Research

Dissertation Projects

  • The Business of Sharing: Legitimacy and Institutional Logics (Revise & Resubmit at Academy of Management Journal)

Legitimacy is critical for the survival and growth of entrepreneurial firms. Existing studies tend to assume that legitimacy once attained is not problematic and focus on one type of audience, which largely ignores Suchman’s (1995: 594) original and fundamental insight that legitimation projects attract attention, which invites other audiences that oppose legitimation, and therefore, “every victory seems to mobilize a new, more radical opponent.” Using mixed methods of topic modeling and qualitative analysis of Airbnb, I show how the entrepreneurial firm used different institutional logics in navigating multiple audiences with potentially contradictory legitimacy criteria at various stages of development.

  • Diverging Central Examples and Decline of the “Sharing Economy” Category

Categories are the cognitive infrastructures of markets. Recent category research has been interested in the dynamics of category change; yet, understanding how categories fall out of use is an important yet understudied phenomenon. In this study, I examine how the differences in the central examples of the “sharing economy” category highlighted by the initial category promoters versus the media ultimately led to the decline of the category.


Publications

  • Institutionalizing Place: Materiality and Meaning in Boston's North End

ㅤㅤCandace Jones, Ju Young Lee, and Taehyun Lee. 2019. Research in the Sociology of Organizations, 65B: 211-239. ㅤㅤhttps://doi.org/10.1108/S0733-558X2019000065B016

  • Paradoxical Effects of Alliances on Firm Growth: U.S. Airline Alliance Network and the Size of Directly-Covered Markets

ㅤㅤTaehyun Lee, Grimm Noh, and Dongyoub Shin. 2019. Journal of Strategic Management, 22(1): 77-101. ㅤㅤhttps://doi.org/10.17786/jsm.2019.22.1.004


Selected Working Papers and Works in Progress

  • Riding the Bandwagon: Adoption of a Nascent Category Label by Digital Matching Firms

ㅤㅤTaehyun Lee. (Additional data collection stage).

  • From Competitors to Complementors: Architects and Engineers Professionals Creating New Markets

ㅤㅤTaehyun Lee and Candace Jones. (Data analysis and writing stage).

  • Criteria for Effective and Ethical Framing

ㅤㅤRichard P. Nielsen and Taehyun Lee. (Conceptual paper; writing stage).

  • Social Movement as a Platform of Interinstitutional System: Interfield Variations of Institutional Logics and Agency Dynamics, and Post-movement Divergence of Activist Artists in Korean Minjung Arts

ㅤㅤDongyoub Shin, Sunhyuk Kim, Margeum Kim, and Taehyun Lee. (Data analysis and writing stage).