RESEARCH

Research Interests: Economic Sociology, Organizational Theory, Strategic Management, Entrepreneurship, Social Evaluation, Social Hierarchies, Mobility

Publications

Entrepreneurship and Social Mobility: Three Status Metaphors for Future Research (with Chris Rider, Brenda Myung, and Kyle McCullers)
Research in Organizational Behavior, 2023. Download paper

We consider how entrepreneurship and employment differentially shape opportunities for social mobility across people and contexts. Specifically focusing on changes in an individual’s social status, or vertical mobility, we propose three metaphors for studying entrepreneurship: (1) production (i.e., increased status); (2) preservation (i.e., maintained status); and (3) consumption (i.e., decreased status). Each metaphor features theoretical mechanisms that account for how founding an organization can facilitate inter-occupational transitions and, thus, enable status mobility. We offer a proposed research agenda for studying entrepreneurship’s role in social mobility processes, including mechanism-specific propositions at the individual and population levels of analysis as well as guidance on sampling and measurement.

Working Papers

The "Who" and "How" of Producer Authenticity: How Producers' Ascribed Identities Govern Authenticity Perceptions (Solo-authored)
Revise & Resubmit, Organization Science.

I propose the Conditional-Compensatory Framework, whereby audiences evaluate producers’ authenticity based on not only their production choices (i.e., “how one produces”), as featured in prior work, but also their ascribed identities (i.e., “who produces”). Specifically, I argue that (i) authenticity perceptions are conditional on producers’ ascribed identities (e.g., ethnicity, race), and (ii) authentic production choices may or may not compensate for producers whose identities are misaligned with audience expectations. The proposed framework is tested in a two-part study. An archival study establishes a positive correlation between identity alignment and authenticity perceptions, and an experimental study further shows that identity governs authenticity perceptions both directly, independent of production choices, and indirectly by moderating the returns of those choices. Thus, authenticity is indeed shaped by production choices but much more so by “who” makes those choices. I consider how authenticity judgments may constitute a socially legitimated basis for discrimination and further lead to producer stratification within markets, calling for a distinctly sociological view of strategy.

Cultural Brokers: Celebrated Appreciators or Disparaged Appropriators? (Working paper)