My research explores (1) how social movements and civil society-embedded organizations navigate and respond to the rise of illiberalism and (2) how it affects firms, managers, and our long-standing management theories. I mainly employ qualitative methods (i.e., ethnography and in-depth interviews), and my work contributes to institutional theory, scholarship on social movements, the political aspects of organizing, and grand challenges.

In my first empirical paper, I focus on the organizational practices and resistance of three independent Hungarian newspapers, while my second empirical article examines the student-led Freeszfe resistance movement under the illiberal government of Viktor Orbán. In a review article, with my co-authors (Pursey Heugens and Wenjie Liu), I study what managing under illiberalism means for business firms. In a conceptual paper I am writing with Johanna Mair and Pursey Heugens, we theorize how illiberal institutional environments affect for-profit firms.

Invited revisions: 

• Managing Under Illiberalism: A Constitutive Review (with Pursey Heugens and Wenjie Liu). Second round R&R at Journal of Management

• Media Organizations as Quasi-Movements: Role Switching Under Illiberal Rule (with Richard Haans and Pursey Heugens). Second round R&R at Journal of Management Studies

Manuscripts in preparation:

• The Tragedy of the Acquiescents: How Firms Become Compliant and Complicit Through Illiberal Regime Alignment (with Johanna Mair and Pursey Heugens). Current stage: manuscript writing. Target journal: Academy of Management Review

• Curtain Down: Organizational Cancellation and the Resistance of Theater-Making Students in Hungary (with Pursey Heugens and Richard Haans). Current stage: data collection. Target journal: Administrative Science Quarterly

• When Politics Constrain Inclusion: How Firms Sustain Workplace Diversity Under Illiberalism. Current stage: conceptualization. Target journal: Academy of Management Journal

• Political Polarization and Organizational Resilience: The Role of Community-Anchored Commitment (with Kevin Curran and Sumeet Malik). Current stage: preparing for submission. Target journal: Administrative Science Quarterly