Overview
Broadly speaking, my research examines the intersection of market strategy and nonmarket strategy from a political perspective. In ongoing projects, I center on the implications of political risks, political status, and political ideologies that structure inter-organizational relationships. Public-private partnerships, social impact, and social activism are among the substantive topics through which I contextualize my theoretical pursuits. My research adopts a mixed methods approach, which draws on qualitative methods, regression frameworks, and computational text analysis.
Broadly speaking, my research examines the intersection of market strategy and nonmarket strategy from a political perspective. In ongoing projects, I center on the implications of political risks, political status, and political ideologies that structure inter-organizational relationships. Public-private partnerships, social impact, and social activism are among the substantive topics through which I contextualize my theoretical pursuits. My research adopts a mixed methods approach, which draws on qualitative methods, regression frameworks, and computational text analysis.
Dissertation: The Architecture of Grassroots-Oriented Corporate Philanthropy in China
Early Career Workshop Award, Society for the Advancement of Socio-Economics (SASE), 2021
Social Impact Best Dissertation Prize, Rustandy Center for Social Sector Innovation Research, 2021
Center for International Social Science Research Dissertation Fellowship, 2021
Center for East Asian Studies Dissertation Fellowship, 2021
Charles R. Henderson Research Grant, 2020
This dissertation explores why and how firms partner with politically marginalized nonprofit organizations prone to government surveillance, predation, and repression. In the first chapter, I demonstrate that low political status of nonprofits helps firms turn corporate philanthropic initiatives into core business activities, in particular market risk mitigation, business networking, and product marketing. In the second chapter, I show that structural characteristics of locality-specific performance ratings—namely, evaluation frequency and ambiguity—condition capacity building and agenda versatility of politically marginalized nonprofits, which have implications for their attractiveness in the eyes of potential corporate donors. In the third chapter, I document that breadth of corporate support that a nonprofit can possibly garner—a measure of resource mobilization base for social impact—also varies according to the organization’s political status. Through an empirical investigation of grassroots nonprofits in contemporary China, on the basis of a mixed-methods design, this dissertation advances a demand-side, nonprofit-centered perspective on corporate social responsibility and points to the significance of political contestation and commerciality in market-society collaborations.
Working Papers:
1. Grassroots-Oriented Corporate Philanthropy as Extension of Firms' Core Business Activities in China. In preparation for submission.
Early Career Workshop Award, Society for the Advancement of Socio-Economics (SASE), 2021
Rustandy Center for Social Sector Innovation Research Funding, 2019-2021
Prior research has established that corporate philanthropic donations in politically repressive environments are predominantly received by the government and its affiliates. Drawing on quantitative and qualitative data from China, I develop a theory of firms’ partnership with grassroots nonprofits, which are politically disadvantaged organizations unaffiliated with the state. An analysis of original nonprofit philanthropic activity data shows that, in comparison with state-controlled nonprofits, grassroots nonprofits are more likely to subject their projects to firm donors’ core business practices. Findings based on interviews and participant observation further point to two mechanisms underlying the grassroots nonprofits’ susceptibility to firms’ business needs. Precisely due to lack of access to quasi-coercive means and failure to legitimize work as political necessity, grassroots nonprofits are first open to corporate donors’ requests to secure control of donation allocation and leverage such control to buffer against market uncertainties. Second, grassroots nonprofits also become expedient targets of firms seeking to turn philanthropic events into cost-saving opportunities of business networking and product marketing. These findings connect political disadvantage of firms’ nonprofit partners with commerciality of corporate philanthropy, contributing more broadly to work on political embeddedness, hybridity, and corporate-society relation.
Online Appendix
2. Aid Intermediaries and Political Voids (with Marieke Huysentruyt and Bertrand V. Quélin).
Substantial development assistance is directed to recipient countries with varying political institutions and implemented by civil society and private sector middlemen. Nonprofit and for-profit intermediaries may differentially respond to a contract opportunity in a country with “political voids” — that is, where political institutions imperil the political rights of non-political elite mass. We develop a conceptual framework and an empirical analysis to examine this argument. We show how an organization’s strong commitment to social justice and its non-aggressive stance can yield a relational comparative advantage. The predictions were tested with a proprietary dataset of 1,122 bids for contract opportunities in Africa, Asia, the Middle East, the Caribbean and Overseas Territories initiated by the United Kingdom’s bilateral aid agency. We show that holding constant the nature of the project and the economic development of the target country, nonprofits were more willing to compete for contracts in countries distinguished by political voids, compared to for-profit firms. We also show that peer competition pressure mediates the relationship between political voids and nonprofits’ entry decisions: The weaker the presence of transnational social organizations in the target countries with political voids, the more the nonprofits were willing to bid. Further, the pure nonprofits, not the hybrid ones, with a non-aggressive agenda were most willing to fill political voids and most likely to win the contracts. However, this also came at a higher price paid by donors. Our results underline the critical role of nonprofits in the delivery of aid in politically challenging contexts and suggest that a below-the-radar, purely nonprofit approach may pay off most for nonprofits seeking aid contracts in these settings.
3. The Make or Buy State: Cost Efficiency, Capacity Lock-In, and Partisan Asymmetry in Federal Contracting (with Elisabeth Clemens). In preparation for submission.
Government contracting reconstitutes boundaries of the public sector through ever-deepening engagement of business firms and nonprofit organizations. Despite a legion of sociological accounts documenting implications of the contracting regime, it is rarely investigated in the first place when outsourcing of state functions is prioritized over “in-house” performing and how configuration of contracting award allocation varies over time. Regression analysis of U.S. federal contract spending across both granting administrative agencies and grantee states from 1979 to 2018 demonstrates that delegatory relationships are sustained by the need to incentivize contractors’ specialized capacities and to maneuver partisan politics. Instead of optimizing cost efficiency in service delivery, the federal government contracts out more responsibilities to nonstate organizations that are able to facilitate building of the administrative state and help absorb uncertainties within the political system. Furthermore, this capacity lock-in process is augmented by laissez-faire presidential administrations, which at the same time more readily leverage market transactions to expand electoral support for the presidential party.
4. Nonprofit Status Hierarchies and Grassroots-Firm Collaborations. Working paper.
5. The Breadth of Corporate Support for the Nonprofit Sector. Working paper (dissertation chapter).
6. Proximate Cohesion: Physical Copresence and Political Suturing in China’s Social Sector. Paper writing.
7. Phantom of the Past: Resurgence of Totalitarian Discourses in Post-Socialist Propaganda (with Tong Ju). New data collection underway.
8. Redistributive Solidarity and Business Engagement: Experimental Evidence (with Marieke Huysentruyt). Research design and conceptualization.
9. Federal Contracting as a Political Project for Small and Minority Businesses (with Elisabeth Clemens). Data collection.
Early Career Workshop Award, Society for the Advancement of Socio-Economics (SASE), 2021
Social Impact Best Dissertation Prize, Rustandy Center for Social Sector Innovation Research, 2021
Center for International Social Science Research Dissertation Fellowship, 2021
Center for East Asian Studies Dissertation Fellowship, 2021
Charles R. Henderson Research Grant, 2020
This dissertation explores why and how firms partner with politically marginalized nonprofit organizations prone to government surveillance, predation, and repression. In the first chapter, I demonstrate that low political status of nonprofits helps firms turn corporate philanthropic initiatives into core business activities, in particular market risk mitigation, business networking, and product marketing. In the second chapter, I show that structural characteristics of locality-specific performance ratings—namely, evaluation frequency and ambiguity—condition capacity building and agenda versatility of politically marginalized nonprofits, which have implications for their attractiveness in the eyes of potential corporate donors. In the third chapter, I document that breadth of corporate support that a nonprofit can possibly garner—a measure of resource mobilization base for social impact—also varies according to the organization’s political status. Through an empirical investigation of grassroots nonprofits in contemporary China, on the basis of a mixed-methods design, this dissertation advances a demand-side, nonprofit-centered perspective on corporate social responsibility and points to the significance of political contestation and commerciality in market-society collaborations.
Working Papers:
1. Grassroots-Oriented Corporate Philanthropy as Extension of Firms' Core Business Activities in China. In preparation for submission.
Early Career Workshop Award, Society for the Advancement of Socio-Economics (SASE), 2021
Rustandy Center for Social Sector Innovation Research Funding, 2019-2021
Prior research has established that corporate philanthropic donations in politically repressive environments are predominantly received by the government and its affiliates. Drawing on quantitative and qualitative data from China, I develop a theory of firms’ partnership with grassroots nonprofits, which are politically disadvantaged organizations unaffiliated with the state. An analysis of original nonprofit philanthropic activity data shows that, in comparison with state-controlled nonprofits, grassroots nonprofits are more likely to subject their projects to firm donors’ core business practices. Findings based on interviews and participant observation further point to two mechanisms underlying the grassroots nonprofits’ susceptibility to firms’ business needs. Precisely due to lack of access to quasi-coercive means and failure to legitimize work as political necessity, grassroots nonprofits are first open to corporate donors’ requests to secure control of donation allocation and leverage such control to buffer against market uncertainties. Second, grassroots nonprofits also become expedient targets of firms seeking to turn philanthropic events into cost-saving opportunities of business networking and product marketing. These findings connect political disadvantage of firms’ nonprofit partners with commerciality of corporate philanthropy, contributing more broadly to work on political embeddedness, hybridity, and corporate-society relation.
Online Appendix
2. Aid Intermediaries and Political Voids (with Marieke Huysentruyt and Bertrand V. Quélin).
Substantial development assistance is directed to recipient countries with varying political institutions and implemented by civil society and private sector middlemen. Nonprofit and for-profit intermediaries may differentially respond to a contract opportunity in a country with “political voids” — that is, where political institutions imperil the political rights of non-political elite mass. We develop a conceptual framework and an empirical analysis to examine this argument. We show how an organization’s strong commitment to social justice and its non-aggressive stance can yield a relational comparative advantage. The predictions were tested with a proprietary dataset of 1,122 bids for contract opportunities in Africa, Asia, the Middle East, the Caribbean and Overseas Territories initiated by the United Kingdom’s bilateral aid agency. We show that holding constant the nature of the project and the economic development of the target country, nonprofits were more willing to compete for contracts in countries distinguished by political voids, compared to for-profit firms. We also show that peer competition pressure mediates the relationship between political voids and nonprofits’ entry decisions: The weaker the presence of transnational social organizations in the target countries with political voids, the more the nonprofits were willing to bid. Further, the pure nonprofits, not the hybrid ones, with a non-aggressive agenda were most willing to fill political voids and most likely to win the contracts. However, this also came at a higher price paid by donors. Our results underline the critical role of nonprofits in the delivery of aid in politically challenging contexts and suggest that a below-the-radar, purely nonprofit approach may pay off most for nonprofits seeking aid contracts in these settings.
3. The Make or Buy State: Cost Efficiency, Capacity Lock-In, and Partisan Asymmetry in Federal Contracting (with Elisabeth Clemens). In preparation for submission.
Government contracting reconstitutes boundaries of the public sector through ever-deepening engagement of business firms and nonprofit organizations. Despite a legion of sociological accounts documenting implications of the contracting regime, it is rarely investigated in the first place when outsourcing of state functions is prioritized over “in-house” performing and how configuration of contracting award allocation varies over time. Regression analysis of U.S. federal contract spending across both granting administrative agencies and grantee states from 1979 to 2018 demonstrates that delegatory relationships are sustained by the need to incentivize contractors’ specialized capacities and to maneuver partisan politics. Instead of optimizing cost efficiency in service delivery, the federal government contracts out more responsibilities to nonstate organizations that are able to facilitate building of the administrative state and help absorb uncertainties within the political system. Furthermore, this capacity lock-in process is augmented by laissez-faire presidential administrations, which at the same time more readily leverage market transactions to expand electoral support for the presidential party.
4. Nonprofit Status Hierarchies and Grassroots-Firm Collaborations. Working paper.
5. The Breadth of Corporate Support for the Nonprofit Sector. Working paper (dissertation chapter).
6. Proximate Cohesion: Physical Copresence and Political Suturing in China’s Social Sector. Paper writing.
7. Phantom of the Past: Resurgence of Totalitarian Discourses in Post-Socialist Propaganda (with Tong Ju). New data collection underway.
8. Redistributive Solidarity and Business Engagement: Experimental Evidence (with Marieke Huysentruyt). Research design and conceptualization.
9. Federal Contracting as a Political Project for Small and Minority Businesses (with Elisabeth Clemens). Data collection.
