I am a fifth-year Ph.D. candidate in Macro Organizational Behavior, with a Ph.D. Minor in Sociology, at Stanford. I expect to graduate in spring 2026. I am on the 2025-2026 job market.
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Why do firms in emerging economies under-adopt practices that are supposed to make them productive?​
A key theoretical prediction is that global competition will have a homogenizing effect, pressuring firms to become as productive as possible or risk selection. If so, firms would do well to adopt new technologies, hire professional CEOs, design formal HR incentives etc. Yet across emerging economies, empirical evidence suggests otherwise: firms routinely under-adopt.
Using field-based methods like ethnography and experiments, I study how locally held moral orientations, cultural beliefs, and institutional relations—what I call local meaning systems—influence adoption outcomes, shaping firm performance, entrepreneurship, and economic development.
Specifically, I focus on the organizational processes and evaluations of elite decision-makers—owners, CEOs, and managers—who interpret global practices through local meaning systems rather than treating them as inherently beneficial or neutral. This suggests a potential classification error: under-adoption is not a sign of organizational failure or inertia, as mainstream economic explanations often suggest, but organizational adaptation fitted to local meaning systems. Reclassifying under-adoption as adaptation matters not only for building cumulative knowledge but also for improving how public and private resources are allocated.
Empirically, I focus on the Bangladeshi garment sector, where I study the adoption of mature practices such as automation, CEO professionalization, and price-setting practices. I also examine the underlying assumptions of progress imbued in these practices and study how they are are socially produced in the Global North through the strategic choices of professionals. I invite theories from economic sociology to converse with strategy, entrepreneurship, 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 thesis on how firms adopt 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 got 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. from Stanford, I received an MPA from Columbia University, and a dual BS in Economics and a BS in Information Systems Management from Singapore Management University. Before Stanford, I spent over a decade in global public policy and strategy, working at the World Bank (as Senior Economist and Young Professional), Bain & Company, and the Monetary Authority of Singapore.