Arvind Karunakaran

Bio

Arvind Karunakaran is an Assistant Professor at Stanford University in the Department of Management Science and Engineering. He is a Core faculty of the Center for Work, Technology, and Organization (WTO), Stanford Technology Ventures Program (STVP), and a faculty affiliate of the Stanford Institute for Human-centered Artificial Intelligence (HAI) and the Digital Economy Lab (DEL).

His research draws on organizational theory and sociology of work and occupations/professions to examine authority and accountability in the workplace, especially in the context of technological change. He received his Ph.D. from the MIT Sloan School of Management. His current research focuses on understanding (a) tensions among the overlapping strands of authority in organizations (e.g., line authority, staff authority, professional authority), and how it shapes consequential outcomes such as exclusion/inclusion in the workplace, perceptions of powerlessness, employee voice and change implementation; (b) mechanisms for enforcing accountability during periods of organizational and technological changes (e.g., introduction of Generative AI and algorithmic evaluation tools).

He specializes in ethnographic and field-based methods (e.g., participant observations, interviews), examining the empirical and theoretical puzzles discovered during fieldwork that existing research cannot fully explain. He complements these methods with comparative-historical analysis of primary archival data and quantitative/computational analysis of large-corpus of textual data.

His research has been published in journals such as Administrative Science Quarterly, Organization Science, Academy of Management Journal, Academy of Management Annals, Research Policy, and Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, and recognized with awards from professional associations such as the American Sociological Association (ASA), Academy of Management (AOM), Industry Studies Association (ISA), Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS), and Labor and Employment Relations Association (LERA).

Selected Publications:
Karunakaran, A. Frontline Professionals in the Wake of Social Media Scrutiny: Examining the Processes of Obscured Accountability. Forthcoming, Administrative Science Quarterly.

Karunakaran, A. 2022. Status-Authority Asymmetry between Professions: The Case of 911 Dispatchers and Police Officers, Administrative Science Quarterly, 67(2), 423-468.

Karunakaran, A. 2022. In Cloud We Trust? Co-opting Occupational Gatekeepers to Produce Normalized Trust in Platform-mediated Interorganizational Relationships, Organization Science, 33(3), 1188–1211

Karunakaran, A, Orlikowski, W.J., and Scott, S.V. 2022. Crowd-based Accountability: Examining how Social Media Commentary Reconfigures Organizational Accountability, Organization Science, 33(1), 170-193.

Van Angeren, J., and Karunakaran, A. 2023. Anchored Inferential Learning: Platform-specific Uncertainty, Venture Capital Investments by the Platform Owner, and the Impact on Complementors, Organization Science, Forthcoming. **Equal Contribution**

Rahman, H., Weiss, T., and Karunakaran, A. 2023. The Experimental Hand: Examining How Platform-based Experimentation Reconfigures Worker Autonomy. Academy of Management Journal, Forthcoming. **Equal Contribution**

Rahman, H., Karunakaran, A.,and Cameron, L. Taming Platform Power: Taking Accountability into Account in the Management of Platforms. Academy of Management Annals, 66(6), 1803–1830. **Equal Contribution**

Academic Appointments

• Assistant Professor, Management Science and Engineering

Honors & Awards

• Runner-up, ASQ Best Paper based on a Dissertation, Administrative Science Quarterly (2023)
• Recipient, LERA/AILR Best Papers, Labor and Employment Relations Association Annual meeting (2023)
• Fellowship, CASBS (Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences) Summer Institute (2023)
• Finalist, Best Conference Paper Award, OMT Division, AOM Annual Meeting (2023)
• Jagdeep & Roshni Singh Faculty Fellow, Stanford University (2022)
• Recipient, Best Published Paper, Communications, Information Technologies, and Media Sociology, American Sociological Association (2022)
• Recipient, William H. Newman Best Dissertation Paper, Academy of Management (2019)
• Recipient, Louis Pondy Best Dissertation Paper, Organization and Management Theory (OMT) division, Academy of Management (2019)
• Honorable Mention, Junior Theorist Award, Theory Section, American Sociological Association (2019)
• Recipient, Giarratani Rising Star Award, Industry Studies Association (2022)
• Recipient, Gerardine DeSanctis Best Dissertation Paper, Communications, Technology, and Organizing (CTO) Division, Academy of Management (2019)
• Recipient, Best Conference Paper, Communications, Technology, and Organizing (CTO) Division, Academy of Management (2019)
• Recipient, Emerging Scholar in Innovation and Entrepreneurship, Industry Studies Association (2019)
• LERA Best Papers, Labor and Employment Relations Association (2019, 2021, 2022)
• Finalist, Best Submission with Practical Implications, MOC Division/Behavioral Science and Policy Association, AOM (2019)
• Runner-up, Best Paper in Innovation and Entrepreneurship, Industry Studies Association (2022)
• Runner-up, Best Working Paper Award, Technology, Innovation Management, and Entrepreneurship, INFORMS (2019)
• Recipient, Best Doctoral Dissertation, Association of Information Systems (AIS)/Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) (2018)
• Honorable Mention, Shils-Coleman Memorial Award, Theory Section, American Sociological Association (2018)
• Recipient, Best Graduate Student Paper, Communications, Information Technologies, and Media Sociology, American Sociological Association (2017)
• Recipient, Best Paper (Macro Track), East Coast Doctoral Conference, Organized by Columbia University and NYU (2017)
• Ethnography Fellow, Department of Sociology, University of Chicago (2017)
• Recipient, Donald R. Cressey Award for the Most Outstanding Dissertation Project, Horowitz Foundation for Social Policy (2016)
• Recipient, Above & Beyond Call of Duty Award (top 2% of reviewers), Organization and Management Theory (OMT) section, AOM (2013)
• Recipient, Vincent Cerf Graduate Student Paper Award, Design Science Research in Information Systems and Technologies (2012)

Professional Education

• PhD, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (2018)

Current Research and Scholarly Interests

Areas of Research:
Sociology of Work and Occupations/Professions
Organization Theory
Technological/Organizational change

Topics:
Authority in the Workplace
Accountability (Professional, Organizational, Algorithmic)

Phenomena:
Social/Algorithmic Evaluation (of Job applicants, Employees, Startups)
AI in the workplace
Social Media Scrutiny of Frontline Professionals
Conflicts in Symmetrical vs. Asymmetrical Relations
Diversity and Inclusion in Tech
Sustainability/ESG initiatives