Yuan Li

Dr. Yuan Li is a professor of management and organization theory. She obtained her PhD in Business Administration from the Marshall School of Business at the University of Southern California. Before coming back to
California, she was an assistant professor of Strategy and Organization at theDesautels Faculty of Management at McGill University in Montreal, Quebec.

 

Dr. Yuan Li’s research concerns the cultural and symbolic processes of
organizational, institutional, and technological change. She studies how
leaders and change agents use rhetorical tropes, arguments, and symbols tomake meaning and influence reality. Some of her current projects focus on the field dynamics of artificial intelligence (AI), responsible AI in regulatory rhetoric, and AI’s impact on organizational structures and practices, particularly in policing.

 

Published work has examined the diffusion of managerial innovations such
as the Total Quality Management, the role of the government, intellectual
and media elites, and entrepreneurs in China's economic transformation, impact of discourse on organizational development and change, and organizational event stigma. She is most known for theoretical models that explain mechanisms of institutionalization and decoupling as microlevel and macrolevel phenomena coevolve. These models have practical implications for a wide range of cases such as the adoption of CSR, ESG, DEI, and new technologies. She is also interested in integrating ideas of Western and Eastern philosophies to produce practical knowledge. Yuan uses qualitative methods as well as quantitative content analysis tools.

 

Her research has been published in leading management journals such as
the Academy of Management Journal, Academy of Management
Review, Journal of Management Studies, Journal of Business Ethics, Journal of Management Inquiry, Management Communication Quarterly,
and Culture and Organization, among others. She serves on the Editorial
Board of Organization Studies, the flagship journal of EGOS (European
Group for Organization Studies).

Department: 

School of Economics and Business Administration » Organizations and Responsible Business

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