Research

Peer-Reviewed and Select Papers*

*All authored and published work up to this point are solo- or first-author.

Tien, Grace. [Blinded Title for Peer Review]

(R&R, Strategic Management Journal)

ASA Award for Best Student Paper in Economic Sociology and Entrepreneurship

This study draws on ethnographic fieldwork and 100 interviews with founders and investors to highlight the role of narratives around startup culture and founder charisma on investor outcomes in an autocratic context.

Tien, Grace. [Blinded Title for Peer Review]

(R&R, Socio-Economic Review)

This paper draws on 100 interviews and years long ethnography to examine how regulatory uncertainty in an autocracy shapes entrepreneurs’ decision-making processes.

• Invited to present at Nonmarket Strategy Research Conference 2025 (job market track)

Tien, Grace. 2023. The Protestants’ Dilemma: When Cultural Mismatches Shape Deliberate Action.

(Published, Sociology of Religion)

Tien, Grace. [Blinded Title for Peer Review]

This paper theorizes foreignness and ethnoracial legitimation, drawing on interviews and two ethnographic studies of transnational immigrant entrepreneurs.

• Invited to Present at Columbia/UPenn Migration and Organizations Conference 2025

Work in Progress

Development without Displacement: Entrepreneurship and Disinvested Urban Communities.

How do disinvested neighborhoods and its residents respond to gentrification? Numerous studies have highlighted the ways in which gentrification displaces marginalized residents, who then move out. An emerging body of work have increasingly documented the ways in which socially conscious gentrifiers or locals resist gentrification, via neighborhood organizing and activism. However, this body of work has yet to consider approaches to urban renewal that aim to develop without displacing marginalized residents as an alternative response. This oversight is important because while previous scholars identified moving out—a passive response, or protesting—a reactive response, this study examines a preemptive response to gentrification. Drawing on interview and ethnographic data, I examine the role of local entrepreneurship as an approach to facilitating mobility for disinvested communities and its longtime, marginalized residents.

• Invited to present at EGOS 2025

Surrogate Kinship Networks and the Unhoused.

Sociologists have examined and debated the salience of kinship ties and networks for the poor. One view is that the poor continue to rely on kinship ties and networks, and another view suggests that the economically destitute do not rely on familial kinship networks and ties to survive as they have in the past. Drawing on interview and ethnographic data, the findings of this study identify an emerging and new type of kinship network in place of kin, friends, or disposable ties—surrogate kinship networks—which are meant to be both a replacement and a permanent form of network ties for individuals who have been chronically unhoused.

• Invited to present at AOM 2025, MIT Equitable Opportunity Conference 2025, Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management 2025

Book

Tien, Grace, and María E. Funes. Religion & Racial Capitalism

(Forthcoming, Palgrave MacMillan)

Much of the discourse around diversity, equity, and inclusion have encountered two blind spots. First, discourse in the academy and beyond have prioritized the intersectionality of race and gender but neglected the intersectionality of race and class. Secondly, the resurgence (and now backlash) to diversity, equity, and inclusion have largely benefited cultural and economic elites on the political left and left behind the working class. This book suggests that the framework of racial capitalism can help bring attention to these gaps, in part due to renewed scholarly interest in racial capitalism across academic disciplines. This book is motivated by these theoretical gaps and focuses more specifically on how religion and religious institutions have both exacerbated or made efforts to address racial capitalism.

Google Scholar Page