Work is central to dignity and social recognition. My research examines the (e)valuation of work, with a particular focus on entrepreneurial labor in contexts shaped by emerging technologies such as algorithms, digital platforms, and artificial intelligence. I study how entrepreneurs and other workers make their labor recognizable as worthwhile, especially when new technologies and cultural shifts make the value of their work contested and difficult to measure.
Entrepreneurial work is a particularly generative setting for examining these dynamics because it often unfolds under conditions of uncertainty. Nascent markets lack established metrics of worth, emerging technologies introduce new evaluative devices, and cultural shifts alter what kinds of work are recognized as valuable. My research investigates how entrepreneurs and other workers navigate these conditions through symbolic and strategic efforts to claim, defend, or redefine the value of their work and ventures.
Across my projects, I examine questions such as: How do new metrics become legitimate in nascent markets? How do workers contest algorithmic evaluations that undervalue self-expression? And how do ethnic entrepreneurs present their identities differently to in-group customers versus out-group investors? Together, these projects show that the value of work is not simply measured, but actively constructed through social, cultural, and technological processes.
Theoretically, I draw on economic sociology, cultural sociology, and organization theory. Methodologically, I primarily use qualitative methods, including interviews, ethnographic observations, and digital and archival data, while complementing these approaches with quantitative methods such as lab experiments and archival studies. This mixed-methods approach allows me to understand individuals’ lived experiences and how they construct meaning, while examining broader patterns in how work is evaluated across markets, organizations, and technological systems.
My research has been published in Strategic Management Journal.
Evaluative Tension in Self-Expressive Platform Work and Algorithmic Imaginaries:
The Case of Social Media Content Creators
Digital platforms increasingly encourage individuals to treat work as self-expression, while evaluating and rewarding that work through algorithmically mediated metrics of broader audience appeal, such as views and likes. This paper examines how social media content creators experience and navigate the resulting evaluative tension between self-expression as a basis of value and algorithmic metrics. Drawing on an inductive qualitative study of lifestyle creators across YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok–including interviews, in-person observation, and online ethnography–I show that creators experience strain as they view algorithmic metrics as a threat to self-expression, yet simultaneously find them consequential to their visibility, status, and income. I further show that creators construct “algorithmic imaginaries,” interpretive accounts of how algorithms work to generate those metrics. These imaginaries help them manage this evaluative tension. By attributing bias and/or inconsistency to algorithms through these imaginaries, creators can selectively discredit algorithmic metrics as valid evaluations of their work. This paper contributes to research on platform work and evaluation by showing how algorithms become contested devices of evaluation.
Building a Bridge to the Future: Prospective Legitimation in Nascent Markets
(with Derek Harmon and Eunice Rhee) Strategic Management Journal.
How do new things in nascent markets become legitimate? Existing research points to a process where legitimacy is built by making associations with already legitimate ideas from other domains. In this study, however, we investigate the Internet boom of the 1990s, a nascent setting where something new—engagement metrics used to evaluate firms— gained legitimacy amongst investors, but not by being associated with already legitimate metrics. Using a question‐driven mixed‐methods approach, we reveal that these new metrics instead gained legitimacy through a novel process we term prospective legitimation, where a new basis of legitimacy was constructed by firms linking their otherwise unproven new metrics to future profitability. We discuss how these findings inform research on legitimacy, the development of nascent markets, and future‐oriented communications.
Managing marginalized entrepreneurial identity for the creation of new markets:
Evidence from Muslim American entrepreneurs
(with Diana Jue-Rajasingh)
We explore how Muslim entrepreneurs strategically approach meaning-making of their religious identity. While prior research on minority entrepreneurship emphasizes in-group homophily as an important source of support for minority entrepreneurs, our initial interview data suggests otherwise. Muslim entrepreneurs highlight their religious identity when communicating with out-group, non-Muslim investors to signal their cultural access to the Muslim-specific market, leveraging their marginalized identity as a resource in their entrepreneurship. However, when communicating with in-group Muslim consumers, Muslim entrepreneurs downplay their religious identity to alleviate the suspicion regarding the quality of their ventures’ offerings. This suspicion exists due the history of Muslim businesses taking advantage of Muslim consumers whose needs have been largely neglected in the mainstream market. Based on the preliminary qualitative observations, we are currently conducting a survey experiment to test the effectiveness of this strategic meaning-making of entrepreneurs' identity for these two audience.