Business PhD Spotlight: Yunjung Pak
Yunjung Pak examines the intersection of technology, innovation, and organizational theory. He completed both his Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in sociology at Yonsei University in Korea. His master’s thesis explored how media coverage about a radical activist group in Korea was shaped by cultural forces.
This academic foundation led Pak to continue applying his research interests to social enterprises, focusing on social innovation through information technology. As a project manager, he launched an online petition system akin to Kickstarter, connecting the Korean public directly with the National Assembly. While this innovative project initially succeeded in demonstrating how technology can facilitate civic engagement, the system was challenged and failed amid organizational struggles and political fluctuations.
“My experiences influenced my academic trajectory toward exploring the intricate relationships between technology, organizational innovation, and institutional change.”
Pak’s dissertation delves into how governance processes guide the adoption and evolution of technology within organizations and fields. In particular, he examines the Ethereum blockchain community, highlighting how technology-based community governance was established through responding processes to a crisis called the DAO hack, and how the community subsequently shifted its legitimized technical architecture from proof-of-work (PoW) to proof-of-stake (PoS) through cultural entrepreneurship.
The decision to join the Alberta School of Business was influenced by several factors, notably the faculty’s innovative approach to data analytics in social sciences known as interpretive data science (IDeaS), which led him to his supervisor, Dr. Timothy Hannigan. Moreover, Pak’s familiarity and alignment with the institutional perspectives of Alberta’s faculty such as Dr. Michael Lounsbury and Dr. P. Devereaux Jennings—whose articles he had read during his Master’s program—made Alberta an ideal place for advancing his academic career.
“My work aims to elucidate how governance evolves and facilitates the development of meanings and practices within emerging technological fields.”
Pak’s research method is unique, employing interpretive data science techniques such as topic modeling and Fuzzy Set Qualitative Comparative Analysis (fsQCA) to analyze extensive archival data. His approach emphasizes the importance of qualitative expertise in selecting and preprocessing data given the social and cultural context, interpreting meanings of artifacts identified by algorithms, and building them as theoretical constructs. His work promises to contribute significantly to the fields of organizational theory, technology, and innovation.