Theory + Data
I develop theory and test it with large-scale data, event studies, and field evidence.
Research
Understanding strategy in competitive environments
In my dissertation, I ask how competitive surprise—a firm-initiated competitive event that is unexpected to rivals and other market participants—shapes the rival's response time and effectiveness.
Empirically, I use large-scale text mining and large language models on news articles, SEC filings, and other unstructured text to measure and examine these questions.
View CVComputational Methods
I build NLP and LLM pipelines to capture strategic phenomena in news, filings, and action streams.
Strategic Focus
I study competitive dynamics, information, and firm behavior in real product and geographic markets.
Impact
The aim is scholarship that also helps managers see rivalry, surprise, and positioning more clearly.
Dissertation
Antecedents and Performance Implications of Surprise Capability: An Empirical Analysis
An empirical study of surprise capability — why some firms surprise rivals more often than others — using NLP and large language models on more than 1.7 million news articles across ten industries.
Competitive Surprise: A Theoretical Framework
A theoretical framework for competitive surprise: a firm-initiated move that is unexpected to rivals and other market participants, and how such surprises shape response time, effectiveness, and advantage.
Under Review
Competitive Surprise: A Theoretical Framework
A theoretical framework for competitive surprise: a firm-initiated move that is unexpected to rivals and other market participants, and how such surprises shape response time, effectiveness, and advantage.
Working Papers
Bodies at Work: A Critical Review and Organizing Framework for a Corporeal Approach to Organization Studies
An integrative review of corporeality in organizational research, proposing a framework for how bodies shape work, power, and interaction.
Competitive Surprise and Rival Response Time: An Event Study
An event-study design linking surprising competitive actions to the time it takes rivals to respond, built from millions of news articles, embeddings, and identified action–reaction pairs.
How Merger Announcements Shape Investor and Rival Responses: Insights from an AI Text Analysis
How the clarity and variety of strategic rationales in M&A announcements relate to rival responses and deal outcomes, using an NLP and LLM pipeline on thousands of 8-K filings.
Competitive Surprise: A Multiple Case Study
A qualitative study of how firms experience and respond to competitive surprises across industry contexts. Ethics approved; participant recruitment is underway.
Anticipated Departures and Team Investment: A Longitudinal Archival Study in Formula 1 Racing
How anticipated personnel departures relate to team investment, using a longitudinal archival dataset from Formula 1.
Published
From Protection to Adjustment: How Rival Repositioning Alters Competitive Action Repertoires
How firms change the intensity, complexity, and non-conformity of their competitive actions when rivals encroach on their product-market position, introducing a protection–adjustment account of repertoire change.
Presentations
Competitive Surprise: A Theoretical Framework
A theoretical framework for competitive surprise: a firm-initiated move that is unexpected to rivals and other market participants, and how such surprises shape response time, effectiveness, and advantage.
Competitive Dynamics Conference, University of Virginia Darden School of Business, July 2026 — Best Paper Award. Also at the Strategic Management Society Conference, Berlin, 2026.
Book chapters
Dynamic Capabilities and Innovation
Book chapter in Innovation, published by Routledge.
Team Performance and the Development of Iranian Digital Start-ups: The Mediating Role of Employee Voice
Book chapter in Managing Human Resources in SMEs and Start-ups: International Challenges and Solutions (pp. 109–140).
Arts Entrepreneurs in an Emerging Economy
Book chapter in Artisan and Handicraft Entrepreneurs: Past, Present, and Future (pp. 137–147). Springer.
The Context for Business in Iraq
Book chapter in Understanding Contexts of Business in Western Asia: Land of Bazaars and High-Tech Booms (pp. 331–345).
Research Approach
I care about phenomena that are hard to see until they are measured. That means building datasets from unstructured text, pairing them with theory, and asking what the resulting patterns imply for rivalry and managerial choice.