My research interests revolve around how different forms of embeddedness impact the work of organizations and the resilience of workers.

 

I am committed to employing ethnographic methods in my research. My commitment to ethnography is as personal as it is intellectual. First, as a scholar and researcher, I think ethnography, with an intensive focus on generating in-depth understandings of people’s lived experiences, is the right method to study sociomateriality and culture. Second, as a human being, I am deeply passionate about ethnography as a way of understanding our very strange yet deeply human world. I find great satisfaction in connecting to and understanding human subjects.

 

​UPCOMING PUBLICATIONS

 

Cao (upcoming, 2026). To the lighthouse: Moral injury, moral resilience, and moral courage. In Towards Greater Equality in Academia: A Collective Response. Edited by Scholz & Szulc. Edward Elgar Publishing. Gloucestershire. UK.

 

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MANUSCRIPTS UNDER REVIEW

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Cao. First, let’s eat cake: How sociomateriality supports resilience via bricolage behaviors. Under review at Human Relations as of February 2026.

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MANUSCRIPTS IN PREPARATION

 

Cao & Wang. Do you know my son’s favorite food?: How emotional labor is shaped by embeddedness as local enactments of family discourse. To be submitted to Organization Studies in 2026.

 

Cao. The empathizers: Focusing on present impact as a relational mechanism among immigrant rights advocates. To be submitted to Human Relations in 2026.

 

Cao. Maybe don’t mention Harvard: Social reproduction processes in the translation of Bourdieu’s four forms of capital in Asian societies. To be submitted to Business and Society in 2026.

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