World society theory predicts that deeper integration into intergovernmental organizations (IGOs) improves domestic governance, yet the governance effects of structural embeddedness vary widely across states and over time. We argue that this variation reflects a dimension of international integration that existing research has overlooked: discursive embeddedness, or how a state takes part in producing the norms of the world polity. Discursive embeddedness has two dimensions. Discursive influence is a state’s capacity to reshape global governance discourse, and discursive receptivity is its movement toward the prevailing normative mainstream. Using new text-based measures from the UN General Debate Corpus and a panel of 109 states from 1985 to 2015, we find that structural embeddedness has a null or negative effect on governance in the absence of discursive embeddedness. Discursive influence raises the governance returns to structural embeddedness, while receptivity without influence lowers them. The combination of the two, which we call committed internalization, is associated with governance gains at high levels of structural embeddedness. These effects emerge only after 1994, when they appear in political, economic, and social IGOs alike, as a single liberal mainstream formed and global governance developed the accountability machinery that gives co-authorship of norms practical weight. The findings suggest a conditional revision of world society theory. Whether IGO integration improves governance depends less on structural embeddedness itself than on whether states take part in global networks as co-producers of the standards to which they are held.

Han, Sang Won and Yong Suk Jang . "Scripting or Enacting: Structural and Discursive Embeddedness and Governance Quality in the World Polity." Under Review at  American Journal of Sociology.

Han, Sang Won and Henrich R. Greve. 2026. "The Categorical Imperative versus Linguistic Alignment: Organizations Use Language to Modify Environmental Expectations." Organization Science 37(1): 113-131.

Analysis on how organizations communicate with the environment and respond to each other reasonably starts with the common assumption that mutual understanding and agreement is beneficial for organizations. The process of building such an agreement and the consequences of agreement versus disagreement is an active research topic and one that calls for additional research. We build on but depart from recent theoretical and empirical progress by introducing the concept of linguistic alignment built from the intersection of organizational self-description and environmental description of the organization. We define a measurement strategy for linguistic alignment and test its implications for U.S. public firms over last two decades with novel embedding alignment techniques. We find that organizations face negative consequences when deviating from linguistic alignment with analysts. This does not bar organizations from managing their self-presentation to obtain a positive market evaluation, but it means that linguistic alignment is done through managing their relationship and engagement with analysts.

We adopt a network-based perspective to examine the effects of hiring strategies in terms of the diversity of hiring sources. To address this question, we situate the firm within the mobility network that encompasses all moves of individuals. Considering the transferability of general and firm-specific skills, we propose that firms can mitigate integration costs while gaining diversity benefits when they hire from a focused set of firms that themselves hire broadly. We expect this strategy to be beneficial in terms of achieving innovation outcomes as well as productivity benefits. We also predict that having a strong cultural orientation with high intensity and consistency can help amplify these benefits. Our analysis of mobility data from U.S. public firms between 2005 and 2021 supports our hypotheses.

Han, Sang Won and Shinjae Won. 2026. "Hiring at the Tip of the Funnel: Externalizing the Work of Organizing and Filtering Diversity." Strategic Management Journal 47(7): 1935-1979.

Kim, Minjae and Sang Won Han. "Persistent Bipartisanship: The Growing Importance of Ideological Overlap amid Increasing Polarization." Under Review at American Journal of Sociology.

We examine how bipartisanship among legislators forms based on ideological (i.e., policy) positions amid increasing polarization in the U.S. politics. Prevailing accounts of contemporary polarization emphasize affective and identity-based partisanship as central forces behind legislative behavior, implying that bipartisanship is declining and increasingly detached from substantive policy positions. Yet, bipartisan cooperation persists in Congress, including on contentious issues. Building on emerging evidence that even partisan voters still prioritize ideological representation via bipartisanship over partisan loyalty, we argue that ideological overlap among legislators across the partisan divide may foster bipartisanship by helping them present it as faithful ideological representation. By this logic, ideological overlap may become increasingly important, when partisan boundaries become so salient that they likely exaggerate the ideological differences between partisan voters. Empirical analyses of bill cosponsorship show such patterns among both typically partisan and moderate legislators, particularly when legislators face electoral incentives to lean into ideological representation over partisan loyalty.

We propose that individuals differ in their ability to generate creative ideas as a function of the values, beliefs, and norms of their social group’s culture they have adopted and routinely use. To generate creative ideas, an individual needs to think differently from their group to generate novel ideas that others cannot, while understanding what the group will view as appropriate and practical. We view culture as a network and decompose individuals’ cultural adoption into two conceptually and empirically distinct dimensions. Cultural breadth, which reflects whether individuals have adopted a broad range of values, beliefs, and norms that span the organization’s culture, contributes to the novelty required for creativity. Cultural embeddedness, which reflects whether individuals have adopted the core values, beliefs, and norms entrenched in the organization’s culture, helps an individual generate ideas that others will view as useful. We predict that individuals with both high cultural breadth and high cultural embeddedness, who we label integrated cultural brokers, will be most likely to generate creative ideas that are novel and useful. We test and find support for our theory in two contexts: an e-commerce firm in South Korea and MBA students at a U.S. university.

Choi, Yoonjin, Paul Ingram, and Sang Won Han. 2023. "Cultural Breadth and Embeddedness: The Individual Adoption of Organizational Culture as a Determinant of Creativity. Administrative Science Quarterly 68(2): 429-464.

- ASQ Dissertation Award, Administrative Science Quarterly, 2024