(Updated Jun 2026)
UNDER REVIEW
Tan, M. & Chai, S. “Legitimation process in segmented nascent industries” (Real title disguised for peer review) [Dissertation chapter]
2nd Round Revise & Resubmit at Strategic Management Journal
Nominated for Best PhD Paper Prize, SMS Istanbul 2024
Nominated for “That’s Interesting!” Award, EGOS Milan 2024
Selected conference presentations/workshops: GRONEN Barcelona (2026), HoFoW Lyon (2026), AOM Copenhagen (2025), ARCS Paris - PhD workshop (2025), SMS Istanbul (2024), EGOS Milan (2024)
A study about the emergence and legitimation of a new multi-segmented industry centered around valorizing insects for multiple applications. Abstract omitted for peer review.
SELECTED WORK IN PROGRESS
Tan, M. “Bottle versus Breast: A Historical Case Study on the Oscillating Moral Dominance Between Infant Formula Market and Breastfeeding Practice in the U.S., 1971-2000” [Dissertation chapter, job market paper] Target: Administrative Science Quarterly
Selected conference presentations/workshops: EGOS Bergamo/virtual (2026), Ethnography Atelier (2026), Organization Science Winter Conference Paris - Doctoral Consortium (2026), AOM Management History Division virtual PDW (2025)
The relentless expansion of markets into intimate spheres of life consistently triggers resistance from nonmarket domains. As literature focuses on examining the ultimate triumph or failure of each domain’s moralization strategies, it overlooks how these rival spheres negotiate and redraw boundaries over time. Understanding this longitudinal co-evolution is critical because these boundary struggles can leave lasting footprints that alter both commercial and domestic modes of organizing provisions of essential goods and services. To this end, I build a historical case study of the American infant formula market and breastfeeding activism across the 20th century, focusing on 1971 to 2000. I leverage extensive historical sources from formula firms, breastfeeding proponents, parents, pediatricians, the government, and mainstream media to build a theory of oscillating moral dominance between market and intimate realms. My findings reveal three amplifying mechanisms that, in each temporal phase, sway the dominant norm of infant feeding toward either the commercial product or the embodied intimate practice: entrants’ uncertainty renewal, core market actors’ resonance or antagonism with new moral framings, and actors’ adaptation to shifting normative expectations of their social and economic behaviors. Each phase ended with reconfigured market-intimacy boundaries and relationships between core market constituents –firms, mothers, and physicians– with previous entrants, setting the stage for the next cycle of moral re-evaluation. I conclude that the march of markets is not totally unfettered, nor can the protective counterreaction from nonmarket domains achieves permanence; instead, the two move in a cycle of moral tug-of-war preventing either sphere from fully eclipsing the other.
Tan, M. “Emotions and Emergence: How Entrepreneurs Manage Consumers’ Aversive Emotions in Nascent Market of Insect-as-Food Products” [Dissertation chapter, collecting additional data]
Selected conference presentations/workshops: Showcase Symposium, AOM Philadelphia (2026)
Extant research has focused on the critical role of cognitive processes for new category acceptance, but has neglected emotions from consideration. In some categories, emotional appeal may be as critical as cognitive legitimacy. Further complicating, the growing environmental consciousness has spurred entrepreneurs’ entry into moral markets that often involve sustainable products from unconventional inputs. The materiality of such inputs can evoke nonconscious, aversive emotions. Given the scarcity of research examining how audience emotions shape nascent category emergence and how entrepreneurs account for these affective dynamics, this paper asks: How do entrepreneurial actors manage consumers’ aversive emotions toward an emerging category? To explore this question, I investigate entrepreneurial actors in nascent markets of food products made from insects as sustainable ingredients. I build a theory on how entrepreneurs build mental representation of emotional composition diversity and intensity of different customer groups (in particular aversive emotions such as disgust, fear, and shame), and how this representation plays a role in their strategic actions and decisions in shaping and legitimating the insect-as-food category.
Tan, M. “Reviving Old Technologies and Valorizing Mundane Objects through Reassignment of Functions and Meanings” [Conceptual paper, writing stage]
Objects and technologies possess both functional and symbolic values, but research often examines these dimensions separately. One research stream focuses on the functional value creation of objects through technical innovations that address audience’s practical needs. Another stream explores how actors mobilize cultural resources to imbue objects or products with symbolic value that fulfills audience’s desires for expression and meaning. Given the separate domains of research, extant scholarship overlooks phenomena where actors reassign objects with both radically new functional use and symbolic meaning, and face resulting audience dissonances. Amidst pressures from today's social and environmental crises, various organizations, social movements, and entrepreneurs increasingly rethink and question the roles of mundane, familiar, or discarded objects and technologies. This study theorizes how heterogenous actors 1) reassign objects and technologies with new (un)favorable uses and meanings and 2) address audience dissonances that result from these reassignment attempts.
Tan, M. & Huising, R. “Defining the Tools of the Trade: Market Forces and Medical Expertise through Visual Analysis of Print Advertisements in Pediatrics Journals” [Early-stage]
Huising, R. & Tan, M. “Constructing a Culture of Responsibility Among Biosafety and Biosecurity Professionals” [Early-stage]
METHODOLOGY-RELATED WORK
Huising R.*, McAlpine, C.*, & Tan, M.*, “Becoming who you are: Voices and journeys of qualitative scholars” [Analyzing data]
*alphabetical order, equal authorship
This project explores the process of becoming and being an academic scholar. We interview scholars with expertise in qualitative research methods across different career and life stages about their experiences, challenges, relationships, and moments of meaning in their scholarly lives. The central focus is not on their specific research findings, but on their trajectories as people and scientists—how they navigate identity, purpose, feedback, collaboration, boundaries, craft, and joy in the academic profession.