To Partner or Go Alone: Governance Mode as a Response to Institutional Complexity

Governance with Shon R. Hiatt · Complete manuscript, available on request

Firms facing incompatible institutional demands can respond by changing what they do, what they say, how they are organized, or how they are classified. This paper argues they can also change who governs an activity. A firm can undertake an activity alone or alongside partners; in both cases it remains involved, but under shared governance other governing organizations can be called on when audiences object, so the focal firm no longer stands behind the activity alone. Firms should change governance differently depending on what is contested: goal-level contestation over the firm's direction shifts governance broadly across the portfolio, while means-level contestation over particular activities makes sharing vary from deal to deal, shaped by what the firm already operates. Using 1,331 acquisitions, joint ventures, and alliances by 16 integrated oil and gas firms from 2010 through 2023, the paper finds that greater contestation of firm direction was associated with more shared governance, without evidence that firms responded by doing fewer deals. Across deals, sharing increased more sharply toward transition activities for firms with more conventional operations, and the direct comparison favored what firms already operated over contestation of direction. The findings add governance mode to the repertoire of responses to institutional complexity and show that goal- and means-level contestation leave different patterns in firms' governance choices.

Relational Competition: Interesting Idea, Questionable Construct

Theory Ao, J., Nicholson, J. B., Blatman, G., Madhavan, R., & Prescott, J. (2022). Academy of Management Perspectives, 36(4), 1033-1048.

Assesses the construct validity of relational competition and identifies what stands in the way of its theoretical development.

It All Adds Up: Immigration Policy Multiplicity and the Erosion of Education's Advantage in Ownership

Multiplicity with Alfred Marcus · Complete manuscript, available on request

When does the number of policies in force matter, apart from what those policies say? Owners hold the residual claim on a business, so rules that affect the business affect what ownership yields; wage employees can face the same rules without holding a claim. As immigrant-targeted policies accumulate, ownership becomes relatively less attractive to people with strong alternatives, and education strengthens the paid-employment alternative. Using data on more than four million foreign-born workers across 51 U.S. jurisdictions from 2000 to 2020, the paper finds that policy multiplicity is associated with a weaker education-ownership relationship: a 6.7-percentage-point postgraduate advantage at zero policies becomes a 1.7-point deficit at eight. Supporting and restricting policies show similar associations, education responds more strongly than English proficiency or U.S. tenure, and no comparable pattern appears among native-born workers. Policy count can shape who occupies economic positions even when policy content does not distinguish ownership from employment.

Measuring the World That Was: Institutional Measurement Systems and the Drift Between Certification and Reality

Measurement with Shon R. Hiatt · working title · study fully designed

An authorized measure can keep its force after the conditions it was built to represent have changed, while the same system produces the evidence of that drift. This project develops distributed validity governance: the authority to produce a measure, evaluate with it, diagnose its validity, attach consequences, and revise it is divided among actors moving on different timetables. Whether the evidence bites falls to evaluators, who can reproduce the drift by continuing to use the inherited measure or counteract its consequences by incorporating the diagnostic, well before the standard is formally recalibrated.

Stick to Your Knitting or Chase the Wind? Rethinking Capability Balance in the Transition to Renewable Energy

Capabilities with Ravi Madhavan · working title · being redeveloped

Its earlier form examined how alliance-based capabilities shaped the oil and gas majors' movement toward renewable energy; the redevelopment asks how institutional pressure for transformation can widen the gap between the capabilities firms build, the work audiences reward, and the work that delivers the demanded outcome.

Capability Formation and Network Evolution: An Exploratory TERGM Analysis

Capabilities with R. Krause and Ravi Madhavan · working title · early stage

An exploratory temporal network analysis of how capabilities and partnership networks co-evolve in the energy transition.

Securing Energy Leadership through SMR Innovation: Strategic Insights for the U.S., Japan, and South Korea

Research Fellow · White paper with the Hamm Institute for American Energy, Oklahoma State University, 2025

U.S. Nuclear Power Industry Employment Forecast Analysis: Operations, New Construction, and Reactor Restart Workforce Projections

Research Fellow · White paper funded by the National Center for Energy Analytics, 2026