Speaker: Dr Gordon C. Shen
Title: Effective Contextualization
Date: Thursday, 28 Aug 2025
Time: 10:00 am – 12:00 pm
Venue: Building 26C, CBE, 248, Allan Barton Forum
EY Song is the host of this visit.
Abstract:
Contextualization requires researchers and practitioners to consider situational, temporal, and multi-level factors that shape outcomes. Yet, these contextual dimensions are often overlooked, despite repeated calls to adopt methodological approaches grounded in multi-criteria decision-making to better characterize empirical contexts. In this seminar, I aim to engage audience members in an interactive discussion on heightened sensitivity to context in both theorizing and practice. I will emphasize the role of contextualization through the example of national health information management development in the Global South. This work helps build management and organizational theory on boundary objects and postcolonialism.
Bio:
Gordon C. Shen, PhD, SM, is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Management, Policy, and Community Health at The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston School of Public Health. Dr. Shen’s research focuses on responsible innovation, or the implementation of innovations that are socially desirable and of managerial interest. This entails a nuanced understanding of culture, co-creation, and context. He draws from and contributes to institutional theory and high-reliability organizing, as theoretical lenses to examine empirical contexts in health care globally. His work has been published in interdisciplinary journals such as Academy of Management Perspectives, Sociology of Development, Voluntary Sector Review, and numerous health journals.
Before joining UTHealth Houston in 2019, Dr. Shen was on the faculty in the Department of Health Policy and Management at the City University of New York Graduate School of Public Health and Health Policy. He holds a PhD in Health Services and Policy Analysis, with a concentration in management and organizational theory, from the University of California, Berkeley and an SM in Epidemiology, with a concentration in psychiatric epidemiology, from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. He completed a postdoctoral fellowship in global health at the Yale School of Public Health. Dr. Shen was a Fulbright student in China from 2012 to 2013 and a Fulbright-Fogarty Fellow in Public Health in Ethiopia in 2014. He has consulted for the World Health Organization, World Bank, and The United States Agency for International Development. He was elected as the 2024-2026 Academy of Management Health Care Management Division Academic-at-Large.