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.
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.
