Research Interests
My research examines how actors create the enabling conditions for transformative change. I focus on complex, fragmented settings where organizations (and the actors within them) must navigate competing rules and interests, work across boundaries, and build the relationships and structures needed for action. The sport industry serves as my primary empirical context.
Together, this research traces how organizations move from building new structures, to coordinating across boundaries, to reshaping the systems around them.
Three questions guide my work.
- How do organizations build the institutional conditions needed for action in fragmented environments?
- How do organizations navigate competing interests and bring together diverse actors, resources, and institutions to sustain collective action?
- How and under what conditions can organizations mobilize their resources and influence to drive meaningful social change?
As examples of my work, please see my 2018 paper on institutional disruption and my 2020 paper, published in Organization, which discusses the institution of sport as a site for social change. My 2021 paper in the Sport Management Education Journal (SMEJ) discusses how unpaid internships lead to racial inequality in the sport industry. This manuscript won the SMEJ Best Paper Award in 2021.
To date, I have authored or co-authored over 40 peer-reviewed journal articles. These papers are published in the following journals: Organization, Journal of Management Inquiry, Sport Management Review, Journal of Sport Management, African Journal of Business and Economic Research, International Review for the Sociology of Sport, International Journal of Sport Management, Journal of Issues in Intercollegiate Athletics, and International Journal of Sport Management and Marketing, among others. I am also the Editor-in-Chief of Sport, Business and Management: An International Journal.