Linqing Huang

My research analyzes the social construction of evaluations and the role of gatekeepers in our society. Specifically, it focuses on ratings and evaluations in the culinary field, where critics and gastronomic guides hold positions of authority. I will attend the AoM job market in July.

Job Market Paper

Expert rating organizations play a crucial role in contemporary markets by shaping consumer choices and organizational market hierarchy through their evaluations. Yet these evaluators themselves face competitive pressures that may compromise the objectivity audiences expect from them. We examine how expert rating organizations strategically overlap with competitors' evaluation to maintain both credibility and distinctiveness. Using longitudinal data from China’s restaurant evaluation market (2017-2022), we analyze 4,662 evaluations across 454 restaurants by two competing guides: the Michelin Guide and the Black Pearl Guide. We find that expert rating organizations exhibit systematically different levels of strategic overlap across two distinct evaluation dimensions – candidate coverage (which restaurants to give a rating) versus candidate ratings (how highly to rate them). Moreover, three organizational characteristics shape these strategic overlap patterns: status (higher-status increases strategical overlap), market knowledge (greater local knowledge reduces strategic overlap), and order of market entry (first-movers exhibit less strategic overlap). These findings reveal that expert rating organizations are not mere homogeneous gatekeepers, but also strategic players. Our study contributes to research on social evaluations by revealing how competitive positioning shapes evaluator behavior on strategic overlap, and identified how this strategic overlap varies across strategic dimensions and over time.

Working Papers

• Is It All a Matter of Taste? Differentiation of the Michelin Guide in Foreign Countries (with Fabrizio Perretti)
• A New Tastemaker in Town: Competition Between Restaurant Guides in China (with Fabrizio Perretti)
• Realigning Market Identity: How and What Do Organizations Reply to Customer Reviews after Status Change
• The Role of Venture Capital in Startups' Institutional Logic Adoption (with Qiang Xiong and Andrea Fosfuri)
• Decision Rights versus Ownership Stake? The Influence of Pre-Founding Experience on Founders' Preference (with Guangwei Li and Zhao Zhou, Reject & Resubmit at Journal of Business Venturing)
• Differentiated Equality: Equity Dispersion and New Venture Team Stability (with Zhao Zhou)