Sang Won Han

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.

Linguistic Alignment and its Performance Consequences for Organizations

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.

Hiring at the Tip of the Funnel: Externalizing the Work of Organizing and Filtering Diversity

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. Forthcoming. "Hiring at the Tip of the Funnel: Externalizing the Work of Organizing and Filtering Diversity." Strategic Management Journal.

Han, Sang Won and Minjae Kim. "Cross-Cutting Ties among Divided Political Elites." Invited to Revise and Resubmit at American Journal of Sociology.

Cross-Cutting Ties among Divided Political Elites

We develop and test a theory to address a puzzle in contemporary US politics—enduring formation of cross-partisan cooperation among political elites against seemingly unstoppable forces of political division. Our main idea is that cross-partisan cooperation may arise precisely because of political division that highlights strategic brokerage benefits for politicians sharing legislative agendas with opposite-partisans. But at the same time, when it is more important to demonstrate co-partisan commitment vis-à-vis such division, political elites may limit or even avoid cross-partisan cooperation. Our analyses on the US Senate and House of Representatives 1973–2017 test these ideas, particularly by exploiting institutional features highlighting legislative benefits (e.g., threshold to override the “filibuster” in the Senate) and electoral penalties from cross-partisan cooperation (e.g., higher voter partisanship in House elections). The upshot is an endogenous “brake” to structural fragmentation, where some cross-cutting ties may form due to—and not despite—greater intergroup division.

Cultural Breadth and Embeddedness: The Individual Adoption of Organizational Culture as a Determinant of Creativity

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

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