Overview
My work is motivated by a desire to conduct rigorous research that helps organizations understand opportunities and constraints in the environment, including their surrounding networks and the broader institutional environment. Specifically, there are two streams. In one stream of work, I study dynamics and outcomes of networks. The second stream of my research examines organizational responses to institutional change. Some of the key questions that I investigate include:
- How do power differentials (i.e., relative dependencies of partners on one another for resources) influence the unfolding of interorganizational relationships over time?
- How do networks impact organizational performance and policy preferences of individuals?
- How do private enterprises respond to changes of regulatory transparency and the legal environment?
Subfields
Interorganizational Networks, Institutional Change, Entrepreneurship, Nonmarket Strategy
Committee Members
Victor Nee (Chair), David Strang, Filiz Garip, Christopher Marquis (Johnson Graduate School of Management)
Dissertation
Essays on the Network Evolution and Outcomes of Interorganizational Collaboration
In my dissertation, I examine the influence of prior interactions on the patterns and outcomes of interorganizational relationships. My dissertation contributes to the interorganizational networks literature by (1) revealing power asymmetry as a crucial contingency for the role of shared third parties in interorganizational cooperation; (2) demonstrating the signaling effect of interorganizational relationships across different industries to outside parties such as investors; (3) showing the influence of one-shot interactions in a regional business community on later established business networks between entrepreneurs. Papers from my dissertation received the Robert B. McGinnis Paper Award from the Department of Sociology at Cornell University and the Society for the Advancement of Socio-Economics (SASE) Early Career Workshop award.