Santosh B. Srinivas
Assistant Professor · Management & Human Resources · HEC Paris
he/him
I study how value is produced, assessed, and negotiated in organizational and entrepreneurial settings — and how evaluative processes reflect and reinforce social power. Methodologically, I work with NLP and large language models.
publications
Patil, S. V., Srinivas, S. B., Tussing, D. V., & Rhee, J. (2025). Addressing the flexible use of cognitive flexibility constructs: Toward a multifaceted approach.
Academy of Management Annals, 19(1), 74–131.
Many researchers have drawn on "cognitive flexibility" to denote the mechanism underlying a broad array of organizational theories. We conduct a comprehensive search, strip away labels, and use text analysis to distinguish among five fluid thought processes — grouped into three higher-order categories. We argue that cognitive flexibility may be more appropriately viewed as a multifaceted, rather than monolithic, construct.
Sinha, R., Chiu, C. Y., & Srinivas, S. B. (2021). Shared leadership and relationship conflict in teams: The moderating role of team power base diversity.
Journal of Organizational Behavior, 42(5), 649–667.
Drawing on dominance complementarity theory, we suggest that team power base diversity moderates the impact of shared leadership on relationship conflict. In 70 project-based teams, we find that at high levels of power base diversity, shared leadership reduces conflict and improves performance.
Rindova, V. P., Martins, L. L., Srinivas, S. B., & Chandler, D. (2018). The good, the bad, and the ugly of organizational rankings: A multidisciplinary review.
Journal of Management, 44(6), 2175–2208.
A review across management, sociology, education, and law reveals three perspectives on rankings — as information intermediation, as comparative orderings, or as surveillance and control. We identify a new perspective — rankings entrepreneurship.
chapters
Boyd, R. L., Srinivas, S. B., et al. AI and computation in the social sciences. Forthcoming, Oxford University Press.
Rindova, V. P., Srinivas, S. B., & Martins, L. L. (2022). How to break free. Research in the Sociology of Organizations.
+We propose that entrepreneurial acts toward emancipation can be guided by different notions of worth. Drawing on orders of worth, we theorize how civic and inspired orders point to alternate emancipatory ends and means.
Rindova, V. P., & Srinivas, S. B. (2017). Managing meaning — culture. Oxford Handbook of Management.
+This chapter theorizes how symbolic practices enable effective responses to diverse stakeholder demands, examining the role of culture in organizational meaning.
current research & explorations
My current work examines how different audiences construct and contest social positions on user-generated platforms, and how individuals adapt their self-presentation when the demographic composition of their field shifts. A parallel stream reconnects with entrepreneurship — how personal histories shape opportunity recognition, how ventures use rhetorical history to craft market positions, and how entrepreneurial rhetoric can function as social critique.
exploratory
I am interested in how the emerging agentic AI economy may reshape the evaluation of competence, worth, and opportunity. I deployed a small open-weights model into social networks where participants are entirely AI agents or entirely humans. It observes and writes field notes on what gets discussed and what patterns emerge. agentfield watches an AI-only network; mortalfield watches human conversations.
teaching
My classes orient students to multiple conceptions of value and varied approaches to organizing. I use case-based pedagogy, asking students to reflect individually and then compare perspectives collaboratively. With AI reshaping what competence looks like, I see an opportunity to redesign assessments around what matters most: the ability to translate ill-structured problems into relevant concepts and critically synthesize solutions.
Organizational Behavior · Grande École, HEC Paris · 2019 –
Doctoral Seminar in OB · HEC Paris · 2019 –
Outdoor Leadership Seminar · MBA, HEC Paris
timeline
Management & Human Resources
McCombs School of Business
Research + Wadhwani Center for Entrepreneurship
Technical Lead