Yusaku Takeda
I am an Assistant Professor of Business Administration at the Gies College of Business — the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.
My research confronts a defining challenge of our time: the fragmentation of society along deep sociopolitical lines. I investigate how business organizations, as powerful actors, navigate these fault lines and act as sociopolitical intermediaries—shaping the relationship between macro-level societal institutions, culture, and sentiments and the beliefs and behaviors of individuals. My work explores how ideologies like nationalism, political partisanship, and neoliberalism become embedded within firms and influence their strategies, innovations, and societal impact.
To understand these complex, long-term phenomena, I adopt a historical perspective, combining deep archival and qualitative work with large-scale quantitative and computational analysis. My goal is to build historically-grounded theory that can open up new fields of inquiry at the intersection of organizational theory, strategic management, and sociology.
My research has been recognized with awards from the Academy of Management's OMT Division, including the Best Student Paper Award (2020) and as a Finalist for the Best Paper on Environmental and Social Practices (2022). I was also a Finalist for the Best Conference Paper and Best PhD Paper Prizes at the Strategic Management Society (2020). I also received the Funai Overseas Scholarship from the Funai Foundation for Information Technology—its first recipient in management and organizational studies.
I earned my Ph.D. in Business Administration from Harvard University and a B.A. in Social Studies from Wesleyan University. I have also worked as a research assistant at Hitotsubashi University’s Graduate School of International Corporate Strategy in Tokyo.
I also teach, practice, and compete in Judo, holding a Sandan (third-degree black belt), and I compete internationally.
I am from Hokkaido, Japan.
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