I am an Assistant Professor of Strategy & Innovation at Boston University’s Questrom School of Business. My research employs ethnographic and linguistic methods to study the dynamics of fields formation, with a focus on vocabulary, meanings, and practices development in the contexts of entrepreneurship and local investing. My 2018 Academy of Management Annals piece with Tim Hallett and Beth Bechky brings attention to the role of interactions as a source of meaning making in fields. Consistent with this view, my analysis of micro-level interactions within the Slow Money movement, which supports the development of sustainable local food systems by connecting sustainable food entrepreneurs with local investors, offers insights into meaning making and practice development as tethering of local understandings to extra local rationales. More recently, I’ve been interested in combining machine learning techniques with ethnographic methods, as well as in studying the emerging field of big data analytics consulting.
Prior to joining academia, I worked in Italy and Europe as a management consultant for Deloitte and Arthur D. Little. In the United States, I did research for the New York office of Corriere della Sera, the leading Italian newspaper and for the public affairs firm APCO Worldwide.
Research Interests
- Qualitative research (ethnography)
- Institutional theory
- Sustainability
- Field emergence
- Practice variation
- Vocabulary
- Meaning making
- Big Data & machine learning
Academic Background
- Ph.D., Management, New York University Stern School of Business
- M.S., with Distinction, in Public Relations and Corporate Communications, New York University
- Post-Graduate Diploma, Cum Laude, in Economics, Sant’Anna School of Advanced Studies, Pisa, Italy
- B.S., Cum Laude, in Business Administration, University of Pisa, Italy
Esther Leibel 