Yusaku Takeda
I am an Assistant Professor of Business Administration at the Gies College of Business — the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.
I bring a long-term historical perspective to the question of how organizations respond to and are shaped by powerful societal ideologies that influence their behaviors. These forces—whether nationalism, political ideologies, or the shareholder ideology—shape organizational behavior through the beliefs, emotions, and attachments of the people who drive them. My work examines how people in and around organizations—leaders, employees, and stakeholders—grapple with these ideologies and the consequences of their engagement. Through historical analysis, I reveal the ways in which these ideologies take root in organizations and are reproduced in society through business activities and practices.
My work lies at the intersection of these issues, rooted in prior research in organization theory, sociology, and strategic management research. Out of necessity, the bodies of research I draw from and speak to are quite diverse. My intellectual lineage is rooted in research on organizational adaptation, change, and evolution concerning intersections between organizations and various societal-level transformations. Yet, my research contexts, theorized mechanisms, and specific social forces in question often intersect with research in other disciplines, such as economic and political sociology and political science. It is in this sense that I am a transdisciplinary scholar.
I consider myself a scholar of history because almost all of my research is concerned with long-term historical processes, patterns, and events that happened in the past or the influences of various forces rooted in one’s past experiences and memories. Like historians (with some exceptions in economic history), much of my research aims to develop or extend new insights based on such historical investigations. This does not mean that I do not use quantitative tools. I value keeping inquiries driven by questions rather than methodologies, and whenever appropriate, I use various statistical and computational techniques, combining quantitative and qualitative methods, and collaborate with scholars with skillsets that I do not have to. This is all to understand phenomena of interest and to tell stories I want to understand.
My research has been recognized as the winner of the Best Student Paper Award and the runner-up for the Best International Paper Award from the Organization and Management Theory (OMT) Division of the Academy of Management (2020). I was also named the finalist for Best Paper on Environmental and Social Practices from the AOM OMT Division (2022), Best Conference Paper Prize, and Best Conference Ph.D. Paper Prize by 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 and hold a Sandan (third-degree black belt).
I am from Hokkaido, Japan.
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