stockholm, Paris, and Aix-en-Provence. He has held faculty positions in economics, sociology, or management at Purdue University, Johns Hopkins University, Cornell University, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, and New York University, as well as visiting positions in England, France, New Zealand, Norway, Sweden, and the United States. He was also senior research fellow at the International Institute of Management in Berlin. He edited Administrative Science Quarterly, chaired the screening committee for Fulbright awards in business management, directed the doctoral program in business administration at New York University, and was President of the Academy of Management. He is a fellow of the Academy of Management, the American Psychological Association, the American Psychological Society, the British Academy of Management, and the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology.

He has published over 160 articles on accounting, bargaining, business strategy, computer programming, computer simulation, forecasting, decision making, human-computer interaction, learning, organizational design, organizational growth and development, perception, scientific methods, and social revolutions. He has also authored two books and edited seventeen books. In his latest book The Production of Knowledge, he reflects on his own academic journey and on the challenges associated with management and social science research.