Abhirup Chakrabarti

Full Bio

Abhirup Chakrabarti is Associate Professor at Smith School of Business. 

Dr. Chakrabarti studies organizational intelligence, exploring how organizations identify challenges, select among alternatives, coordinate functions, integrate across units, and overcome institutional constraints. His research examines these process dynamics in the context of business reconfiguration, where firms reorganize by growing (M&A), refocusing, relocating, and divesting. His current research projects use these insights to examine how regulators, investors, and firms interact, for instance during upheaval events. These projects trace how such interactions lead to economic value destruction (SSHRC Insight), organizational focus on managing stakeholders rather than addressing issues, and environmental violations (SSHRC Insight Development). His prior research has appeared in Global Strategy Journal, Organization Science, and Strategic Management Journal, and has achieved recognition from the Academy of Management, Administrative Sciences Association of Canada, and Strategic Management Society. 

Dr. Chakrabarti’s courses align closely with his research. He teaches courses on organizational intelligence, experimentation, and strategy process in the Smith Commerce and Professional programs. These courses show how managers can create value within their organizations without being captive to success cases, best practices, and expert opinions. They explore contexts where the application of existing managerial knowledge is particularly tenuous, such as when firms design architectures for experimentation, change methods underlying decision making, change organizational arrangements to support new strategies, or navigate global forces such as geopolitics or capital flows. His courses have been offered in the Smith Commerce, Master of Management in Artificial Intelligence, MBA, executive MBA, Master of International Business, and Master of Digital Product Management programs.  For PhD students, he conducts seminars on corporate strategy process, and on research methodology examining the application of econometrics to problems of strategy.

Dr. Chakrabarti's research and teaching are designed to be useful to practitioners. His book, A Practice of Transforming Organizations, is used in professional degree programs. It offers low-cost methods that managers can use to identify which problems need attention, set goals, and reorganize workflows and organizational arrangements. These tools can be particularly useful in family-owned or small and medium-sized enterprises that need practical frameworks rather than expensive consultant-driven interventions. He welcomes conversations with organizations navigating strategic change.

Prior to joining Queen’s University, he was Assistant Professor at McGill University.  While at McGill, Dr. Chakrabarti co-directed the EMBA Analytic Mindset Module along with Professor Henry Mintzberg during the initial years of the McGill-HEC Montreal EMBA program. He has previously taught at Duke University and at the National University of Singapore.