SOUL HAN
Ph.D. Candidate
Cornell University (Sociology)
I am a sociologist who draws on economic sociology, comparative political economy, and organizational theory to explain cross-national differences in domestic institutions that shape the rate and direction of technological innovation.
My dissertation, Developmental Bureaucracy’s Hurdle at the Technological Frontier: Diffusion and Domestication of the ARPA Model in South Korea, exemplifies my broader research agenda on how domestic institutions facilitate, modify, or constrain the social mechanisms that shape the direction of technological innovation.
email: sh2523@cornell.edu
Developmental Bureaucracy’s Hurdle at the Technological Frontier:
Diffusion and Domestication of the ARPA Model in South Korea
My dissertation examines how domestic institutional factors constrain and modify the adoption of the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) model in South Korea. Globaly recognized by academics and policy elites, the innovation model has been deemed to endow state bureaucracy with a unique set of dynamic capabilities to explore extremely uncertain technological opportunity spaces and facilitate path-breaking directions in research and development.
State actors in Korea joined a global wave of the model’s diffusion, as four different ministries and their respective line R&D management agencies initiated five large-scale ARPA-type R&D programmes since 2018.
Using archival data and 67 in-depth interviews with administrative officials, scientists, and policy advisors/experts, the study demonstrates how institutional barriers at multiple levels domesticate the model, limiting its transformative potential while adapting it to entrenched local bureaucratic and scientific practices.
Each empirical chapter uses different case(s) to demonstrate how the modification occurs at three distinct levels of institutions—bureaucracy, profession, and defense innovation system—and thus limits the developmental state’s aspiration to develop dynamic capabilities for exploring uncertain opportunity space and facilitating transformative technologies.
Chapter 1
Studying the Global Diffusion of the
ARPA Model
(Under review)
This review paper establishes an analytical foundation for studying the global diffusion and domestic adaptation of the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) model. It identifies DARPA’s core organizational elements, theorizes how they foster transformative advances, and examines institutional barriers to the transfer of these elements.
Chapter 2
Can Developmental Bureaucracy Foster Transformative Technologies?
(Outline available)
This paper explores the processes through which an organizational model for R&D funding transformative technologies diffuses and gets adapted by the bureaucracy of a developmental state.
Chapter 3
The Negotiated Role of Disruptive Innovation Agents
(Full draft available)
This article examines an oft-overlooked aspect of the diffusion of innovation models by revealing that transplanting the ARPA-type model requires more than disruptive organizational restructuring but also the introduction of a novel profession-level role whose capabilities and capacities are shaped in large part by the surrounding institutional environment.
Chapter 4
Defense Innovation Reform and Bureaucratic Incumbency: Limits of DARPA Emulation in Korea
(Full draft available)
In this article, I compare DARPA with its Korean counterpart, K-DARPA, to show how incumbent state actors in Korea’s defense innovation system reshaped the transported model to conform to their interests and entrenched institutional practices.
Future research plan
Forging the
Global ARPAs
As next steps and immediate extensions to my dissertation project on the diffusion and domestication of the ARPA model, I plan to expand the range of cases for comparison.
The extension of my project can ultimately lead to a book, Forging the Global ARPAs (working title), which can yield general insights into how non-U.S. advanced economies restructure part of their pre-existing state innovation agencies to overcome their institutional disadvantage in transformative technologies.
Please feel free to read the following research plan, share your comments, networks, and ideas for collaborative research.
Other lines of research
1. Emerging scholarship on firms that generate and sustain social values
2. Sociologically grounded accounts of regional advantage in the knowledge economy
Illusive Impact Investing
(draft available, w/ Diane Burton & Christina Jarymowycz)
Exploratory Mixed Methods Research on Portfolio Companies
Currently, I am part of a larger collaborative research project examining firms funded by impact investors, as part of a broader study on impact investing at Harvard Business School. The ongoing paper, “Illusive Field of Impact Investing” (draft available; co-authored), investigates why field-level efforts to institutionalize a new form of financial market aimed at scaling social impacts largely failed to materialize.
Two co-authored books on social entrepreneurship and social economy
(Korean)
1. Social Economy and Social Value: Ancient Future of Capitalism
2. Our New Territory: Social Innovators of Our Times
My two co-authored books in Korean were among the first to introduce the concept of social enterprise and social economy to Korean audiences--targeting academic readers (former) and practitioners (latter).
Former: https://product.kyobobook.co.kr/detail/S000000685790
Latter: https://product.kyobobook.co.kr/detail/S000001622424
Other papers (Korean) on the domestication of CSR in Korea
The Long-Run Transformation of CSR in South Korea: Based on the Perspective of New Institutionalism and Varieties of Capitalism (2025, Korean, solo-authored). The Journal of Asian Studies.
The Korean Evolution of CSR: The Case of SK's Support for Social Enterprise Ecosystem (2022, Korean, solo-authored). The Journal of NGO Studies.
The Theory and Reality of 'Social Value': Observations from the Roundtable of Center for Social Entrepreneurship Studies (2022, Korean, co-authored w/ Heejin Cho). Journal of Policy Studies.
Knowledge Economy and Regional Advantage (R&R)
Role of Norms, Networks, and Institutions
The growth of the knowledge economy and its concentration into a few successful high-tech regional clusters has attracted cross-disciplinary attention in the social sciences, provoking a search for the role of social mechanisms that generate regional advantage. I develop sociologically grounded accounts of regional advantage in the knowledge economy and thus identify research opportunities for sociologists in explaining its sources...
Comparative Political Economy of Regional Entrepreneurial Dynamics in High-Tech Clusters
(data analysis and research proposal available)
My research proposal, which builds upon this review paper (left) by using the set of social mechanisms to systemically compare the regional dynamics of high-tech entrepreneurship in New York City (United States) and Malmö-Lund (Sweden), two regional knowledge economies in different institutional environments, has won a graduate research grant from the Institute for European Studies.
Education
Ph.D. Candidate, Sociology, Cornell University
Master's Degree, Sociology, Seoul National University
Bachelor's Degree, Political Science, Swarthmore College
Curriculum Vitae
CONTACT
For inquiries or collaboration opportunities, feel free to reach out.