Arun B. Datta

I am Arun Datta, a Ph.D. candidate in Strategic Management at the McCombs School of Business, University of Texas at Austin (Ph.D. expected May 2026; dissertation proposal successfully defended Nov 2024). I am currently on the academic job market.

 

My research centers on CEO power dynamics—how top executives shape firm strategy through three mechanisms: privileged information flows, status legitimacy, and regulatory influence. Founder CEOs provide a vivid setting for testing these mechanisms, in part because of the clarity of their strategic roles, but also because of my keen interest in these strategic leaders. Two of my current projects focus specifically on founders, while others examine politically connected or high-profile incumbent CEOs.

 

My dissertation is structured in a three-essay format:

•    Study 1 (empirical): Demonstrates that ethnic-minority CEOs receive higher returns to hard power yet lower (often inverted) returns to soft power relative to majority-group CEOs. A refined version of this study serves as my job-market paper, currently under revise-and-resubmit at Strategic Management Journal.

•    Study 2 (empirical): Explores how a CEO’s industry-level political influence affects firm performance, moderated by factors such as demand instability and market growth.

•    Study 3 (theoretical): Proposes an integrative framework mapping managerial influence along hard–soft and internal–external dimensions, linking CEO orientations to firm outcomes.

 

I am currently advancing six research projects, including:

•    One revise-and-resubmit at the Strategic Management Journal (job-market paper, described above)

•    One paper under review at Academy of Management Journal

•    Two manuscripts slated for submission within the next two months

 

Across these studies, I analyze how CEO power and its antecedent traits (including human, social, and positional capital) affects compensation, firm performance, employee turnover, and acquisition activity. My dissertation draws on a longitudinal dataset covering more than 30,000 firm-years with rich CEO-level variables (e.g., personality, founder status, political capital, demographics).

 

My work has been recognized by the Strategic Management Society, where I was a finalist for the Strategic Leadership & Governance Best Doctoral Student Paper Award.

 

Before academia I worked in data analytics and supply-chain forecasting at Little Caesars and in category management at Walmart eCommerce. I hold a B.A. in Economics and Political Science from the University of Michigan and an M.S. in Management from UT Austin. Outside of research I enjoy pickleball, golf, and travel.

 

I welcome collaborations on research relating to the topics discussed above as well as upper echelons and entrepreneurship research more broadly—please feel free to reach out!