Arvind Karunakaran

Arvind Karunakaran studies authority and accountability in the workplace, especially in the context of technological change. His current work examines human–AI augmentation and its consequences for professionals and organizations.

He is an Assistant Professor of Management Science & Engineering and, by courtesy, of Sociology at Stanford University. He is core faculty at the Center for Work, Technology, and Organization (WTO) and the Stanford Technology Ventures Program (STVP), and a faculty affiliate of the Stanford Institute for Human-Centered AI (HAI) and the Digital Economy Lab.

His research uses ethnographic and field-based methods, complemented by comparative-historical analysis of archival data and computational analysis of large text corpora. It appears in Administrative Science Quarterly, Organization Science, Academy of Management Journal, Academy of Management Annals, Research Policy, and Harvard Business Review, and has been covered by The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, the Financial Times, and MSNBC. He was named to the Thinkers50 Radar in 2025.

A computer science engineer by training, with prior work experience in the technology and consulting industries, he holds a master’s in Information Science and Technology from Penn State and a PhD in Management (Information Technology and Organizations) from the MIT Sloan School of Management.