Priyam Saraf
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I am a fifth-year Ph.D. candidate in Macro Organizational Behavior at Stanford University, with a Ph.D. Minor in Sociology. I expect to graduate in spring 2026.
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Why do firms in emerging economies under-adopt practices that are supposed to make them more productive?
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A key theoretical prediction is that global competition will have a homogenizing effect, pressuring firms to become as productive as possible or risk being selected out. If so, companies would do well to adopt new technologies, hire professional CEOs, design formal HR incentives, or more such practices. Yet across emerging economies, empirical evidence from organizational economics suggests otherwise. Firms routinely under-adopt. ​
I use field-based methods, including ethnography and experiments, to study organizational processes that shape adoption outcomes with consequences for firm performance and economic development. Specifically, I study how elite decision-makers—owners, CEOs, and managers—routinely interpret global practices through local meaning systems rather than view them as inherently beneficial devices. In the firms I study, under-adoption is a signal of not organizational failure or inertia, but adaptation to practices that often misalign with locally held moral orientations, cultural beliefs, and institutional relations.
Empirically, I focus on the Bangladeshi garment sector, where I study the adoption of mature practices such as automation and CEO professionalization. I also examine how emerging global practices like sustainability are socially produced in the Global North and come to be expected of firms globally. I invite theories from economic sociology to converse with strategy and economic development.
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My work has been recognized by the Academy of Management (AoM) and the American Sociological Association (ASA). A paper from my dissertation on variation in firms’ adoption of automation received the Best International Paper Award in AoM’s Organization and Management Theory (OMT) Division, was a runner-up for the Carolyn B. Dexter Award, and received honorable mentions for Best Student Paper from ASA’s Sociology of Development and Science, Knowledge, and Technology Sections.​​​​
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In addition to the (expected) Ph.D., I received an MPA from Columbia University, and a dual BS in Economics and a BS in Information Systems Management from Singapore Management University.
