About

Sunasir Dutta is an Assistant Professor of Strategic Management and Entrepreneurship at the Carlson School of Management, University of Minnesota. His research focuses on the intersection of social entrepreneurship, corporate social responsibility, and sustainable business practices, with a particular interest in the role of natural disasters in fostering social innovation and entrepreneurship.

Research topics

• Computer Science
• Economics
• Business
• Political Science
• Marketing
• Sociology
• Industrial organization
• Knowledge management
• Ecology
• Natural resource economics
• Economic geography
• Public relations
• Social psychology
• Environmental science
• Psychology
• Biology
• Management

Selected publications

• Why Can Entrepreneurship Fuel Future Movement Mobilization? Redeploying Framing and Civic Engagement

  Academy of Management Proceedings · 2025-07-01

  article1st authorCorresponding

  There is increasing attention to how entrepreneurship cannot be disconnected from social change. Past work has investigated how social movements create entrepreneurial opportunities, but the reverse has received limited attention. We investigate how entrepreneurship which starts out as a product of broader economic transitions can set in motion social ‘residues’ that fuel future collective action. In particular, we argue that entrepreneurship in new domains is associated with the disruption of the existing social order and the emergence of new bases of association, which can be repurposed for activism in response to lightning rod events. We study this in the context of industrial entrepreneurship in early 20th century China in the WWI period, and its subsequent relationship with local social protest following the May 4th movement in 1919, using an event history framework. We contribute to the literature at the intersection of entrepreneurship and social movements and discuss implications from this historical study for understanding how economic change fueled by entrepreneurship can be engines of social disruption and change.

  PublisherDOI

• Community Identity and Organizational Responses to Natural vs Manmade Crises

  Academy of Management Proceedings · 2025-07-01

  article1st authorCorresponding

  Communities sometimes react to environmental crises by creating local environmental organizations to engage in environmental advocacy, conservation and pollution control. Prior work has examined antecedents of such organized collective action by focusing on community attributes, such as trust, social capital, collective efficacy, and institutional legacies of past collective action. Yet, small, bounded geographic communities differ also in how they perceive environmental crises are true risks that deserve attention and organizational action. In this paper we argue that such variations in risk perceptions from environmental crises are associated with the degree of individualism vs collectivism is communities that is hyperlocal rather than national as has been assumed in the past. We test this broader proposition by studying how communities differ in their organizational responses to environmental crises posed by industrial accidents based on their degree of individualism, and how such responses are moderated by whether the underlying causes of the accident are natural vs manmade. Our paper speaks to the enduring puzzle of how local community action emerges not just in collectivist communities but also in deeply individualist communities such as in much of the United States heartland. We discuss implications at the intersection of entrepreneurship and the natural environment.

  PublisherDOI

• Crucibles, Multiple Sensitive Periods, and Career Progression

  Academy of Management Proceedings · 2024-07-09

  article

  We study the effects of crucible experiences along multiple sensitive periods on career progression. While prior literature has hinted that individuals can be imprinted during multiple sensitive periods, not just during the early career, there has been scant attention to it theoretically and empirically. We use unique administrative data of 8662 U.S. Army officers who graduated from the United States Military Academy (USMA) at West Point from 1995 to 2004 and exploit a natural experiment to estimate robust treatment effects. In our setting, workers were quasi-randomly assigned to crucible locations such as war zones in Iraq and Afghanistan and, importantly for our study, the quasi-random assignment to crucibles could be during the early career of the individual (i.e., during the first five years of the career), mid-career (between the fifth and ninth year of the career), or both during the early- and mid-career. We exploit this allocation protocol to estimate robust treatment effects of crucible exposure on an objective measure of career advancement—promotion to the rank of major. We additionally exploit variation in whether the repeated crucible assignments are in the same or different geographic/cultural contexts to study whether crucible assignment triggers one of two possible human capital development and learning mechanisms: building absorptive capacity in a relatively narrow context or exaptation and developing dynamic capabilities. Our evidence suggests that based on task characteristics, the former mechanism is in play in our empirical context. Our results contribute to literatures on imprinting, development of managerial cognitive capabilities, learning and career experiences, and how the geographic/cultural context can shape human capital.

  PublisherDOI

• How Early Crises Shape Startups’ Propensity For Future Change

  Academy of Management Proceedings · 2024-07-09

  article1st authorCorresponding

  Organizations in their infancy are more likely to adopt features driven by the social and technical needs of the environment around them, which then can become persistent imprints. While most work in this vein has looked at how these imprints are hard to change later, we argue that organizations that encounter exogenous crises and adaptation needs at the time of founding are imprinted with greater capabilities for future change of other kinds. We test this in the context of US startups in the period 1985-2014, and find that organizations that encountered a local natural disaster in the year post founding are associated with greater chances of technological and organizational pivots later in their lifetime. Yet such enhanced capability for change is a double-edged sword, also enhancing the organization’s failure chances long after the crisis itself has subsided. We discuss implications for literatures in organizational adaptation, imprinting, entrepreneurial geography, and exogenous crises and organizations, while offering insights for startups and investors that find themselves in such conditions.

  PublisherDOI

• How Demand Shocks “Jumpstart” Technological Ecosystems and Commercialization: Evidence from the Global Electric Vehicle Industry

  Strategy Science · 2024 · 4 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Natural resource economics
  • Economics
  • Industrial organization

  We examine how exogenous demand shocks overcome ecosystem bottlenecks in the commercialization of an emergent technology. We argue that demand shocks that spur new technology adoption by niche users pull “hub” firms into country technology markets, despite ecosystem bottlenecks, thereby serving to “jumpstart” the process of ecosystem development and technology commercialization. By analyzing global electric vehicle markets over the period 2008–2017, we find that extreme weather events such as abnormal heat-related events spur adoption of electric vehicles by end users, thereby propelling automotive or hub firms’ entry into country technology markets, and the subsequent shift of their electric vehicle product portfolios toward the more radical version of the technology. Notably, such demand shocks propel firms’ commercialization strategy, despite ecosystem bottlenecks such as the lack of regulatory and economic inducements for adoption, relative absence of complements, and product market differences. After entry, entrant firms’ electric vehicle product portfolios transition from hybrids toward radical technology products and investments in complements, albeit contingent on their competitive market position in the legacy technology. We discuss the implications of these findings concerning the uptake of demand shocks, and their robustness to modeling choices, technological generations across extended timeframes, potential mediating forces, and boundary conditions owing to firm and country-market heterogeneity. Supplemental Material: The online appendices are available at https://doi.org/10.1287/stsc.2022.0075 .

  PublisherDOI

• Fostering Entrepreneurship in Nonmetro Areas: Ecosystem Architects as Conduits of Knowledge Spillovers

  Academy of Management Journal · 2024-12-03 · 4 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding

  Prevailing theories hold that regional entrepreneurial activity is a function of each region’s preexisting local resource endowments. But these theories do not explain entrepreneurial activity in regions that possess few of the requisite endowments, such as nonmetropolitan areas, which often lack many of the resources conducive to entrepreneurship. Drawing on institutional theory and knowledge spillover theory, we theorize that individuals engaged in institutional work play a key role in catalyzing entrepreneurial activity within such regions by serving as conduits of voluntary, horizontal knowledge spillovers. We propose that their ability to do so is enhanced when they access nonlocal tacit knowledge from others working in similar contexts. We further propose that, consistent with sociological theories of social capital and trust, local socioeconomic conditions can constrain the absorption of such knowledge and thereby local venturing in their home communities. Empirically, we study these propositions through a field intervention: an in-person gathering fostering tacit knowledge spillovers among individual entrepreneurial ecosystem architects from nonmetro counties in a Midwestern U.S. state. We conducted additional tests of alternative specifications, identification, and behavioral impacts. Taken together, these arguments and findings deepen our theoretical understanding of an important pathway in the development of regional entrepreneurial ecosystems.

  PublisherDOI

• How Vicarious Learning Shapes Firms’ Relationship Networks with Third-Party Experts

  Academy of Management Proceedings · 2022-07-06

  articleSenior author

  In some markets, firms can compete by forming relationships with experts outside the boundary of the firm—what we call third-party experts—who can serve to both legitimate the firm and influence demand for its products. Developing and maintaining relationships with these third-party experts is, however, a complicated endeavor and how they go about doing so is a core strategic decision for firms in these markets. Taking a network perspective (where we consider firms to have networks of relationships with third-party experts), and focusing on both tie formation and dissolution, we find that firms learn vicariously from their close competitors when determining whether to grow (or shrink) their relationship networks and which particular experts they should target. Furthermore, firms’ network-altering behaviors differ depending on whether a firms’ attention and resources are directed to relationships or are pulled toward an alternative strategic focus. Firms whose attention is focused elsewhere engage in less tie formation and tie dissolution but end up more reliant on what they learn vicariously from their competitors. This study contributes by highlighting how firms approach building relationships with third-party experts, by providing a dynamic perspective to firms’ strategic network building behaviors, and by generating further insight into the role that managerial attention and resource allocating play in shaping firm behavior.

  PublisherDOI

• Strategy and Innovation in the Biopharmaceutical & Healthcare Sectors

  Academy of Management Proceedings · 2022

  • Political Science
  • Computer Science
  • Public relations

  The purpose of this symposium is to foster and accelerate scholarly conversations around the strategy and innovation of the bio- pharmaceutical and healthcare sectors. Our goal not only includes highlighting the aspects of importance of these sectors, but also involves contributing to the emergence of new ideas and research agenda, in light of recent events including Covid-19. We bring together a great set of five working papers and two senior scholars as discussants, who all study important theoretical issues and emerging phenomena in the biopharma and healthcare sectors. We have organized this presenter symposium with three goals in mind. First, to provide and motivate the importance of these sectors as an important empirical setting for strategy and management scholars. Second, to provide a brief overview of the strategy literature that has grounded their studies in these settings. We especially would like to highlight the theoretical insights from studies ranging from the management of innovation to the relationships between incumbents and entrepreneurial firms. Lastly, to introduce the working papers that use these settings that shed light on the direction and trajectory of the literature. When do Firms Provide Early Access prior to Commercialization? Evidence from Expanded Access Program Presenter: Sukhun Kang; London Business School Presenter: Sungyong Chang; London Business School Targeting vs. Expansion: What does physical connectivity actually provide? Presenter: Daniel Erian Armanios; Oxford U., Saïd Business School Presenter: Sunasir Dutta; U. of Minnesota Presenter: Maria Roche; Harvard Business School The Problem of Fragmentation and the Paradox of Network Intervention: Evidence From Policy Change Presenter: Russell James Funk; U. of Minnesota Presenter: Sohyun Park; U. of Minnesota Tight or Loose? Unpacking the Impact of Organization Design on the Development &Commercialization Presenter: John Eklund; U. of Southern California Looking Beyond Dyad: Impact of Information Environment on Value Capturing from Technology Partners Presenter: Sandip Bisui; U. of Colorado, Boulder Presenter: Jeffrey J. Reuer; U. of Colorado, Boulder

  PublisherDOI

• Beyond Spatial Proximity: The Impact of Enhanced Spatial Connectedness from New Bridges on Entrepreneurship

  Organization Science · 2021 · 24 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Sociology
  • Computer Science
  • Economic geography

  Various strands of work have explored how spatial proximity helps (metaphorically) bridge barriers to resource mobilization and foster knowledge transfer. However, much of that work takes spatial connectedness as a given. We argue that spatial connectedness is a distinct construct that affects the extent to which spaces are not just proximate but are actually able to link people, ideas, resources, and knowledge together. We explore one such source of connectedness—physical (not metaphorical) bridges. We find that the opening of newly built bridges enhances startup founding in the local geographic community. Beyond their impact on startup founding, newly built bridges also influence the organizing process for such ventures. This includes a positive impact on the entry of prospective founders into entrepreneurship and an increase in the number of early-stage investors. The subsequently founded ventures are also more likely to engage in recombination and to cross industry boundaries. We explore scope conditions around industry and connective heterogeneity. We also test for robustness to various modeling approaches. The discussion highlights contributions of these findings to the study of entrepreneurship, as well as of organizations and the institutional fields in which they operate.

  PublisherDOI

• Do Third Places Matter?: The Effects of Foot Traffic Concentration in Gathering Places on Financial Distress and Physical Health in Communities

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2021-01-01

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Hayagreeva Rao

  Stanford University

  12 shared

• Daniel Erian Armanios

  University of Oxford

  3 shared

• Jaison D. Desai

  United States Army

  3 shared

• Gurneeta Vasudeva

  University of Minnesota

  2 shared

• Ion Bogdan Vasi

  University of Iowa

  2 shared

• Eric Lin

  American Military Academy

  2 shared

• Sungyong Chang

  1 shared

• K. S. Pennington

  UCLA Health

  1 shared

Education

• Ph.D., Electrical Engineering

  University of Minnesota

  1990

• M.S., Electrical Engineering

  University of Minnesota

  1986

• B.S., Electrical Engineering

  Indian Institute of Technology

  1984