Dr. Yuan Li is a business professor specializing in management, organization theory, and strategy. She obtained her PhD from the Marshall School of Business at the University of Southern California. Her research analyzes the cultural and symbolic processes of organizational, institutional, and technological change. Drawing from various disciplines such as sociology, political science, communications, anthropology, cultural studies, philosophy, and history, her work illuminates the ways in which social and organizational actors make, and are made by, meaning.
Li's work has examined the diffusion of managerial innovations such as the Total Quality Management, a paradox lens on organizations, organizational event stigma, and the dialogical perspective on organizational development and change. Her recent projects explore the shifting struggles and organizational strategies of diversity, equity, and inclusion, the social and symbolic ecologies of artificial intelligence, and the rhetoric of disruptive technologies. She is known for introducing semiotics to institutional theory in explaining mechanisms of institutionalization and decoupling. These conceptual models have practical implications for a wide range of cases such as the adoption of DEI, ESG, and innovations.
Dr. Yuan Li has published in leading management journals such as the Academy of Management Journal, Academy of Management Review, Journal of Management Studies, Journal of Management Inquiry, Journal of Business Ethics, Management Communication Quarterly, and Culture and Organization, among others. She serves on the Editorial Board of Organization Studies."